In 1982, I was 11 years old (for most of the year) and I saw more naked women on movie
screens than I ever have since. I was a normal kid with a healthy amount of curiosity, and
nowhere near puberty, but I became obsessed with seeing movies with naked women in
them.

It started when a couple of friends and I snuck into a movie
called Young Doctors In Love. It was a comedy that I was
really too young to understand, and I haven't seen it since,
but there was one scene where the doctor boss or
something gets a Christmas gift which is this topless
woman. I didn't really understand anything else about the
scene except that the girl didn't have a shirt on and I
wasn't supposed to see it. I was instantly hooked to the
gills.

In those days the MPAA ratings were enforced about half as stringently as they are today,
but they still didn't sell tickets to R-rated movies to 11 year old boys. So the scheme was
pretty simple. You'd buy a ticket for E.T. or Rocky III, and then just walk right into the
forbidden theater. Once you were in, you'd walk straight to the front row, sit down, and
keep your trap shut. You knew that talking or being loud would get you thrown out, and
you really were just there to see the movie.

This ruse worked over and over. I think the very next weekend after Young Doctors in
Love, we saw The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. It was a big disappointment, and
none of us could really understand why Dolly Parton didn't take her shirt off. After all, it's
an R-rated movie, we're all adults here, why NOT? Again, I really didn't get the movie, but
there were a couple of scenes (as I remember) with other topless women, and that kept it
from being a total loss.

POSTER GALLERY:
(all down the side
and across the
bottom) Click on any
image to enlarge.

It may have been the next week or the week after that my friends went and saw a movie
called Homework. I was doing something with my family or something, and I didn't get to
go, but I heard a scene by scene retelling the next day. This was a movie that I DID
understand. It was about kids in high school. I was really disappointed that I'd missed it,
and that's probably why I still watch it now and then, just to remind myself that I'm
grown up and I can watch whatever I want.

Then came Porky's (yup, we're still in 1982). This movie was a big hit, and that made it
easier to sneak in. We saw that one twice, but the second time, we left right after the
group shower scene (it wasn't my idea, but I had to agree there was no more major
nudity for the rest of the picture). Incidentally, that was the very night I had my first
(and just about only) run-in with the police when this idiot kid I was with knocked over a
soda machine. It's a long story, but sufficeth to say if we'd stayed for the end of
Porky's, things might have turned out differently.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High came next, with an up to the minute soundtrack (and
references in the movie itself to Led Zeppelin and Cheap Trick), characters that you could
relate to and even cheer for ("I'm gonna kick 100% of your ASS"), comedy, drama AND
nudity. At the time I think it was about the coolest movie I'd ever seen.

After that it went downhill quickly. Spring Break wasn't nearly as good as Fast Times,
and the characters were all unlikable college kids. Fortunately, the thing was thick with
naked girls. It's most impressive to me now because director Sean S. Cunningham
produced Last House on the Left and the Friday the 13th series, and I saw his sole low
budget excursion into teenage sex on the big screen.

By early 1983, it was just about over for me. I kept expecting every movie I snuck into
to be as good as Porky's or Fast Times, but none of them were (and really, almost none
of them are today, except for The Last American Virgin).

My friend and I developed a new plan - my dad would take me to R-rated movies all the
time when I was a kid (always sci-fi or horror - I saw Alien, Creepshow, The Shining,
Galaxy Of Terror, Heavy Metal, Blade Runner and many more in the theater before my
12th birthday) and so I appealed to him to take us to a movie called Joy Sticks. Just
from the poster, you could tell there would be naked girls in it, and it was also about
video games, so how could it not be the best movie ever?

We told my dad he didn't have to stay for the movie, but he said, "What are you talking
about? I paid, I'm staying." In maybe the second scene of the movie, two girls took
their shirts off to seduce a nerd guy, and I just sort of sunk down in my seat. After the
movie, my dad said that Joy Sticks was the worst movie he'd ever seen, and there's
really no question - it's true. But the fact that he pointed it out, combined with the fact
that we were allowed to see it, made the whole idea of pursuing nudity for nudity's
sake seem sort of pointless. As strange as it seemed, at 12 years old, I was jaded to
pointless nudity in film. It would take years before I would come around - I wouldn't be
happy sitting through an awful movie just to see a naked girl again until I hit puberty.

- Eric Henderson

Copyright 2004 Eric Henderson.