The Hollywood Knights are a local muscle car gang. They are the bane of the local police and the upper class home owners. Their local hangout, the burger drive-in, is closing down. It's Halloween 1965.

This is trying to be another American Graffiti. Having Robert Wuhl play the group leader Newbomb Turk is not the most inspired choice. He looked old even when he was young and he's close to 30 by then. He's a better fit for the lead cop. As the group leader, his goofiness does not infer leadership material. The most intriguing names maybe Tony Danza and Michelle Pfeiffer who play a young couple from two different worlds. They don't have nearly enough screen time although they were still new aspiring stars back then. The most memorable scene may still be the underwearless cheerleader. That says a lot about the adolescent me but also this movie. Non of it is memorable or new. It's retreading old material without injecting anything ground-breaking. It is trying to follow another's path and doing it in less compelling ways.

Tony Danza and Michelle Pfeiffer are ostensibly the stars of "The Hollywood Knights", but cheap, flashy Robert Wuhl walks away with the picture (though it's no mean feat). Playing hell-raising youth Newbomb Turk, Wuhl is glinty-eyed like a mischievous pervert, causing non-stop comic chaos on Halloween in Beverly Hills, 1965. Predating "Porky's" with the same locker room humor, the flick apes "American Graffiti" and "Animal House" but substitutes wit with raunch, replacing adolescent sexual embarrassments with undiluted smut. It didn't catch on with audiences in 1980 but gained a small cult on cable. If there's anything good about the picture it is Wuhl: taking charge, as if he were the visiting brother of Belushi, Wuhl bellows and cackles and urinates in the punch bowl. It's tough for any actor to upstage Michelle Pfeiffer, but Wuhl proves it can be done (and with C-minus material!). *1/2 from ****

Just watched this movie that had aroused my curiosity for the last 29 years on YouTube. Unfortunately, because the Warner Music Group has boycotted any of its recordings from the site, part 7 in a series of 10-minute segments of The Hollywood Knights had no audio which I figured had the three Atlantic artists that were credited at the end. As a result, I missed the dialogue of Tony Danza, Michelle Pfeiffer, and some Knights with a Doo-Wop group, one of whom I recognized as T.K. Carter. If I eventually hear this missing segment, I'll add my comments of it to this review. Now, for the most part I enjoyed this movie especially the scenes with Robert Wuhl, Stuart Pankin, and Fran Drescher especially her attempt to have sex with Wuhl in the car. The cop scene in the clogged bathroom was a little embarrassing. The "punch" scene with some of the comments made afterwards was pretty hilarious. Many of the Danza/Pfeiffer scenes were a nice drama though I didn't really see a connection with the more prankish scenes. And I loved all those scenes with that adulterous school faculty woman and the man she's fooling around with especially those with Pankin. And how about Wuhl's version of "Volare"? Or the "one-armed violinist"? So on that note, yeah, I recommend The Hollywood Knights. P.S. It's now several hours later and I've heard the missing scene I mentioned earlier. Touching speech from that guy about to go to Vietnam about if anything happens to him just before The Mamas and the Papas "California Dreamin'" plays on the 8-Track. And the Doo-Wop group sings a fine version of The Drifters "Under the Boardwalk" as they help the pledges out. And then there's the hilarious police superior's recount to those dumb cops at Tubby's of what happened earlier in the movie...