Stewardess School (1986)

ss

In 1984, “Police Academy” stormed in to theaters and helped define comedy for the eighties. Suddenly every profession in America was some kind of madcap misadventure, including being a stewardess, for some reason. “Stewardess School” is another take on the formula, this time with a group of misfits doing their damndest to train to become stewardesses, all the while getting naked, doing drugs, and experiencing some of the best stereotypes you can imagine. Filled with only the best C list TV stars, “Stewardess School” is passable entertainment if you keep in mind it’s trying its best to launch a series on the “Police Academy” formula.

After two friends flunk piloting school, they decide to go to stewardess school for the sake of women and travelling around the world. They’re fun because one of the pair can barely see and has comically thick glasses, while the other is a womanizer. There’s also an heiress living as a punk rocker, an ex-prostitute, a flamboyantly gay man, a tough as nails female wrestler with man troubles, a perky princess, two tough twins, and a seemingly normal young woman who has the tendency to create disaster. The group has to weather stewardess school together, getting in to all kinds of odd situations, and partying their butts off in some of the more awkward sequences that have ever come out of the decade. The school has also decided to open its doors to everyone, thanks to the kinky and crooked dean, who spends his free time being whipped and beaten by a dominatrix in his office.

“Stewardess School” is a solid comedy that teams “Police Academy,” and “Airplane!” and tries really hard to turn its characters in human beings while also adhering to more stereotypical broad comedy characters for the sake of guilty laughter. So the flamboyantly gay man (Rob Paulson) has to reach under a woman to find her seatbelt and has his head accidentally shoved in to her crotch. There’s also the brutally sexy ex-prostitute (the instantly memorable Judy Landers) who has no trouble dropping trou to get what she wants. And who can forget the obligatory heavy character defined by food? As played by the late Wendie jo Sperber, she spends most of the movie ogling food in an attempt to lose weight to pass stewardess school. While the movie is anxious to be confused for “Police Academy” it also tries hard to be taken as a wacky sex comedy, flaunting boob shots and raunchy humor.

It doles up some solid comedy, including a long montage of the group practicing their steward tasks on a fake flight with actual customers. Most of it is hit or miss from gags involving a customer with the tendency to grab butts, and a violent ex-football player, to a drawn out ice cream scene with a little boy (“How’d you like your nuts crushed?” “How’d you like your tits shot off?”). As with most of these comedies, the dean is crooked and or mean, the only normal characters fall for one another, and the misfits prove to be competent in their jobs at the end of the film thanks to a convoluted finale involving a faulty plane and terrorists. Shocking enough, “Stewardess School” never had the opportunity of a sequel, but it’s at least worth watching to ogle the insanely hot Judy Landers, who (big surprise) steals the box cover art for the original VHS release.