Welcome back for another entry in this year’s Camp Crappabuttawipe at B-Movie Enema.

You know, summer camp isn’t just running for your life from a crazed killer. Nah, it’s also a place where coming-of-age comedy-dramas can be told too. That’s kind of what we have here with 1980’s Little Darlings. This movie comes to us from first-time director Ronald F. Maxwell. He was only 30 years old when this film went into production. However, he had already been a professional working in television since the mid 70s. Maxwell followed this up with another film starring one of the stars of this movie, The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia (along with Dennis Quaid and Mark Hamill in between Star Wars sequels). Later in his career, Maxwell shifted to Civil War epics, the largely appreciated Gettysburg in 1993 and the largely despised Gods and Generals in 2003.

As for our leading ladies in this movie, the other one who would work with Maxwell follow-up is Kristy McNichol. McNichol was already a veteran of television shows from her teenage years. She was a regular nominee for Emmys in the late 70s for the drama series Family. Later in her career, she would appear in 100 episodes of the comedy Empty Nest. With Little Darlings, McNichol would follow that up with the aforementioned The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia along with a Golden Globe-nominated performance in Neil Simon’s Only When I Laugh. Unfortunately, her appearance in the 1982 comedy The Pirate Movie (a movie absolutely slaughtered by critics upon release) probably harmed her ability to keep up the momentum her earlier film appearances granted her.

Kristy McNichol’s co-star in Little Darlings, though, was Tatum O’Neal. Despite her young age (16 at the time of this film’s release), O’Neal was already a big star in movies. At the age of ten, she became the youngest Oscar winner for 1973’s Paper Moon. She followed that up with 1976’s The Bad News Bears. Both actresses were veterans. Both were riding the wave of critical and industry recognition. At least on paper (moon), this looked like a dynamite pairing for this movie.

Co-starring in the movie as well are a couple of other names. Armand Assante plays an older counselor who catches the eye of O’Neal’s character, Ferris. The object of McNichol’s streetwise character, Angel, is played by Matt Dillon who is about to explode on the scene in the early 80s with phenomenal opportunity after phenomenal opportunity early in his career. So we’ve got a seriously great cast.

But I think we should probably get on the bus for Camp Little Wolf and get to know Angel Bright and Ferris Whitney.

If there were any questions about how a kind of sweet, tender, coming-of-age movie about a couple of girls at summer camp ends up on a summer camp gets chosen by a blog called B-Movie Enema, those are answered 30 seconds into the movie. We meet Angel Bright (McNichol), and she’s cat-called by a local boy. He asks her to “slide him something sweet.” She rears back and kicks him in the nuts.

I am not only vindicated, but I’m really glad I chose this movie to be part of this summer-long camp theme.

There is also another nice little joke thrown in after this. Angel walks to the road and gets into her mom’s car. Her mom, also smoking a cigarette like Angel was at the start of the movie, is waiting for her. Her mom looks at her and says that she doesn’t like her smoking while puffing on her own smoke. Not a bawdy, laugh-out-loud joke, but a fun little snicker at the somewhat hypocrisy parents often work with as they raise their children.

Alright, so while Angel Bright is headed to camp in her mom’s beat-up, rusted convertible, we see Ferris Whitney (O’Neal) getting into her family’s shiny, well-cared-for Rolls-Royce. Naturally, she is fashionably dressed and doesn’t smoke. In fact, the Whitneys are from the other side of town, but they are juxtaposed by showing them driving to the same place, the buses sending girls off to Camp Little Wolf.

Also, there’s a rad soft rock tune talking about a young love, which is only the first of a few bangers that will play in the movie’s soundtrack.

Ferris and Angel meet on the bus to Camp Little Wolf, and they don’t exactly get along at first, but they have a common issue. You see, when Angel got on the bus first, some of the cattier bitches on the bus annoyed her with their incessant chatter about boys and movies and how one of them is already engaged to a boy who looks just like John Travolta and how her parents are “so provincial” about this engagement and… blech. They also whispered about how they think that Angel thinks she’s tough, basically labeling her as white trash. When Ferris gets on the bus, the same quartet of catty bitches calls her tacky. The only seat left on the bus is with Angel, who doesn’t give it up willingly.

They start pushing and shoving and slapping at each other over this seat, causing the bus driver to have to pull over and break it up.

The cattiest of these cunts is Cinder Carlson. She’s the one who is already engaged and talks about how her parents are provincial and shit. Anyway, she’s a child actress. She’s been in commercials like the Tidy Curl ads. So, you know, the big time. Anyway, she’s also had sex. She’s gone all the way to fourth base. She makes fun of Ferris for being a virgin and calls Angel a lesbian. In fact, she’s not totally willing to dismiss that maybe Angel and Ferris are both “lezzies.”

But not only have Ferris and Angel already shown a bit of animosity toward each other, but this Cinder broad will actually be the one who will pit Ferris and Angel against each other to see who will get laid first. They also have to share the same cabin, and with beds right next to each other. Angel isn’t so into guys, but when Cinder puts up her $100 residual check to the winner, that changes things. Money is more useful than dudes.

Trust me. We’re garbage. Money takes you a hell of a lot farther than some loser who can barely shower appropriately… let alone wipe their own asses.

While girls are lining up to put money on Ferris winning the competition, it seems Angel has some emotional support from a group of girls who all wear shirts with her name on them. This whole race is picking up a lot of steam in the early days of this summer camp. Ferris has found her first target. While in her swimsuit and applying lotion to herself, she strikes up a conversation with Gary Callahan (Armand Assante). Mr. Callahan is a French teacher which… well, let that take your gutter brains wherever they need to go with that fact. Ferris is fluent in French and fluent in flirting pretty hard. She wants to know his sign, because this is the era in which this stuff is important to know. Naturally, he’s a Leo, and they are super compatible.

It doesn’t take him long to figure out what’s going on because she’s talking in very breathy, soft flirty tones. Also, he’s already picked up on the whole thing with the girls who are rooting for either Angel or Ferris. Naturally, Ferris says it’s just an experiment, and it’s not really any of his business. You know, it’s just between the girls and whatnot. It probably doesn’t help keep the secret when she calls it a biology experiment, then compliments his eyes, and then gets up and trots off in her bathing suit to jump into the lake.

Considering he’s not a bad-looking guy, kind of young, and a French teacher, I’m gonna guess this is not the first teenage girl to hit on him.

Later, the teen girls go hiking to a spot where they spy on the boys’ camp across the lake, where all the guys are skinny dipping. I have to kind of wonder, though, why the entire boys’ camp is skinny-dipping with themselves. Are they sure this is the sausage barrel they want to choose their potential fuck buddies from?

The older girls hijack a bus while Blondie’s “One Way or Another” plays. Again… rad soundtrack here. While Angel drives to town where they want to raid the Men’s room for condoms, Ferris tells some of the girls that she’s already chosen Gary Callahan to be her fuck target. One of the other girls reveals this plan to Angel. Angel is not concerned. She’ll still win, and she will find her own boy to zero in on. I like how some of the girls can’t imagine being with someone older, like Mr. Callahan. They see him as something kind of ancient and gross because of the age gap. Meanwhile, both Cinder and Ferris see themselves as more refined and mature, and find him dreamy because of his age. The girl who tells Angel about what the others are talking about reminds her to look for someone younger because boys peak sexually at the age of 17.

See? Girls and boys don’t understand puberty and maturity on equal levels of stupid.

One of the great things about this movie is how it is a type of movie, a coming-of-age, sex comedy, that you would expect to be entirely centered around boys. The 80s were all about boys going on sex adventures. This has the same energy but focuses on girls. Often, the guys’ boner comedies are a dime a dozen, but when you do get one that is from the girls’ perspective, it’s kind of refreshing and a little more fun. It also kind of poses the whole concept in a slightly less icky way. Every teenager starts to get horny in one way or another. While the boys are usually expected to be the more aggressive ones to try to sate their hormonal desires (god, reading that back, I just grossed myself out a little), there is a particular need from girls too, and it kind of shows that nature is just that… nature. Little Darlings is trying to tackle this same subject from the other side of the genetic fence to say that, yeah, girls have sex drives too that kick in around the same time as boys.

And there’s nothing wrong with that.

At the gas station, Angel finds something she especially likes – Randy Adams (Dillon). He’s got long hair. He drinks beer. He’s got a sweet Mustang. He’s got a nice butt. Best yet, he’s local, and not simply passing through. He goest ot the camp on the other side of the lake. She tells him that her name is Angel. She then says, “Don’t let the name fool ya,” and does a little eyebrow twitch. It’s perfect acting from Kristy McNichol. And a perfect piece of writing follows when Randy tells her his name and uses the same “Don’t let the name fool ya” line back at her.

The girls steal the entire condom machine. They return to the camp and attack the machine with sledgehammers and crowbars until they finally break it open. Again, the way they are kind of crazed and violently trying to get into this machine, let alone committing vandalism to steal it, is something you expect to see boys do in a movie. Yet, still, you don’t think this is a boy’s movie that was hastily rewritten to be geared toward female characters. It’s brilliant. And… I am already going to say this at the halfway mark of the movie… I really love this movie.

I like how you can also see Ferris and Angel start to really like each other too. Yes, they are rivals. Yes, they are from different sides of town. Yes, they are from different classes, but they are starting to work together. Even when they are pulling pranks on each other, which can kind of be mean, like rubbing food all over each other and starting a food fight, they are smiling and having fun. It’s sweet and enjoyable.

The girls start to try to tip some scales for Ferris. First, they ask Gary if he thinks she has nice legs. He agrees, but only because she stays in shape. Then, one girl who is kind of a hippie dippy chick offers him some ginseng to drink… you know, because it will maybe make him horny or something. She’s always trying to push herbal stuff to girls to chill them out or whatever. Then, Cimber and Ferris plot for Ferris to fall into the pool so he will save her and maybe give her mouth-to-mouth. She then asks him for private swim lessons that the girls watch while the hippie girl plays a recorder to help put the mood out in the universe. It’s really brilliant stuff.

It seems Ferris is clearly in the “lead” in the competition. So, Angel and her biggest supporter, Dana, go to check out Randy. Randy and his friends are fooling around with dirt bikes. Dana thinks he’s just swell, but when he falls off his dirt bike, Angel says, “He’ll have to do.”

When the parents come to visit the girls at the camp, we learn some things. Ferris and her father talk about how her mother has left them. She might come back, but it’s not likely because she’s in Reno (where Ferris says people go to get divorced), and her father is considering dating other women. Meanwhile, Angel asks her mother about when she lost her virginity. Her mom said she was 19, but it was no big deal. Angel asks why everyone seems to treat it like a big deal, but her mom doesn’t have an answer because it really isn’t. Yet, in a way, it really is important, or at least thought of as being something more than just “no big deal.”

The news of her parents getting divorced depresses Ferris. She decides to stay in bed all day. Meanwhile, Angel goes to see Randy at the boys’ camp. They spend the afternoon together while John Lennon’s “Oh My Love” plays. Let me take an aside for a moment… It’s amazing to think how soundtracks used to be built for movies. Nowadays, it’s hard to think of any movie of average or below-average budget having a John Lennon song play prominently for a couple of minutes. But, here we are. Add that to the Blondie song earlier, you start to realize this movie has something of a jukebox soundtrack that should appeal directly to the age group the movie is made for, with big names and popular songs that would have been heard on the radio pretty readily at that time.

Anyway… Angel’s big plan was to bring Randy a bunch of beers to get him drunk so they could possibly, you know, play some serious grab ass. However, she made him drink too much too fast, and he passed out.

Things are getting pretty tense in the competition. The expectation is that Angel is going to win tonight. She’s going on a date with Randy, and her camp (no pun intended) is pretty sure she’s going to seal the deal. Cinder is especially concerned. She has the most money on Ferris winning. In fact, she confronts Ferris about getting her shit together and stop being a bitch and thinking only of herself.

That night, Angel picks Randy up at the camp. Before it begins storming, they row into the boathouse and get ready to do the deed. It’s as awkward as any first time can be. She’s nervous about him watching her take her clothes off. She doesn’t want help from him. They fumble around with taking their own clothes off. It’s about as unromantic as you can get.

When Angel is too nervous and begins harping on making sure he puts on the condom because she refuses to get pregnant and take care of some guy’s brat, he realizes this is far too difficult for him to be turned on by. This leads to a little bit of a fight and heartbreak when he eventually tells her to go to hell because he isn’t interested in her anymore. She tells him she likes him, but he won’t reciprocate.

So while it seems Angel doesn’t have a guy anymore, Team Ferris is not exactly happy with her moping around. Well, I should say that bitch Cinder isn’t happy about Ferris moping around. Ferris says she is going to Gary tonight. She arrives at his cabin to take him up on the offer he gave her when she was sad that she could come and talk to him anytime she needed to. She wears her white nightgown, which, while I guess you could say should conjure imagery of purity and maybe even thoughts of that’s what you wear when you are sleeping, it’s impossibly long and maybe not exactly doing what Ferris is hoping to do. She tries to drink some wine Gary has in his cabin, but is denied for being underage. She then talks about how she envies Juliet from Romeo and Juliet. She tries to tell him that she’s in the “flower of her youth,” implying she needs to take advantage of her looks and sex drive.

Ferris then tells Gary that she is dying and that the doctor tells her she only has six weeks left. She puckers up and leans in for a kiss, but he doesn’t bite. They kind of chuckle about the attempt, but he is not repulsed by the attempt. He tries to explain to her how she’s clearly confusing the way love is written about in books and how it actually works. He offers to take her back to her cabin, but she asks if she can stay here for “appearances.” Gary does say something kind of sweet to her when he rejects her advances. She asks if she were 21, would he have a different opinion of the situation? He says he thinks he would fall madly in love with her. That sends her running back to her cabin as if she is floating on air, even if it was just a sweet thing to say to a girl who has an impossible crush on him. When she returns to the cabin, the way she looks and acts, even though it’s just a really positive feeling in her infatuation, leads the girls to believe she won the competition. She doesn’t deny it, but is kind of lost in a haze of feeling in love for the first time. She does go so far as to lie and give a romanticized, dramatic version of how the night went, complete with them making love.

Meanwhile, Angel returns to the boys’ camp and meets up with Randy once again. They decide to try again at the boathouse. This time, the attempt goes a little more like Randy might have expected originally. Angel says she feels funny as they prepare to have sex and that she’s scared a little. Randy says some nice things about how she has this rough exterior, but her skin and hair are soft, which makes her even prettier to him. They begin to kiss which leads to them having sex, but… It’s not what Angel expected it to be like. She hoped it would be a no-big-deal thing like her mom said, but it turned out awkward, and the aftermath is cold and even less romantic than the first attempt. She even tells Randy he can leave if he wants.

Angel realizes that part of the reason why it wasn’t what she expected is due to her not being mature enough to understand the act. Randy initially gets mad at her conflicting and confusing behavior, but when he learns she was a virgin, he comforts and compliments her. He even tells her he thinks he has fallen in love with her, and he’s a bit confused by that too. It’s actually a really sweet scene, and I’ll have more to say about all this later

When Angel returns to the cabin, she tells the others she did not have sex, thus giving the win in the competition to Ferris. Later, Randy comes to the camp to talk to Angel and arrange for another meeting at the boathouse that night. Cinder, dressed as a mouse because the camp is putting on a show, tells him she’ll tell him, but she’s not going to show. She reveals the whole “game” to Randy.

He tells Cinder that Angel’s a real loser. He looks her over and apparently likes lady mice because he asks what she’s doing tonight. That’s not all that’s gone south. Word has gone around that Gary and Ferris are now lovers. She tries to apologize for lying to the girls about what happened. He’s very upset and in some trouble. He does sort of forgive her by saying that if their ages were reversed, he supposes he would have done the same thing. She hugs him and tells him she loves him before running off to her cabin again.

At the pageant at the girls’ camp, Angel is pissed that Gary is snuggled up to Cinder. When she storms off, he follows and confronts her about the competition between her and Ferris. He says that if she had told him about the competition, he would have been okay with it anyway. An easy lay is an easy lay, after all. She tells him she lost. She never told the girls. Understanding that she didn’t kiss and tell and was okay with not winning because that would mean she was with him because she liked him anyway, he asks her to start again. She declines, saying that it wouldn’t be enough for either of them. They started in the middle. They never had the beginning part that would build a real relationship. She kisses him goodbye and says she will never forget him.

Angel and Ferris talk about their experiences. Angel is curious if she feels different after making love. Ferris comes clean and says her whole affair with Gary was a lie. Angel tells her to not reveal that to anyone else. She also admits that she and Randy did have sex and cries over the breakup. Ferris admits that they really have been idiots all summer.

So that leads to the girls coming together to come clean about everything to Gary’s boss, Miss Nichols. Cimber thinks it’s stupid to reveal this, but the other girls think it’s the right thing to resolve the trouble Mr. Callahan is in, and let’s face it… It’s some pretty serious fucking trouble, I might add. All the girls also admit to Cimber that they’ve been lying about their past sexual history. Cimber threatens to never speak to Angel and Ferris again, as if that’s some sort big loss. The rest of the girls follow Angel and Ferris’s lead to fix all the shenanigans.

And the most triumphant moment in the movie comes with the hippie girl punching that bitch Cimber in the face for being a bitch.

When she gets on the bus, Ferris tells Gary to just wait until she’s 21 because she’s not going to forget him. When the girls come back to meet up with their parents, Angel tells her mom that she’s going to keep her eye on her because she needs to get her head straight about thinking sex is “no big deal” because she’s been fooling around with nothing but creeps. She then introduces her mother to Ferris, saying she is her best friend while the Bellamy Brothers’ “Let Your Love Flow” plays.

God, I loved this movie.

So let’s start with the #1 thing to like about Little Darlings. That would absolutely be all the performances from the various girls in the cast. Of course, you’re going to get absolute gold from two highly decorated young actresses, Tatum O’Neal and Kristy McNichol. They are fantastic in this. They are both actresses who have enough talent to not just say the lines but put a lot of emotion and realness behind what they are saying. In fact, I kind of mostly didn’t even think about them as themselves as much as I thought of them as Ferris and Angel, two very well fleshed-out characters from two very different worlds. O’Neal may be the Oscar-winner and the top billing, but this is really McNichol’s movie. Angel is really the lead character. She’s the one who has the biggest arc and the biggest change to who she is at the end of the movie. I mentioned earlier how her meet cute with Matt Dillon’s Randy was perfectly acted with the little flick of her eye brow when she tells him to not let her name fool him. She was the most complete character because of where her story goes. More of that in a bit.

As for the other actresses, you have Kirsta Errickson probably having the most fun being the villainous Cinder. She manipulates the situation because she has money, and she has some fame. I mean, it’s low-end commercial ad fame, but the other girls are initially impressed with her. She’s technically the “best friend” of Ferris during camp, but that’s to push her to have sex first so she wins the bet and doesn’t lose her big check. On Angel’s side, we have another longtime character actress in Alexa Kenin playing Dana. She’s fantastic. She had a pretty decent career, but sadly, Kenin died at the age of 23 in 1985. The cause of death has never been publicly released, but she was found dead in her apartment just five years after this movie was released.

The hippie girl was Sunshine. She was played by a young Cynthia Nixon, who would later go on to great success and fame on Sex and the City. She’s also won a bunch of awards for acting, and a spoken word Grammy for the audiobook version of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. She’s got some pretty funny moments in Little Darlings. She’s kind of a pill pusher too. Sure, she’s only pushing herbs and vitamins, but whenever people are a little stressed or have some sort of heightened emotion, she’s there to offer a pill to help calm them down. It’s a fun little part in this movie.

But, as good as the characters and performances are, this is a hell of a well-written movie. There’s a little secret I’ve discovered over the years of consuming media. If you have a movie that is largely planted in a genre that is normally “for boys” (like exploitation films, sexploitation movies, or what we would normally call a “boner comedy”), and it’s made with a female gaze instead of the male gaze, it’s usually a real gem. Little Darlings is exactly that. Over the years, especially by the mid to late 80s, if you have a bunch of teenagers hopped up on hormones in a movie betting on who will get laid first, or wanting to spy on the other camp’s skinny dippers, it would typically be boys and they are looking to trick their way into having sex with unsuspecting women, or videotaping them taking a shit in their bathroom, or spying on them while they use outside showers.

Here? It’s girls. They are all seeking the same thing as boys in movies like this. It is just normally framed in a “boys will be boys” and “girls are virtuous” sort of lens. In Little Darlings, the girls are on the prowl, and the men are treated as the unsuspecting meat on the market. To be fair, there really are only two men who are targeted. That’s where this movie can really zero in on how to make the movie a little sweeter or focus best on how to tell a compelling story. This is a story about how love and romance, and definitely sex, are framed in terms of media and books, especially in tales that are Shakespearean romances. It confuses teenagers who are starting to think about obtaining love or seeking lust. Boys will think of sex being done in dramatic terms that you would see in movies or porn. Girls are swayed by the romance of being swept up in a love affair. Boys want it to be hot and fiery. Girls want it to be these flowery moments of perfection.

The first time, and most instances for that matter, is typically awkward, strange, and fills everyone with vulnerability and humility. If anyone ever tells a grand story of how their first time went, they are bullshitting you. It’s sloppy. It’s ugly. It’s not memorable in terms of quality. There’s a good chance it will be your worst sexual experience. That’s what makes the scene in which Angel and Randy finally have sex so special and well-made. It shows Angel in a very vulnerable light. She’s been sold this concept of sex from a, for lack of a better term, “loose mother” who doesn’t see sex as anything special. It’s not that. It’s very special. The confusion Angel feels is real. You don’t know what comes next. You don’t understand fully what actually happened. You feel exposed and vulnerable. That’s what makes the scene of the aftermath between Angel and Randy truly special and sweet.

But on the other hand, Ferris has this over-hyped idea of how romance should lead to sex that is cartoonishly immature. Both girls, not only being from the opposite ends of town, are coming at the subject of sex from opposite angles. Both need to either temper their expectations or increase their seriousness about the act, or they will forever be doomed to hate it.

That’s where this movie really becomes something special. Little Darlings isn’t a movie meant to entice the viewer by showing teenage girls wanting to do sexy things. It’s meant to make you realize and appreciate the act of growing up and maturing. We all had to do it. We’re seeing the same desires in these girls that we experienced during these days of our lives. We see them make the same impulsive decisions and mistakes we made. It isn’t just a charming movie that shows the fun of being youthful and full of vigor, it’s, well… darling.

Well… I think I just reviewed the best movie selected for Camp Crappabuttawipe. Next week, we’re going to cool things off a little bit with one of the selections I made just for me. It’s gonna be a bit of a nostalgia trip when I revisit one of my favorite sleepover movie rentals from my youth. I’ll be watching 1987’s Ernest Goes to Camp starring the beloved actor Jim Varney.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go tear a condom machine out of the wall of a men’s room so I can make sure everyone has protection for the summer.