Die Aufreisser von der High School (1983)

Set in 1965, four rowdy teenage guys travel to Tijuana, Mexico for a night of partying when they are joined by a heartbroken housewife who is in town seeking a quick divorce.

Director:

Curtis Hanson

Writers:

Bill Norton (screenplay) (as B.W.L. Norton), Bill Norton (story) (as B.W.L. Norton)

Stars:

Tom Cruise, Jackie Earle Haley, John Stockwell

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Tom Cruise	...	Woody
Jackie Earle Haley	...	Dave
John Stockwell	...	Spider
John P. Navin Jr.	...	Wendell
Shelley Long	...	Kathy
Henry Darrow	...	Sheriff
Hector Elias	...	Chuey
Daniel Faraldo	...	Taxi Driver #1
Mario Marcelino	...	Pablo
Rick Rossovich	...	Marine
James Victor	...	Lawyer
Kale Browne	...	Larry
Enrique Castillo	...	Taxi Driver #2
Cornelio Hernandez	...	Big Guy in Jail
Hector Morales	...	Watch Seller

Storyline

Teen sex comedy set in 1965 which follows four Los Angeles school friends, Woody, Dave, Spider, Wendell and the series of misadventures they get into when they travel south of the border to Tijuana, Mexico for a night of cruisin', causing trouble, and to settle a pact to lose their virginity before the night is over, while a young woman, named Kathy, accompanies them for different reasons: to arrange a quick divorce from her husband.

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Plot Keywords:

teen sex comedy | bare breasts | two word title | apostrophe in title | friendship between men | 

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Taglines:

They were boozin' it, brusin' it and cruisin' it, but mostly they were . . .

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Genres:

Comedy | Drama | Family

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Certificate:

R

Details

Country:

Canada USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

22 April 1983 (USA)

Also Known As:

A szerelemben vesztes

Filming Locations:

Calexico, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$7,000,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Tiberius Film Productions, Tijuana Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

100 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color

Did You Know?

Trivia

The make, model and color of the car the guys cruise to Tijuana in was a light-red 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air [2434] convertible. In 1965, the year in which this film was set, the car was a fairly common one to see and could be bought for a fairly reasonable price. Nowadays a restored car of that type could bring more than $100,000.

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Goofs

During the scene when Dave (Jackie Earle Haley) is flirting with the bar girl, her hand is wrapped around her cup. When Dave drops the Spanish Fly into her drink the cup is standing alone at the center of the table. In the next shot her hand is back around the cup again.

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Quotes

Marine: Hey! The MP's will have us out of here. And when they do, you're dead.
Spider: Says who, dick-breath?

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Connections

Featured in Siskel & Ebert: Tom Cruise: The Star Next Door (1990)

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Soundtracks

Hey Little Girl
by Bobby Stevenson, Otis Blackwell
Performed by Dee Clark (1964)

User Reviews

Nondescript teen sex comedy from the eighties

I saw this movie in an entirely appropriate place -- as part of an all-night quadruple feature at a cinema in Northern Ontario, which could have been more accurately described as "Four lousy films for the price of one"! (For the record, the other three films were "Ghoulies", "Missing in Action" and "Ninja III - The Domination").

I would say that Losin' It is probably the best of these four films – not that that's really saying very much. (It was the concluding feature of a very long night of cinematic mediocrity) . It's not an awful film (particularly compared with some of the other components of this multiple feature), and it has the advantage of having been put together by a crew who knew what they were doing. Rather, it's an assembly line teen film of the period, which is given somewhat more polish than usual by the presence of Shelley Long and the up-and-coming Tom Cruise in the cast.

Two years previously in 1981, Porky's established a profitable template for teen films that many producers are still exploiting today. I see Losin' It as a Porky's knock-off, from a similar time and aimed at a similar audience. Essentially, if you were part of that target audience, you would probably have enjoyed it. I was just passing out of the target demographic when I saw this, so perhaps I'm more blasé about it than I might have been if I had seen it a few years earlier. There's a whole genre of teen sex comedy (which tries to tease the audience while dancing around the fact that they can't really show very much) that loses a lot of its impact once you've actually "lost it" yourself.