''Joysticks'' is a 1983

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

comedy film A comedy film is a category of film which emphasizes humor. These films are designed to make the audience laugh through amusement. Films in this style traditionally have a happy ending (black comedy being an exception). Comedy is one of the ol ...

directed by

Greydon Clark Greydon Clark (born February 7, 1943) is an American screenwriter, director, producer, and actor. His career spans several decades and genres, although the majority of his work has been low-budget productions in the action/horror genres. His m ...

Plot

Jefferson Bailey (Scott McGinnis) runs the most popular

video arcade An amusement arcade (often referred to as a video arcade, amusements or simply arcade) is a venue where people play arcade games, including arcade video games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games, redemption games, merchandisers (such as c ...

in town, much to the chagrin of local businessman Joseph Rutter (

Joe Don Baker Joe Don Baker (born February 12, 1936) is an American character actor and a life member of the Actors Studio. He established himself as an action star with supporting roles as a mysterious cowboy drifter in '' Guns of the Magnificent Seven'' (19 ...

). With his two bumbling nephews, Rutter aims to frame Bailey and have his business shut down. Bailey, however, is wise to Rutter's plan and teams with best friends Eugene Groebe (

Leif Green Leif Green is an American actor and production manager. He is perhaps best known for portraying Davey Jaworski one of the T-Birds in the Grease 2, the 1982 sequel to the 1978 motion picture '' Grease'' as well as the hero Eugene Groebe in the 198 ...

) and McDorfus (Jim Greenleaf) to stop this scheme, which also involves a

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

duel with punker King Vidiot (

Jon Gries Jonathan Gries ( '; born June 17, 1957) is an American actor, writer, and director. He is best known for the role of Uncle Rico in '' Napoleon Dynamite '' for which he was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male, and ...

Cast

as Joseph Rutter *

as Eugene Groebe * Jim Greenleaf as Jonathan Andrew McDorfus * Scott McGinnis as Jefferson Bailey *

as King Vidiot (credited as Jonathan Gries) *

Corinne Bohrer Corinne Bohrer (born October 18, 1958) is an American film and television actress whose career has continued uninterrupted for four decades and includes regular roles in eight primetime series produced between 1984 and 2015: '' E/R'' (1984–8 ...

as Patsy Rutter *

John Diehl John Henry Diehl (born May 1, 1950) is an American character actor. Noted for his work in avant-garde theater, Diehl has performed in more than 140 films and television shows, including ''Land of Plenty'', ''Stripes'', ''City Limits'', ''Nixon' ...

as Arnie *

John Voldstad John Ole Voldstad (born February 20, 1951) is an American television and film actor best known for his role as one of the brothers Darryl on ''Newhart''. He played "my other brother Darryl", the one with the curlier, lighter colored hair. Life an ...

as Max * Reid Cruickshanks as Coach Straight * Morgan Lofting as Mrs. Rutter * Kym Malin as Lola * Kim G. Michel as Alva * Jacqulin Cole as Alexis Wheeler *

Logan Ramsey Logan Carlisle Ramsey Jr. (March 21, 1921 – June 26, 2000) was an American character actor of television and film for nearly 50 years. Early life Ramsey was born in Long Beach, California, the son of Harriet Lillian (née Kilmartin) and Capt ...

as Mayor Neville * Justine Lenore as Nurse Tubitt

Production

Director Graydon Clark decided his next film would be an R-rated teen sex comedy based around video games when he saw a group of teenagers playing arcade games in the lobby during a test screening of his previous film,

Wacko (film) ''Wacko'' is a 1982 American comedy horror film produced and directed by Greydon Clark and starring Joe Don Baker and George Kennedy. Plot Dick Harbinger ( Joe Don Baker) is a police officer obsessed with stopping history repeating itself. Thi ...

. The original title was Video Madness. The production took 13 days.

Midway Games Midway Games Inc., known previously as Midway Manufacturing and Bally Midway, and commonly known as simply Midway, was an American video game developer and publisher. Midway's franchises included ''Mortal Kombat'', ''Rampage (series), Rampage'' ...

allowed the film to use the image of Pac-Man just for featuring its games in the film. These included ''

Satan's Hollow ''Satan's Hollow'' is a fixed shooter released in arcades by Bally Midway in 1982 and subsequently ported to the Commodore 64. The arcade game uses the same flight-controller style joystick with built-in trigger as Midway's ''Tron'', released ...

'' and the then-unreleased ''

Super Pac-Man is a 1982 maze chase arcade game developed and published by Namco. It was distributed in North America by Midway Games. ''Super Pac-Man'' is Namco's take on a sequel to the original ''Pac-Man''; Midway had previously released ''Ms. Pac-Man'', w ...

'' used during the film's climactic video game showdown. It also showcased a game by Los Angeles company Computer Kinetics Corp. called ''Stripper'', which was a mod of a Shoei game called ''Streaker''.

Release

The film was theatrically released on March 4, 1983 in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

Jensen Farley Pictures Jensen Farley Pictures was an American independent film distribution company based in Utah that released several films between 1980 and 1983, founded by Raylan Jensen and Clair Farley, former heads of Sunn Classic Pictures. The company filed for C ...

and was the fifth highest grossing in its first week. It grossed $3,952,448 in the United States. The film was released on VHS and

Betamax Betamax (also known as Beta, as in its logo) is a consumer-level analog recording and cassette format of magnetic tape for video, commonly known as a video cassette recorder. It was developed by Sony and was released in Japan on May 10, 1975, ...

Vestron Video Vestron Video was the main subsidiary of Vestron, Inc., a home video company based in Stamford, Connecticut, that was active from 1981 to 1993, and is considered to have been a pioneer in the home video market. The name is now used for a collect ...

. Liberation Entertainment released the film on

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...

in 2006. It was released on

Blu-ray The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of sto ...

by Scorpion in 2013 as a 30th anniversary edition.

Soundtrack

The film's soundtrack was released in November 2015 by Eczema Records.Eczema Records catalog, retrieved Nov. 5, 2015 http://www.eczemarecords.com/collections/all

References

External links

* * 1980s sex comedy films 1983 films 1980s English-language films Films about video games American independent films Films set in California Films directed by Greydon Clark American sex comedy films Teen sex comedy films 1983 comedy films Films about pranks 1980s American films {{1980s-comedy-film-stub