Ironically, the reasons for the sudden collapse of the teen sex comedy are nearly identical to the factors responsible for their rise: Technology, societal changes, and profits.
Microsoft
First came the modem. Though the late 1980s were still a couple of years away from the heyday of America Online and the ubiquity of the World Wide Web, geeks in the know discovered a world of pixelated porn just a few clicks away. Sure, downloading took hours, but it was a lot more anonymous than sheepishly handing a copy of H.O.T.S. or Beach Balls to the nice old lady behind the video rental counter. As download speeds increased and the porn world turned its eye to online profit centers, the need for R-rated softcore fun diminished.
Then came AIDS. The reality of the disease made hard-up acts of horniness a hell of a lot less funny than it was just a few years earlier. Plots that seemed harmlessly naughty in 1984 seemed downright irresponsible by 1988, a year that saw 32,000 new cases and more than 10,000 deaths.
One final reason for the decline of low-budget sex comedies? According to Just One of the Guys director Lisa Gottlieb, the answer is “the obsession that Hollywood had during the late ’80s and the ’90s for the biggest celebrities, you know, paying $20 million to people whose names were worth $20 million. There was a very narrow list of people who would be in movies. The studios kind of stopped making the movies that were the $5 to $10 million ones, and started migrating to the big ones with big, big stars.”
That trend is even more exaggerated today, where the only movies Hollywood deems worthy of showing on the big-screen feature massive special effects and even bigger IP. The rest can go to streaming. Teen sex comedies weren’t completely dead by the end of the 1980s, but they were definitely on life support. The films made a short-lived comeback with 1999’s American Pie and its myriad direct-to-video sequels, but that was a generation ago. Even streaming services aren’t cranking them out these days.
Universal Pictures
Does that mean teens are no longer interested in sex? Okay, that was rhetorical. The explanation once again lies in technology, as young people have never had easier access to watching sex onscreen. And what they’re watching would blow peeking Pee Wee’s perverted mind.
After all, who needs a hole in the girls’ locker room when you have a phone and an incognito browser tab? It’s easier than ever, though some say all this unfettered access to erotic content leads to addiction or diminished relationships.
It’s no wonder some people are nostalgic for the simpler days of Stewardess School.
Top image: 20th Century Studios
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