Gorp (1980)

Review:

What a terrible movie. Whoever made this film thinking, “Wow-gee-whiz, this material is comedic” should be brought behind a seedy abandoned warehouse, lectured on the tenants of what is and is not funny, and then promptly shot. After that, if there is a God and he be a righteous God, that person will be condemned to a ring of hell in which he will be tormented by the characters of this movie in the ways that they torment each other in the film.

I admit that I have a soft spot for summer camp movies. Many of the good ones (“Meatballs” (1979) “Wet Hot American Summer” (2001)) present summer camp with a weird, nostalgic zaniness that sometimes borders on anarchy. “Gorp” is also based on that formula, but stretches it to its unfortunate extreme. It is pure anarchy – and I do not mean that in a laudatory way.

There’s not really a story. A group of guys show up at a cabin in the woods. They are to be the waiters at a nearby Jewish summer camp. We meet Kavelli (Michael Lembeck) and Bergman (Philip Casnoff), the most inane and frustrating duo since the guys who starred in “Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla” (1952 and possibly the worst film ever made).

So, we follow Kavelli and Bergman and some of the other waiters around as they hit on the pretty counselors in training and pull pranks on one another. And let me here insert what makes me so upset about this movie. When I say they “hit on the pretty counselors in training” I mean they sneak into their cabins at night with nylon stockings over their heads, peak under the girl’s covers, get undressed…the fodder of rapists-to-be. And let me here note that when I write that they “pull pranks on one another” I mean that they pull a slew of tiring, monotonous, mean-spirited, scatological, meaningless, unfunny pranks on one another. No, actually, “pranks” is too kind of a word. What these boys do to each is sociopathic.

And don’t get me started on the scene where Kavelli and Bergman drug and try to rape the camp nurse. It’s somewhat hard to offend my sensibilities, but a scene like that being passed off as humor comes close. At least in the date rape scene in “Observe and Report” (2009) you could tell the filmmakers were aware that date rape is fundamentally wrong. Here, this movie wants us to conspire with Kavelli and Bergman by condoning and laughing at the action.

“Gorp” is a movie populated with irredeemable grotesques. It tries so very hard to capture the energy and irreverence of films like “Animal House” (1978) and “Meatballs” (1979) and fails greatly. It grasps only the madness of those films, not the method. The only edifying reason you should see this film is to say, “Oh, so that’s what Dennis Quaid/Fran Drescher looked like when they were younger.”

Oh yea, did I mention Dennis Quaid and Fran Drescher are in “Gorp?”

Rating:

On a scale of one to “Casablanca” this film is a two.

Rationalization:

This film is not rated a one because of one scene and one scene only. A rabbi is giving an enthusiastic speech about the Ten Commandments. We then see that he’s giving this speech to a crowd of approximately three young campers. This scene made me think of what a good movie this might have been if given some more thought and development. It could have easily juxtaposed and intermingled the spiritual side of this camp with the blasphemous lives of the staff. That might have developed into something more than the atavistic romp through amorality that is “Gorp.”