Revenge of the Nerds

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Revenge of the Nerds
Revenge of the Nerds movie poster
Directed by	Jeff Kanew
Produced by	Ted Field Peter Samuelson
Written by	Jeff Buhai Tim Metcalfe
Starring	Robert Carradine Anthony Edwards Timothy Busfield Curtis Armstrong Ted McGinley Bernie Casey John Goodman
Music by	Thomas Newman
Cinematography	King Baggot
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date(s)	July 20, 1984
Running time	90 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$8,000,000 (estimated)
Gross revenue	$40,900,000 (USA) (sub-total)
Followed by	Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise

Revenge of the Nerds is a comedy film from 1984 depicting social life in the United States on a college campus. The movie stars Robert Carradine and Anthony Edwards, with Curtis Armstrong, Ted McGinley, Julia Montgomery, Brian Tochi, Larry B. Scott, John Goodman, and Donald Gibb. The film was directed by Jeff Kanew.

The movie's storyline chronicles of a group of nerds trying to stop harassment by the persecuting jock fraternity, the Alpha Betas. This film is number 91 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies."^[1]

Contents 1 Plot summary 2 Production 3 Cast 4 DVD release 5 Reception 6 Shelved remake 7 References in popular culture 8 References 9 External links

[edit] Plot summary

Lewis Skolnick (Robert Carradine) and Gilbert Lowe (Anthony Edwards) are nerds and best-friends, both heading to Adams College to study computer science. Lewis and Gilbert move into the mens' freshmen dorm with other first-year students. The Alpha Betas, a fraternity to which many members of the school's football team belong, carelessly burn down their house. The team's coach (John Goodman) uses his intimidation to overrule the school's Administrative Dean Ulich (David Wohl) and has the Alpha Betas evict the freshmen from the dorm for their own purposes. The Dean allows the freshmen to live in one half of the gym and suspends normal fraternity rules to allow the displaced freshmen to join fraternities early or move to other housing. However, as nerds, Lewis and Gilbert have no luck, and along with other outcast freshmen, are stuck living in the gym. The two work with the other outcasts and renovate a dilapidated house for their own.

The Alpha Betas and their associated sorority, the Pi Delta Pis, harass the nerds. The nerds try to file complaints to the Greek Council, but it is run by Stan Gable (Ted McGinley), the head of the Alpha Betas, who flatly rejects them, as the nerds are not a part of any fraternity. The nerds attempt to gain membership into a national fraternity but are rejected by all but one (the only one to which they did not send a group photo with their application). The nerds meet U.N. Jefferson (Bernie Casey), the head of the Lambda Lambda Lambdas (Tri-Lambs), a fraternity primarily for African-Americans. Though Jefferson is ready to dismiss them, the group discovers a clause in the fraternity's policy that allows for a trial membership. Jefferson reluctantly grants them this.

The nerds prepare a party and invite Jefferson, but the party is nearly ruined when the Pi Delta Pis, after promising to be their dates, stand them up. However, thanks to the arrival of women from the Omega Mu sorority, a sorority consisting largely of overweight or geekish women, and a supply of marijuana provided by Booger (Curtis Armstrong), the party becomes a success. The Alpha Betas and Pis, however, ruin the party by unleashing pigs in the nerds' house, then taunting them.

The nerds have had enough at this point, and decide to retaliate. They perform a panty raid on the Pi Delta Pi house, using the distraction to install cameras to spy on the woman while they are undressing. As for the Alpha Betas, the nerds sneak into their locker room and put Liquid Heat, an extra-powerful liniment, on their jock straps, resulting in an exquisitely painful and humiliating experience at their next football practice. Jefferson is impressed with the nerds' spunk and ingenuity, and formally welcomes them as Lambdas.

However, the nerds are still harassed by the Alpha Betas, and realize that the only way to put an end to it is to take control of the Greek Council by winning the annual Greek Games during homecoming. They are able to use their smarts to compete with the Alpha Betas during the athletic portion of the event, losing only by a small margin. They then use topless photos taken from their Pi Delta cameras placed at the bottom of whipped cream pies to easily win the charity sales and costume events. During this event, Lewis takes an opportunity to disguise himself as Stan and make out with Stan's girlfriend, Betty Childs (Julia Montgomery), who comes to realize that Lewis is much better person overall than Stan is. The Lambdas easily win the final event of the Greek Games with an elaborate musical production, and Lewis is quick to nominate Gilbert as the new head of the Greek Council.

That night, the Alpha Betas are chastised by their coach and told to ransack the Lambda house, with Stan further enraged that Betty left him for a nerd. The nerds return from their celebration to find their house ruined, prompting Gilbert to storm onto the scene of the homecoming pep rally and try to get a word in edgewise, but the Alpha Betas push him into a fountain. Undaunted, Gilbert tries again, and is nearly attacked by Coach Harris. However, the dean finally steps in and order him to stop, causing the coach to turn on him. However, U.N. Jefferson arrives, flanked by a sizable group of angry Tri-Lambs from other chapters, intimidating the Alpha Betas. He hands the microphone to Gilbert, who gives an inspiring speech about how it feels to be mistreated just for being different. Lewis joins him, and invites anyone who has ever felt left out, laughed at, or picked on to come and join them. Their respective girlfriends do so, as do the other Lambda nerds, followed by many members of the assembled crowd. The Dean uses the opportunity to tell the coach that the Lambdas will be staying in the Alpha Beta house while the Alpha Betas repair the Lambda home, and that the Alpha Betas, as jocks, are welcome to sleep in the gym.

[edit] Production

Exterior scenes such as the arrival of the nerds at college and the fraternity houses were filmed at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. The original Nerds residence, from which they were ousted, was in fact Cochise Hall.^[2] Their subsequent residence was Bear Down Gymnasium.^[3] One scene was filmed at Kyle Field on the campus of Texas A&M University. The original Alpha Beta fraternity house that gets burned down was shot at the Alpha Gamma Rho house on University Boulevard and the Pi house was the Phi Delta Theta fraternity house.^[4]

[edit] Cast

• Robert Carradine as Lewis Skolnick
• Anthony Edwards as Gilbert Lowell
• Timothy Busfield as Arnold Poindexter
• Andrew Cassese as Harold Wormser
• Curtis Armstrong as Dudley "Booger" Dawson
• Brian Tochi as Toshiro Takashi
• Larry B. Scott as Lamar Latrell
• Ted McGinley as Stan Gable
• Donald Gibb as Fred "The Ogre" Palowakski
• Julia Montgomery as Betty Childs
• Michelle Meyrink as Judy
• Bernie Casey as U.N. Jefferson
• David Wohl as Dean Ulich
• John Goodman as Coach Harris
• James Cromwell (credited as Jamie Cromwell) as Mr. Skolnick
• Matt Salinger as Burke

[edit] DVD release

On January 3, 2007 Revenge of the Nerds was released as a special edition DVD entitled "Panty Raid Edition" (The special edition name was changed from "The 'We've Got Bush' Edition", with preliminary artwork shown on websites such as The Digital Bits). Special features included : Audio Commentary, Making of Documentary, Deleted Scenes, Television Pilot, and two theatrical trailers.

[edit] Reception

Revenge of the Nerds was rated moderately well, by most critics. Rotten Tomatoes scored it an average of 76% fresh.^[5]

[edit] Shelved remake

A remake of the original Revenge of the Nerds 1984 film was slated for release in 2007; however, the project was canceled in 2006.

The cast included Adam Brody (who also co-produced), Dan Byrd, Katie Cassidy, Kristin Cavallari, Jenna Dewan, Chris Marquette, Ryan Pinkston, Efren Ramirez, and Nick Zano. It was to be directed by Kyle Newman and executive produced by McG. The script was written by Gabe Sachs & Jeff Judah, Adam Jay Epstein & Andrew Jacobson and Adam F. Goldberg.^[6] Filming took place in Atlanta, Georgia at Agnes Scott College, the Georgia State Capitol, and Inman Park.^[7] Filming was originally scheduled to take place at Emory College but university officials changed their minds after reading the script.^[8]

In November 2006, the film was shelved by Fox Atomic. Producers found it difficult to shoot on the smaller Agnes Scott campus and studio head Peter Rice was disappointed with the dailies.^[9]

[edit] References in popular culture

This "In popular culture" section may contain too many minor or trivial references. Please reorganize this content to explain the subject's impact on popular culture rather than simply listing appearances, and remove trivia references. (January 2009)

• In the 2003 biographical film American Splendor, Harvey Pekar belittles his friend Toby Radloff for naively believing that the characters in the movie represented Toby. He notes that unlike Toby, a 28 year old file clerk living with his grandmother in a poor neighborhood, those characters were college students from suburban, middle income families who will eventually earn degrees, get good jobs, and stop being nerds. This view is indirectly alluded to in Revenge of the Nerds III: The Next Generation where Lewis is depicted as having become a successful computer expert but has abandoned his nerdiness for a more yuppie lifestyle.
• During a sketch on the stop-motion animation show, Robot Chicken, an elementary school student is brandishing an action figure representation of the Doctor and a toy TARDIS from the long running BBC programme Doctor Who at a show and tell when Ogre bursts into the room, yelling his signature "NEEERRRDDD!!" Another sketch showed the Nerds ending up in prison for their shenanigans. Robert Carradine reprised the role of Lewis.
• The song "Computer Camp Love" by Datarock heavily references some plot ideas of the film, and actually directly quotes an exchange of lines between Lewis, Gilbert and Booger in the first verse.
• Rapper Lupe Fiasco has a mixtape loosely based around the film called Fahrenheit 1/15 Part II: Revenge of the Nerds.
• In the Family Guy episode "Don't Make Me Over", a parody is done of the clean-up montage done by the nerds. In the movie the nerds clean up their house, while on Family Guy, Peter and his friends clean up the local bar, The Drunken Clam. However, unlike the nerds, Peter and his friends fail to renovate the building. Another reference appears in a later episode, where the nerds are at a showing of Schindler's List, and Booger says, "We have bush!" In the Family Guy episode "Peter's Progress," the talent show sequence is spoofed by Peter and his gang in a talent show for the right to marry Lady Redbush (Lois).
• In The Simpsons episode "Revenge is a Dish Best Served Three Times", a parody of Revenge of the Nerds is "Revenge of the Geeks."
• In the 2006 video game Bully there is a clique at the academy known as "The Nerds" whose theme song when retaliating against the player's bullying or simply attacking the player is a generic version of the "Revenge of the Nerds" theme.
• The rap group Salt 'N Pepa's first song on record titled "The Show Stoppa", which was an answer record to Doug E. Fresh's "The Show", uses the melody from the homecoming rally/end credits song as the bridge.
• On the television show American Dad, a minor character named Snot is a homage to Booger. Additionally, Curtis Armstrong also provides the character's voice.
• On the television show Robot Chicken the characters of the film are sent to prison for their antics where one of them has a daydream about reaching the inmates as they are beaten by them.
• On the DVD set of Moonlighting (Season Three), series creator Glenn Gordon Caron comments that he chose Curtis Armstrong for the role of Herbert Viola because he "saw Revenge of the Nerds and loved Booger" (referring to the character Armstrong played in the film).
• On the December 2, 2008, episode of The Daily Show, Jon Stewart discusses Barack Obama's economic team, and jokingly shows a scene from Revenge of the Nerds.
• On the 12th episode from the 4th season of the TV show How I Met Your Mother, Ted blames Robin for being messy and compares her to "Ogre from Revenge of the Nerds".
• In the documentary White Water Buddies, Chris Burke mentions the panty raid scene and the famous "hair pie" line.
• Wisconsin punk rock band Vesicular Basalt released a CD in 1994 titled "Lambda Lambda Lambda" in reference to the Nerds' fraternity.
• Japanese rock band has taken the name "Ogre You Asshole" as said by Dean Ulich during the Belching Contest at the Homecoming Fair
• In TV show "The Simpsons", the family goes to see a film and during the end cedits, a character "A Talking Pie" is said to be voiced by Curtis "Booger" Armstrong
• On the very first episode of "Full House", when Jessee moves into Stephanie's old room, he takes out his clothes and opens the small wardrobe and refers to his wardrobe as "Wormser's"

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Revenge of the Nerds (1984) at the Internet Movie Database
• Revenge of the Nerds (1984) at Allmovie
• Revenge Of The Nerds on Fast Rewind

v • d • e Revenge of the Nerds Series Films Revenge of the Nerds (1984) • II: Nerds in Paradise (1987) • III: The Next Generation (1992) • IV: Nerds in Love (1994) ΛΛΛ/ΩΜ Robert Carradine (Lewis Skolnick) • Anthony Edwards (Gilbert Lowe) • Michelle Meyrink (Judy) • Timothy Busfield (Arnold Poindexter) • Curtis Armstrong (Dudley "Booger" Dawson) • Brian Tochi (Toshiro Takashi) • Larry B. Scott (Lamar Latrell) • Andrew Cassese (Harold Wormser) • Bernie Casey (U.N. Jefferson) • James Cromwell (Mr. Skolnick) ΑΒ/ΠΔΠ Ted McGinley (Stan Gable) • Donald Gibb (Fred "The Ogre" Palowakski) • Julia Montgomery (Betty Childs) • Matt Salinger (Burke) • John Goodman (Coach Harris)

v • d • e Films directed by Jeff Kanew Natural Enemies (1979) · Eddie Macon's Run (1983) · Revenge of the Nerds (1984) · Gotcha! (1985) · Tough Guys (1986) · Troop Beverly Hills (1989) · V.I. Warshawski (1991) · Babiy Yar (2003) · National Lampoon's Adam & Eve (2005)