Film

Cherry Hill High

A 1977 sex comedy following five recent female high school graduates on a bicycle trip with their teacher, turning their post-graduation freedom into a competition. It's unabashedly raunchy, period-specific in its attitudes, and plays for laughs in the anything-goes style of late-seventies exploitation comedy. For viewers curious about how different eras approached teen comedy.

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like broad, bawdy 1970s sex comedies that treat teenage frankness as a running joke rather than a moral lesson, and you're happy to settle for a leer and a wink.

Skip it if you need sharp writing or a plot that builds, since this is episodic and its laughs come more from the premise than from wit or surprise.

What it asks of you: It runs about an hour and a half on a rambling road-trip rhythm, and asks you to settle into the silliness rather than track a tight sequence of events.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Porky's1981

The definitive eighties teen sex comedy: sharper writing, bigger budget, genuinely funny ensemble cast. If you're interested in the genre's evolution from seventies roughness to mainstream success, this is the natural next step.

But Dated gender politics and a mean streak toward its female characters. The humor relies heavily on humiliation and the male gaze in ways that haven't aged gracefully.

Porky's poster

Fast Times at Ridgemont High1982

Smarter, sexier, and infinitely more stylish. Cameron Crowe's script captures actual teenage anxiety beneath the comedy. Phoebe Cates, Judge Reinhold, and Sean Penn create a film that works as both comedy and genuine character study.

But Some will find the sexual content gratuitous; others will wish there was more honest emotional weight beneath the surface charm. It's a film that wants to have it both ways.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High poster

Meatballs1979

Bill Murray at his peak, presiding over a summer camp comedy that's crude but fundamentally sweet. The jokes land better, the energy is infectious, and there's actual affection for its characters underneath the raunchiness.

But Summer camp comedy doesn't hit for everyone. If you find the setup inherently goofy, no amount of Murray's charm will change your mind.

Meatballs poster

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Cherry Hill High

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Bloody Birthday1981

Both are low-budget 1970s-early-1980s comedies about youth and transgression, but where *Cherry Hill High* plays sexual liberation for laughs, *Bloody Birthday* asks what happens when you remove all social constraint. They're moral inverses of the same moment.

Three children born during a solar eclipse develop psychopathic tendencies and begin murdering townspeople. It's tonally bizarre—horror movie grafted onto slasher framework, genuinely unsettling and ridiculous in equal measure. A late-night discovery that gets under your skin.

But The child violence is disturbing in ways that go beyond typical exploitation. It's effective horror that can feel genuinely mean-spirited. Also, the technical execution is sometimes sloppy, which distances rather than amuses.

Bloody Birthday poster
More like this (8)

Animal House1978

The benchmark for American comedy excess. More focused than *Cherry Hill High*, more quotable, and it captures a specific cultural moment with genuine anarchic spirit. Essential viewing for understanding seventies comedy DNA.

But It's been referenced to death and canonized beyond reason. Watching it now, you might feel you've already seen it a hundred times. Also, the misogyny isn't played for irony—it's just there.

Animal House poster

The Harrad Experiment1973

A genuinely curious film about sexual liberation on a college campus, made with earnest intellectual ambition. It's sex comedy as philosophical inquiry—messy, well-intentioned, and fascinatingly wrong in its own ways.

But The pacing drags and the dialogue is clumsy. Its earnestness becomes unintentionally comic, and not always in the way intended. It's slow.

The Harrad Experiment poster

Losin' It1983

Tom Cruise and his friends drive to Mexico with one goal: to lose their virginity. It's the same basic premise as *Cherry Hill High* but with better production values and an affectionate tone toward its male leads' nervous fumbling.

But The Mexico setting and jokes haven't aged well. There's a cultural tourism problem baked in, and the humor often punches down at working-class characters.

Losin' It poster

Private School1983

Phoebe Cates and a girls' school setting. It's lighter and more earnestly comic than many of its peers. The pranks and schemes between rival schools carry actual charm alongside the sexual comedy.

But It's slight and forgettable. The humor doesn't linger, and the whole enterprise feels like it's coasting on the appeal of its lead actress rather than strong material.

Private School poster

H.O.T.S.1979

An all-female ensemble comedy about women starting a business. It's scrappy, energetic, and interested in its characters actually *doing* things rather than just being objects of desire.

But The production is rough and the jokes are uneven. You can feel the low budget in ways that undercut the comedy. Some bits misfire badly.

H.O.T.S. poster

Zapped!1982

A telekinetic teen comedy with genuine sci-fi premise allowing for creative visual humor. Scott Baio and Willie Aames provide likable leads, and the special effects are inventively deployed for laughs.

But The premise wears thin and the film coasts once the initial novelty passes. By the halfway point, it's retreading familiar territory without purpose.

Zapped! poster

Phantom of the Paradise1974

Both films use ensemble casts of young people to explore transgression and agency in their era, but *Paradise* weaponizes visual style and genre mixing where *Cherry Hill High* trusts jokes alone. It shows what the same impulse looks like when married to genuine artistic ambition.

Brian De Palma's rock-opera horror-comedy hybrid about a composer murdered and reshaped as a masked avenger at a glam rock palace. It's audacious, darkly funny, visually stunning, and unlike anything you've seen. Part Faust, part Saturday morning serial, entirely hypnotic.

But The tone whiplashes between genres. It's gruesome when it wants to be funny, campy when it reaches for tragedy. Some find the tonal inconsistency thrilling; others find it exhausting and pretentious.

Phantom of the Paradise poster

Bilitis1977

Both films are about young women claiming sexual agency, released in the same year, but *Bilitis* treats the subject as poetry while *Cherry Hill High* treats it as conquest. Watching them back-to-back reveals two irreconcilable approaches to the same moment of liberation.

A French coming-of-age film about a young woman's sexual awakening on the Mediterranean coast. Sensual, artful, genuinely erotic without exploitation, shot with light and color. The same year as *Cherry Hill High* but operating in an entirely different register—cinema versus comedy.

But It moves slowly and relies on mood and visual language rather than plot. The eroticism is tender rather than transgressive, which some will find boring after American exploitation films. The pacing will test your patience.

Bilitis poster

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