Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters: Know Your LGBT History

Friday, August 13, 2010

Know Your LGBT History - Up the Academy

Up the Academy (1980) is probably one of the most offensive movies ever made and that's not in a good way.

Don't get me wrong. I love blue comedy and I also think that we all need to make fun of ourselves. However there is a fine line between good comedy and things that rob folks of their dignity.

Up the Academy crosses the line and does its best to erase it.

Many of you probably never heard of it so allow me to give a brief plotline. Four young men enter a military academy and have "madcap hijinks" there.

And there are a few more bits of trivia about this movie. It was one of Ralph Macchio's first movies and it was so bad that both one of the producers - Mad Magazine - and the actor who played the villain - Ron Leibman - demanded their names removed from it.

Up The Academy is just bad. It insults African-American, Italians (apparently all of them belong to the Mafia), the elderly (old soldiers don't die, they just get very, very flatulent), pedophilia (who knew scenes showing preteens and teens masturbating in classrooms would be "hilarious"), people from the Middle East (apparently they like to eat pig testicles), etc. etc.

The less said about the bowel movement in the punch bowl scene the better.

And, I am getting there, the crowning achievement of all offensiveness is the portrayal of late actor Tom Poston as Master Sgt. Sisson.

Poston, who was an excellent comedian, really should have known better, even in the early 80s.

His portrayal of a gay man can be best described as someone plugging "Porno Peter" LaBarbera to a virtual reality machine.

I mean really when this guy isn't pushing the stereotype of a gay man being overly feminine, he is pushing the pedophilia lie pretty hard.

But the following clip best describes what I am talking about. Poston's character is peppered throughout and you can't miss him. TRUST ME when I say you can't miss him:

2 comments:

Bill S said...: What a waste of time and talent. I managed not to see this thing when it came out, but I remember it being heavily promoted as a successor to "Animal House". I also remember seeing it lampooned as a bomb in the pages of MAD. (I might still have that issue, but probably not.); 3:12 PM
Penny Marie Sautereau said...: I'm just old enough to remember seeing the ad for it on MAD's inside cover. Even then I thought it looked stupid. Though now I wish I still HAD it. For both the fact of MAD denying any involvement in it now, plus it was the very first and only ad ever in MAD that wasn't a parody until MAD went corporate a decade ago, the issues containing the movie ad are probably worth a great deal more than this piece of shite ever was.; 7:04 AM