The Van
Tags: cult

Plot synopsis:
Bobby and his best friend, Jack, sabotage their high-school graduation ceremony by rigging the stage to collapse. After leaving the graduation ceremony, Bobby and Jack (Harry Moses) drive up to another van and notice Sally (Connie Lisa Marie), his secret high-school crush, sitting alone inside, eating ice cream. Bobby cannot look away from her and expresses his fantasy to "be with" her just once. Dugan returns to the van and disapproves of Bobby's attention. Bobby and Jack run across Sue (Marcie Barkin) and Tina (Deborah White), and they attempt to arrange dates with them that evening. Sue is interested in Jack, but Tina states she is neither interested in Bobby nor other boys because they only care about sex.Bobby works in a car wash. Bobby's boss Andy (Danny DeVito) is also a bookmaker, who refuses taking a high-risk bet from an old lady called Bertha. Bobby's co-workers send his convertible into the car wash with the roof down, but Bobby plans buying a van anyway - not just any van, but a custom van with items like a waterbed, a ceiling mirror, a refrigerator, a toaster, an 8 track and multiple television sets. Bobby then gets revenge on his co-workers while showing off his new van by giving them beers spiked with laxatives.In a bar, Bobby unsuccessfully approaches women, including Sally. Finally, a pinball playing girl agrees sharing a joint in his van. Though going hand-in-hand, she objects his moves. Laughing it off, he tries raping her, but Bobby discovers she has stuffed her over-sized bra with wads of toilet paper, and she runs off. Up next is a Mexican girl, who removes her top but demands payment. Another woman is also a prostitute, and her pimp barges in for payment.Afterwards, Bobby and Jack force Sue and Tina to stop their car. Sue drives off with Jack, and Tina joins Bobby in the van. They plan to meet up again later at the beach, but Jack and Sue don't arrive until the next morning. Bobby and Tina form an uneasy truce and sleep in the van without fooling around. Eventually, they share a joint. When Jack and Sue return in the morning, Bobby makes them think that he is in the van having sex with Tina, who is actually out on the beach.After dropping Tina home, Bobby spots Sally with a see-through wetlook in the car wash. After seeing her making out with Dugan, Bobby stops by a quiet take-out place. The take-out waitress praises his van, so he offers sharing a joint on the waterbed. Noting she likes waterbeds, she says she doesn't have time for a joint, but does have some time for a quickie. She steps out from behind the counter and Bobby gasps at her very large buttocks. Once she is nude in the van, Bobby tries a pickup line, but barely finishes it, when she throws and mounts him on the waterbed. He protests, but she obviously rapes him, breaking the waterbed in the process. Bobby mentions her buttocks' size to Jack, and notes he never knew sex could be so physical.After tricking Bobby and Tina to join them to a van spot, at a local beach, Jack and Sue have sex in the back with occasional voyeurs in their window. Bobby and Tina see other vans, before Tina is nearly run over during the van drag races. Bobby and Tina get close, until Bobby again tries getting physical. Tina drives off in the van with Jack and Sue in the back, leaving Bobby to walk home.When Andy reveals he got beat up for not paying for a winning high-risk bet, Bobby volunteers his van's down payment. After getting rejected when approaching Tina's window, Bobby visits Sally's house. Sally says she feels abandoned by Dugan, and Bobby finds himself with her in his van. Unzipping him, she notes he is bigger than Dugan. Taking off her top, they proceed to have sex.The following morning, Tina runs across Bobby in a diner and agrees going together inside, where they meet Jack and Sue. Dugan then enters, lifts Bobby up and says he saw Bobby's van last night around Sally's place. Jack stalls Dugan, but Tina doesn't want to see Bobby again. Refusing to give up again, Bobby kidnaps her. Dugan drive chases Bobby, and the police join in. Bobby escapes, but Tina pleads to get freed. Bobby finally stops when she agrees hearing his side. He says he got the van to succeed with girls, but it changed upon meeting Tina. Tina says she too could never play "the game", and they have sex.The next morning, Bobby drag-races Dugan to regain his money, but not before mentioning he really was at Sally's place. Dugan tries crashing Bobby, but eventually crashes himself into a police car. In result, Bobby's van turns over. Tina, Sue, Jack and Andy are relieved when Bobby is neither dead nor injured. Jack notes Bobby even won the race (when the water seeping from the broken waterbed inside the van leaks out and across the finish line).Bobby leaves in Tina's convertible. Tina asks if he really was with Sally, and Bobby replies that Sally said he is "bigger than Dugan," but Tina just laughs.

Review: Racing vans, the total ass-wipe with the baddest van, the water bed, the smoking of herbs, the hot 70's chicks, the 'makin love in my Chevy van song, it was all so new to me.
When I watch this movie, it makes me want to get my skates, with 4 wheels, not in a strait line, go to the park and hunt down some babes with feathered hair.
I have used this line dozens of times over the years (no one has yet to believe it, though).This movie is one of the all-time best for sheer fun and nonbelieveability.
Steven Oliver was perfect for the part of Dugan, so much so that he was in 1978's "Malibu Beach" as the same character (not nearly as much screen time, though)."Nobody calls Dugan a turd!" is another line for the ages.
The 1975 Sammy Johns hit record "Chevy Van" is heard repeatedly on the soundtrack (this movie has even been reissued with the title CHEVY VAN), despite the film's title vehicle being a Dodge.
The movie is a comparatively sexist morality tale -- will Bobby find sexual satisfaction through the one-night-stand his customised van facilitates, or must he wait until Tina, the girl of his dreams, gives him the time of day?
Still, it is representative of the prevailing carnal dream of male American high schoolers of the time, and on that basis alone THE VAN has, almost in spite of itself, become an artifact of the period that must be referenced in any honest retrospective of the period's popular American cinema....
It may seem like a dumb sex comedy from the 70's but it's more like a window to the decade of decadence.This movie has it all!Sex,pot smoking,a car wash,super-cool vans,cool clothes,a pimp,hookers,van racing,the continuous playing of Chevy Van and other Sammy Johns songs and more!If you want to know what people were really doing in the 70's,get this movie.It will make you want to go FUN TRUCKIN'..
A film like THE VAN may now seem like a disposable piece of Drive-in esoteria, but it was a sizable hit when it was released (not to mention subsequent re-releases as a double feature with other Crown hits).THE VAN was a perfect example of Crown's hit strategy of seizing upon the mood of movie-goers at the time of a film's release.
I had a town Selectman where I was at the time even declare these vans to be "dens of sin on wheels!" A perfect ad line for the film!There are the usual assortment of "good" and "bad" girls, muscle-heads and low-brow hijinks (including a supporting bit by Danny DeVito).
In many ways this isn't much different from the old Beach Party movies of the 60's, but now spiced up with Nudity and Drug use.
Obviously done on a limited budget and a limited schedule, the film coasts along pleasantly enough with a breezy charm that compensates for some, by today's standards certainly, un-PC views of women.The classic touch is a Toaster for Bobby's den of sin on wheels.
Coming-of-age fare from the 70s; you know that period where a new van supposedly meant high living, fast girls, and tons of laughs.
A teen-aged Stuart Goetz, giving a very energetic performance, works at a carwash and finally saves enough to get his loaded van.
Well, naturally this ploy doesn't work all the time and romance buds with a girl that doesn't seem all that impressed with his wheels.
The hit song "Chevy Van" plays throughout the film.
Simple-minded but good-natured drive-in movie about a simple-minded but good-natured high school graduate who has dreams of owning the coolest custom van in the world to use as his "ballroom".
Joint sharing and love making quickly commence with girls Bobby has picked up at the local pizza parlor, but he finds out much responsibility, danger and heartache come with being the owner of such a mechanical marvel.The Van is a guilty pleasure of mine.
I remember seeing this movie at the drive-in, when I was a teenager.
.I wanted a van so bad after this movie, never happened.
. .The plot seems dated now But at the time.But the actors are good.A van was the "it" thing to have at the time.The Main song for this movie "Chevy Van" .
OK, our hero doesn't REALLY say that line in this movie, but if you haven't figured it out already, Stuart Getz is mostly known to millions as Charley in that legendary Brady Bunch episode where Marcia gets hit in the nose with the football (he was the dorky one with the wallpaper samples).Anyway THAT'S where you've seen our "star" before...
now on to the movie.This was a big drive-in hit in the summer of 1977 and is a pretty good time capsule for that era.
Guy hopes to impress chicks with tricked-out van, gets challenged to drag-race by rival.
Feather-light script would probably take at least 24 hours to hit the floor if it were dropped from the ceiling, but it's still a fun (albeit hokey) remnant from the "drive-in swill" days of the '70s.
The Rhino DVD is probably the best version (it's not heavily edited like other versions out there); the only drawbacks are it's full-frame, there are a few imperfections in the print and some of the color didn't age very well, but that doesn't really detract from overall enjoyment of the movie (if anything it enhances the "70s feeling").
Positively THE definitive film about toaster-equipped van lovin'.
A must for anyone who loves insanely bad movies - I saw this movie by accident 8 years ago, and now own 3 copies of it, and have watched it at least a dozen times.
One of those so bad it's good kind of movies.
What teenage boy wouldn't love his own van complete with waterbed, eight track tape player and...toaster!
The teen sexploitation comedy had its heyday in the early 1980's with movies like "Porky's" and a brief revival years later with "American Pie" (and perhaps we're experiencing another right one now with the new movie "Superbad").
The 70's movies were a little different, however, in that it was never clear whether they were trying to "exploit" the actual teenage audience of the era or just exploit the bodies of the "teenage" characters (almost always played by older actors) for the benefit of perverts of all ages.
It has a believable (relatively) and likable (very relatively) protagonist with a (somewhat)realistic problem: he wants to improve his love life by buying a customized van.
This movie is not particularly funny, nor is it exactly neo-realism, but it does capture the spirit of the times enough to achieve a kind of nostalgia (which certainly can't be said about stuff like "The Cheerleaders").
I was actually just a kid at this time, but I remember being disappointed when I reached adolescence in the "just say no" Reagan era that my female peers weren't quite as, uh, fun as my teenage babysitters seemed to be back in this era.
(At least, I personally never owned a van with a waterbed, a mirrored ceiling, and, for some reason, a toaster).I'm sure this isn't a totally realistic movie about being a teenager in the 1970's, but it's as close as THESE kind of movies are probably going to get..
I am simply looking for a time period where politics do not play a part in movies and the VAN was it.I love those 80's teen comedies like Porky's and Killer Tomatoes and Killer Klowns and the Beach and Malibu Beach and so on.
You get a real sense of the world back then and how truly free it was before Liberal Hollywood destroyed culture.PLOT: Something about a man with chest hair(The main character had non in the Van though) chasing a woman and not being labeled a rapist that is awe-inspiring.
this film is one of lifes little pleasures...................and it is a must see for fans of the street car flick, its about a teenager who blows his entire college savings on a coustom chevy van as a way to lure girls in for wild sex parties.
however there is some great 1970's music in this film - and its funny to watch --- I never knew Danny DeVito was ever that Young.
this is a fun movie and its a perfect break(getaway)from the period dramas and war movies that I love so well.
THE VAN:a tricked out xtra special drive in flick that's a must see!.
THE VAN is a simple teensploitation picture made especially for the drive in that goes out of it's way to make you feel comfortable, providing many opportunities to laugh and cry with your friends.
With that being the case, I should've known better than to even expect that the movie shown on it would play without cuts what with both cuss words blanked out and no nudity (good thing that some of the scenes shown on YouTube did have some skin).
The actual star is Stuart Goetz-best known for a guest appearance on "The Brady Bunch"-as just graduated teen Bobby who uses his college money to buy a, you know.
Deborah White plays Tina who Bobby likes but she doesn't feel the same about him.
Then there's a sexy blonde called Sally played by Connie Lisa Marie and her Neanderthal boyfriend named Dugan Hicks (Stephan Oliver who would reprise this role on Malibu Beach).
Okay, I thought the first 45 minutes were pretty funny and hearing Sammy Johns "Chevy Van" and some of his other tunes were fun to hear.
But then Bobby's constant pawing of Tina and her incessant rejection of him gets irritating real quick and "Chevy Van" gets played too many times, not to mention that director Sam Grossman does too many travelogue scenes whenever those songs play.
Still, there was a nice montage of various vans as Bobby and Tina walk around the beach, there were some amusing undercranking when there were car chases, and Danny DeVito had a hilarious opening scene.
The Van is a feelgood movie about a guy who tries to lure girls into his new van, in order to seduce them.
The only thing this movie doesn't fail at is precisely depicting the van fad in the US in the late 70s.
Let's be fair: THE VAN hasn't aged very well as a film.
The plot is so slim that it barely sustains the running time; a geeky guy buys himself a new van and then does his very best to bed a succession of women within its confines.It's lowbrow, dumb, and frequently offensive to women, not to mention incredibly dated in terms of the mannerisms and fashions.
Certainly it has no right to be: the characters are thinly drawn, the acting verges on the wooden, and random scenes of van chases thrown into the mix don't really contribute much overall.
The makers of the film obviously wanted to capture some of the out there craziness of other films of the time, but fell a long way short.
Just when you thought it couldn't get worse, they added more joints and more pink fuzzy-lined vans with raunchy sex scenes.
A classic coming of age story set against the back drop of the late 70's California van culture.
Bobby has played it safe and saved his money from his car wash job and the day he graduates from high school heads down to the Dodge dealer to buy a new customized van that ultimately changes our hero, but not always for the better.
While this movie's story line is amusing at best it does serve as a time capsule for the car culture of southern California.
There is even a scene in the movie set at an all van show gathering down at the beach.
I'm sure the real owners who got their vans on screen in this movie still talk about it now, some 35 years later..
we made love in my Chevy van, and that alright with me.
we made love in my Chevy van, and that alright with me.
"The Van" was one of the movies that was in heavy rotation on that network at that time.I remember watching this movie back then, and thinking it was a typical teen flick(along the same lines as other medium budget teen flicks) ...the ones where the plot revolves around nudity and parties.I totally forgot that this movie even existed until I recently seen this movie again after having not seeing it for decades( I found a copy of it on DVD for sale in cheap bin) I recognized it, and bought it for a mere $4.99.Seems like I had remembered this film being much better that it was(is).
However watching it back then was a different experience than watching now(30+ years later).It was fun to see the kids listing to rock n roll music, smoking weed, and having sex in the back a fancy van(often all at the same time).
This is what a good teen party movie should be.There isn't much of a plot other than the fact that the main character fantasizes about having sex with his arch rivals good looking girlfriend ...he blows all of his college savings money to purchase a tricked out Dodge Van(with shag carpet walls .
But watching this movie 30+ years later, it becomes more of a trip down memory lane.
Because I still can remember Pizza parlors, pinball arcades, It also brought back memories of cruising around a small town while we smoked pot as we would yell at good looking girls and hoping to get laid (sometimes I'd get lucky and get some decent looking girl to share a joint with me and we'd screw in the backseat afterwords, I also remember many of the songs in this move(when they were new)......this movie serves as a perfect time capsule for that era in those regards (brought back lots of memories)the one thing that is depicted in this movie that I honestly can not remember is ....I never remember a time when full sized vans were as popular as this film depicts them as being.
I remember that era very well, and I don't young men going around wishing they had a van.
Instead I remember young men in the 70's (self included) wanting a Pontiac Trans Am, Chevy Camaro or a hot rod Ford Mustang, but never a van.
This movie makes it appear as if vans were most popular item going and that every young man wanted one(which just wasn't true of that era).
It does attempt to make a sincere point about true love and friendship being more important in life than a cool set of wheels and a quick piece of tail.
Sure, it's essentially a blatant adolescent male fantasy pic -- the main teen goofus character Bobby Hamilton gets the girls, the respect of his friends, and a chance to show-up a local van-racing bully -- but it's way too dopey and good-natured to hate.
Stuart Getz as our gawky protagonist makes for an endearingly dorky lead, Deborah White as the main object of Getz's affection is a definite cutie, Connie Lisa Marie is likewise quite luscious as a beauteous blonde babe, and sneering beefcake Neanderthal Stephan Oliver (a 60's biker movie perennial) is wonderfully hateful as the brutish Dugan Hicks.
Breezy Fun. The Van benefits from having a very strongly established setting.
The comedy is pretty silly at times, but for the most part, I enjoyed the fact that this was written before the age of irony.
Second - WTF is going on with this van love.
The plot, basically, is: boy wants sex so buys a van (which, in fairness is quite cool).
Although he didn't need to because in tipping the van the ginger kid crossed the line first.
Car-wash employee Bobby (Stuart Goetz) doesn't have much luck with the girls, so to improve his chances at getting some action he puts a down payment on a custom van, which comes complete with fur interior, mirrored ceiling, water bed, hideous round side window, television, toaster, fridge, 8-track stereo, and a nasty paint job that makes the thing look like a courier vehicle.
Amazingly, it has the desired effect on certain females, but fails to work on Tina (Deborah White), the girl of Bobby's dreams.The Van wants to be a sweet coming-of-age tale with it's happy go lucky protagonist learning that, to win over the true object of his affections, he doesn't have to rely on his flashy vehicle—just being himself is enough; it's a fine sentiment, except that Bobby is such an unappealing character that the whole thing falls flat on its face.Once he has his tricked-out wagon on the road, Bobby acts like a jerk, luring girls onto his water bed with the promise of drugs.
Just a FUN Movie!.
I love The Van. Not only because I'm a 70's junkie and dig the vanning of that era, but also the fact the movie is so carefree and has an attractive summertime aura.
Stuart Getz plays his role as "Bobby" to a T.
At first, you may get the impression he is a suburban pretty boy type, but as the movie progresses, you get to know the real Bobby - a fun-loving, horny, pot and cigar smoking, liquor-drinking, daredevil vanner and he is simply a hoot to observe.
The music score by Sammy Johns is excellent and it jives in perfectly with key scenes, especially when Bobby and Tina make love in his "Chevy" (actually a Dodge) van.
I doubt people who criticize this movie for being too "simple" were around in the 70's, because if they were around, they would understand the cult following of The Van and how it being simple is a fine element.
So yeah, I love this movie and it's required viewing in June every year because I so much want to be in this summer party.