Slumber Party ’57 (1976)

The first few years of Debra Winger's screen career included some grim chapters, such as her three-episode stint as teen superheroine Wonder Girl during the 1976-1977 debut season of the campy TV show Wonder Woman. However, strutting around in a barely-there costume alongside Lynda Carter actually represented a change for the better given Winger's previous gig as one of the leads in Slumber Party ’57, a leering sex comedy about ostensibly wholesome 1950s high-school girls swapping stories of how they lost their virginity. The young ladies' anecdotes are depicted in extended flashbacks, and each flashback plays like a watered-down version of a "Penthouse Letters" anecdote—despite being told from a female perspective, the flashbacks are merely excuses for topless shots and male-fantasy scenarios. We’re talking nubile beauties who are desperate for sex, a horny farmgirl who initiates a lesbian encounter in a barn, a sexy starlet willing to trade sex for fame, and so on. The low point of the movie happens early in the running time, when the high-school girls congregate at a posh mansion in Beverly Hills and dive into the pool, yanking each other's bras off so they can swim nude except for their panties while underwater cameraman document every passing nipple. Adding to the mindless quality of the picture is the presence of assorted ’50s-culture clichés; for instance, the flashback featuring Winger's character includes a showdown between a biker gang and a letterman. At least the soundtrack for this exploitive movie is filled with peppy 1950s music, although one suspects that most musicians would be embarrassed to discover their tunes were used to enliven a low-budget nudie picture.

Slumber Party ’57: LAME