Lost and Found: Private Resort

In which we visit the raucous Private Resort for one last fling before summer ends.

Teen sex comedy Private Resort (1985) was a late eighties cable television staple, which explains why I watched it approximately one-hundred times during those years. Those years, by the way, coincided with my junior high school years, and rarely has the world seen such perfect kismet as that. In other words, I was just the right ages—12, 13, 14–to fully appreciate the movie’s delicious blend of raunch, slapstick, and of course a copious supply of T&A, all of which spoke deeply to my juvenile sense of humor and raging hormones. These opening shots will show you exactly what I mean here…

See what I mean? Here’s one more example:

Now you get it, right?

Low on plot and long on boobies, Private Resort simply drops young heartthrobs Jack (Johnny Depp) and Ben (Rob Morrow) into an exclusive Miami resort and immediate shenanigans ensue. The year after debuting in Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)—in which he famously dies in a bed-related bloodbath—Depp stepped into a costarring role here alongside another rising star, Morrow. Soon after both would reach greater heights, but they sure seemed to be having a blast here as two pals who crash the resort to score some babes. They wind up with a lot more than they bargained for, thanks to a crazy cast of characters, including Hector Elizondo as a hot-tempered jewel thief known as The Maestro, Leslie Easterbrook as Maestro’s bombshell gun moll Bobbie Sue, Tony Azito as the bumbling hotel security chief Reeves, Dody Goodman as the wealthy socialite that Maestro is targeting, Andrew Dice Clay as Brooklyn tough guy Curt, and many, many more.

The cast is positively overflowing with skillful comedic actors. Even though Easterbrook practically bares all in a highly memorable see-through negligée here—in a scene that still lives rent-free in my head all these years later—she’s more than just a spectacularly sexy body. She’s also a spectacular comedic actress, with killer comic timing and a mastery of exaggerated facial expressions.

Azito puts his lithe, bendable dancer’s body to great use as the inept Reeves is knocked over, knocked sideways, and knocked upside down so many times that I lost track. It’s an amazing display of physical comedy prowess. Azito’s run-ins with smoke-show Vicky Benson, billed only as “Bikini Girl,” offer a hilarious running gag in which the exasperated Reeves, perpetually chasing someone through the hotel halls, gawks at her drop-dead gorgeous body before she smacks him for it. I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention Azito’s hilarious elevator fight scene with a crazed German barber (Ronald E. House), which is legitimately one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.

Another memorable bit of physical comedy comes when Jack and Ben are trying to carry the limp, half-naked body of Curt’s drunk girlfriend Alice out of the room before he sees the state she’s in and kills them both. B-movie babe Lisa London plays Alice and, as usual, she’s a riot. Watching Depp and Morrow frantically running back and forth, in and out of the bedroom, carrying London like a sack of potatoes, before dropping her body to the floor with a thud behind a couch whenever the boyfriend appears never gets old.

Elizondo is terrific as the deliciously evil thief who quickly becomes obsessed with killing Jack and Ben after receiving a butchered haircut from Ben, who was pretending to be the hotel barber while a nekkid Jack hid out in the bedroom because he was trying to score with an unsuspecting Bobbie Sue—did you get all that? Private Resort is one sitcom-style misunderstanding after another, each building off the last, until the whole thing crescendos during gloriously over the top ending.

Ultimately, Private Resort succeeds at everything you’d ever want out of a teen sex romp like this. It’s absolutely hilarious, the actors all seem more than game for the script’s zaniness, and it’s loaded, wall-to-wall, with oh-so-tasty eye candy. As the late, great Mike “McBeardo” McPadden wrote in his definitive compendium Teen Movie Hell, “Plain and simple, Private Resort is a pile of hilarity.” I hadn’t watched it in decades, but revisiting it recently reminded me why I loved it so much back in the day.