Squeeze Play! (1979)

There’s no joke too brain-damaged for this sex ‘n’ sports comedy from the early days of Troma. It’s one of their first films made in-house by Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz, who burned to tell the story of what happens when a bunch of small town guys who work at a mattress store play too much competitive local softball and their girlfriends are getting sick of it. So, what do the ladies do? Start their OWN team, of course! That’s how you get things done in life. All of this leads to a wet T-shirt contest, lots of jiggle and wiggle in the team practice montages and as much double entendre about “balls” that can fit into ninety minutes. Meanwhile, Lloyd Kaufman’s style (he takes directing credit under his Samuel Weil pseudonym) is all over this. He likes busy frames with gags in both the foreground and the background at the same time. Half this film feels like he shot a lot of chaos and then put it together in editing. He’d improve at this in later years, but here a few big scenes fall apart into an incomprehensible mess. Until Kaufman brings in the boobs and everything makes sense again.