Rating: D+
Dir: Barbara Peeters
Star: Jillian Kesner, Sterling Frazier, Paul Ryan, Dorothy Buhrman
Starhops, not working for the other guy
Starhops, we finally got a piece of the pie
Starhops, well look out boy, we’ll reach the sky
Starhops, yeah!
So goes the funky pop song opening this frothy confection, which has about as much substance as candy floss, and leaves with you with a similar sense of wasted effort. I should probably have guessed. Peeters’ next film was Humanoids from the Deep, where she would infamously clash with Roger Corman over the content. In addition, this was written under the pseudonym of “Dallas Meredith” by Stephanie Rothman, who once said, “I was never happy making exploitation films. I did it because it was the only way I could work.” Little surprise, then, that this is blandly right-on, thoroughly earning its PG rating.
It does feel Corman-adjacent, not least in the presence of Dick Miller as Jerry, owner of a drive-in restaurant which has been failing since the arrival nearby of McDonalds’ and KFC. “Nobody wants to give their order to pretty girls anymore,” he complains. “They wanna talk to robots!” Plus ça change… He quits, selling the business to waitresses Angel (Kesner) and Cupcake (Frazier). Together with French cook Danielle (Buhrmann – whose accent makes me suspect she may not actually be French, I dunno), they run the place themselves. This is much to the chagrin of oil mogul Carter Axe, who intended to tear the place down and put in a gas station. He sends son Norman (Ryan) to work as a car-hop and gather dirt on the girls’ operation.
I’ve no doubt you can work out how things unfold from here. After a half-hearted attempt at sabotage, Norman ends up falling for Cupcake, and turns on his father, who then sends in the heavy mob. They are roundly defeated, and Norman delivers a stern crypto-socialist lecture to his father: “If you do what’s best for everybody else, you’ll be doing what’s best for you.” Yep, Starhops. Come for the inane comedy, stay for the left-wing political messaging! Though the former is pretty bad as well, not least because the running time is padded out with footage of sunsets. Really. So. Many. Sunsets. As well as beaches. Volleyball games. Mountains.
What there is not, however, is gratuitous nudity, despite a trio of attractive actresses, the salacious ad copy (“They do it all for you!”), and a scenario primed with situations which could lead to it, e.g. seducing their loan out of a bank manager. As mentioned, this is strictly PG stuff, with the stars never going further than slightly revealing things resembling a swimsuit (top). The result would surely only have been deemed satisfactory for 12-year-old boys, who haven’t yet discovered their father’s stash of Playboy. This is what happens when you hire people to make movies, who don’t like the kind of movies you want them to make. Based on this, I have rather less sympathy for Peeters’ Humanoid situation, because this definitely needs someone like Corman to come in and punch it up.