User Reviews

For years I read about King Frat in Cinema Sewer and always debated if I could handle it. And then I came across its entry in Teen Movie Hell and realized that as I was planning a week of teen movies to go along with it, that I'd have to battle my way through it. I'm happy to say that I've made it. And really, it's something else.

Before he became the founding editor of The Huffington Post, Roy Sekoff starred in this movie, which was filmed in Miami and Coral Gables as a takeoff of Animal House. The Bluto Blutarsky of this film is J.J. "Gross-Out" Gumbroski, played by John DiSanti, who believe it or not would go on to be in other movies (*batteries not included is one of them).

Set at Yellowstream University, this movie follows the Pi Kappa Delta fraternity, who are only concerned with drinking. A good chunk of the film involves them mooning people, which leads to the death of the dean of the school. Then, a farting contest is announced and everyone battles to have the best farts in a scene that goes on longer than you'd expect, then goes about another seven minutes past that.

I mean, just watch the first ten minutes of this movie, knowing that this same song plays for the entire movie.

Amazingly, King Frat comes from Ken Wiederhorn, the same man who directed Shock Waves, Return of the Living Dead Part II and Meatballs II. What a resume!

King Frat is literally the bottom of the absolute barrel of filmmaking and I love it. If Animal House was too classy for you, if you wondered if they could make a movie where a frat could murder a dean by farting in his face and stealing the body and then have a scene where numerous men and women fart, good news. This is the movie for you.

I saw "King Frat" in a drive-in when it came out, passing around a bottle of bourbon around the car, as I saw my first bare breasts in the cinema (they were rarer than they are today; no internet or DTV). And fine breasts they were. The best two things about the movie.

Otherwise, this Animal-House ripoff is one of the shoddiest pieces of trash I ever sat through. It might have been an early Farrelly Bros. movie, all the scatological and disgusting jokes are there. All they left out are the punch lines. Nothing is really very funny. And since it's ripped right out of "Animal House" every plot twist is telegraphed.

However, it has one virtue. I started college the year this flick was released, so I had a particular interest in seeing it. And while I did not think it was very realistic in 1979, I know now just how true to life it was. Back then you could pretty much say or do anything. You could dress up in the costumes of other cultures for an evening's good time without raising eyebrows or having your party canceled. You could make scatological jokes, even make a nerf-style version of male genitalia pop up in a girl's hand unexpectedly, and she would think it was funny and not have you arrested, kicked out of school, and brought up on charges.

So long as you didn't actually hurt anyone (back when I was in college, "rape" meant actually inappropriately touching someone, so you kept your hands--and everything else--to yourself) you were considered free and equal. We didn't have "free speech zones" where children (as I was then and as college kids are now) whose ideals disagreed with the powers-that-be had to go to express themselves (say, by the Constitution, isn't the whole country supposed to be a free-speech zone?) Persons didn't get their panties in a wad by off-color jokes; or if they did they were dismissed as prudes and blue-noses.

I revisited this movie recently, and while the breasts are every inch as good as I remembered, the rest of the movie unfortunately stank as much as I recalled. Without my having one iota of nostalgia for the movie per se, it took me back to the days when campus life, shortly after it introduced co-ed dorms and relaxed its tightly-wound restrictions, was freewheeling; and not a mine-field where a premature kiss or a word that MIGHT somehow be construed as sexist or racist by neo-Inquisitors who fork through every sentence to find such things, can get you canned or jugged.

Though worth watching for nothing else, "King Frat" at least gives you a snapshot of a time before newfangled fuddy-duddiness took over campuses with strict speech and behavioral straight jackets.

"King Frat" (1979) Enough has been written about this disgraceful "Animal House" ripoff , its boundary-pushing doo-doo humor and nauseating male nudity. From the demand that director Ken Wiederhorn have his guild card revoked to gratitude expressed that its screenwriter recently died, the movie earns some of this outrage.

But it's really just a sloppy grind to sit through with epic amounts of vulgarity smacking you in the face. At least the female nudity is of a high enough quality to counteract all the male bare asses. Worse, the youthful heroes are all in their 40s, complete with bald spots, and this creates less of a joyful, collegiate atmosphere than one more akin to a halfway house.

John DiSanti, age 41, is the John Belushi surrogate who burps, bottomburps, constantly takes dumps, and eventually the character plays with his own phlegm, vomits on cue, poops his pants, then makes love on a toilet while making a BM. That's a lot of ambitious writing.

Though the movie's goal to "out-gross" "Animal House" practically reaches X-rated heights, it didn't out-gross anything at the box office. Everything is badly achieved due to wretched production values (though the frat house is beautiful), a horrible theme-song, a cast completely lacking in charisma, and it's likely only giggling 12 year olds back in 1979 granted it any praise. This, mostly for the boobies.

Other atrocities include: a dog becomes airborne on its own flatulence and there's a fart contest. There's an Isley Brothers and even a Heart poster on the frat-house walls, but, aside from a cameo from the solid disco band Natural Magic, the only music is the ungodly theme song. No amount of 1979 pharmaceutical cocaine on set justifies this mess. Amazingly Busch beer products pop up all over the movie. Additionally, it's no surprise the DVD of the film is a lovely VHS tape rip-transfer.