WACKO (1983)

'WACKO': AN ABSOLUTE HORROR

Philadelphia Daily News (PA) - May 12, 1983

Author: JOE BALTAKE, Daily News Movie Reviewer

In terms of teenage sex films, "Wacko" - another opus from Greydon Clark, the public nuisance who just recently foisted "Joysticks" on us - is as about as arousing as a cadaver.

What we have here is teenage sexploitation, with a Hitchcock twist: Between its staple scenes of kids at Hitchcock High trying to get laid, the movie serves up quotes from Hitchcock films (most notably "The Birds" and ''Psycho"), as well as those made by such imitators as Brian De Palma and John Carpenter.

It's easy to see why these films are geared to the pre-pubescent, "how- about-a-joint?" crowd - only an uninformed, clouded mind could find anything to enjoy in these stinkers.

The resident virgin is a girl named Mary who, 13 years ago, witnessed the lawnmower mutilation/murder of her sister. Mary's beau is one Norman Bates who, true to his "Psycho" namesake, is also sexually untarnished.

Half of the cast of "Wacko" drops like flies; the other half makes pathetic attempts at having sex. (Is this film trying to say something?)

For the record, an embarrassing George Kennedy and a tacky Stella Stevens play Mary's incompetent parents, and Joe Don Baker, who hit a low point in ''Joysticks," sinks to rock bottom here as the disgusting gumshoe examining all the dead bodies that litter dear old Hitchcock High. He's downright odious.

**SINGLEG* Parental Guide: Rated R for its bloody ways and infrequent nudity.