The First Turn-On!! 1983

On the last day of summer at Camp Big-Tee-Pee, hormone-charged teens are eager to head home. While wandering the woods with their ditzy camp counselor Miss Farmer Georgia Harrell, four students — self-proclaimed stud Mitch Michael Sanville, his girlfriend Annie Heidi Miller, Henry Googy Gress, and Danny — sneak off to smoke a bit of cannabis. They slip into a nearby cave to hide from the staff, but a misstep from Henry’s flatulent punchline triggers a landslide that traps them all inside. With time running out and oxygen thinning, they decide to pass the hours by trading stories about how each of them first lost their virginity.

Mitch, a swaggering yet jittery kid, is the first to spin his tale. Michael Sanville plays Mitch, and the story begins with Lucy, an elegant prostitute, picking him up while he’s hitchhiking and inviting him to her luxurious hotel room. Nervous and inexperienced, he enlists the help of his ultrasmarty but less capable friend Jeff, who offers dubious pointers (including the memorable line “when in doubt, whip it out”). Lucy, however, greets Mitch with warmth after Jeff’s bungled attempts, and she repays him with mind-blowing sex that leaves him both awed and overwhelmed.

Henry’s turn follows, and the memory is messy, eerie, and oddly sweet. In a Halloween setup, he dresses as a ghost, only to realize his costume looks suspiciously like a Klan robe because he can’t see through the eye holes. Blinded, he stumbles into the path of flamboyantly gay African-American men who are about to attack a young white woman. They beat Henry, but the woman survives the encounter and, believing Henry’s blunder saved her, falls for him. That night they share a passionate moment beside a heap of donuts, turning danger into an unlikely romance.

Danny’s tale reveals a different kind of fantasy. A porn-obsessed teen, he remembers the day at the beach when he glimpsed a Penthouse Pet, Sheila Kennedy John Flood winking at him in a dream-like moment. Later that night, he finds Sheila waiting for him back in his room, and what follows is a long, charged round of foreplay that becomes an orgy when his brother’s girlfriend joins in. Danny mispronounces the situation, turning it into a chaotic, hazy memory that sticks with him.

Miss Farmer then recounts hers, a high-school romance overshadowed by pain. In her youth she loved her psychotic nerd boyfriend Dwayne Mark Torgl, but he dumped her for another girl at the junior prom. Rather than be sidelined, she moves on with two new boyfriends, and the three of them end up having sex on a bowling alley lane.

As the stories unfold, the oxygen in the cave grows thinner and their fear of suffocation deepens. In a startling truth, they all admit that their tales were fabrications and that none of them has ever lost their virginity. Refusing to die as virgins, they all join in a final, desperate orgy. The relentless rhythm of their bodies triggers another landslide, this one powerful enough to crack open the cave and set them free.

Back at camp, a narrator reveals each of their futures:

• Danny becomes a pornographic actor under the name “Dicky Long.”

• Mitch grows into a priest who also becomes a vocal advocate for gay rights.

• Henry ends up working for the National Cheese Commissioners Board.

• Annie endures a troubled life with eight marriages and a mental breakdown that leaves her a vegetable.

• Miss Farmer goes on to run the government’s Wildlife Preservation program.

The film closes on a striking image: Miss Farmer, now in charge of wildlife, attempts to launch a large trout into flight by tossing it into the air, a final visual that lingers after the echoes of the night in the cave fade away.