Stewardess School (1986) – A Review by Haphazard Stuff

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Onboard an airplane, passengers are being served by a new crew of flight attendants. A perky stewardess is making an ice cream sundae for a little boy dressed in a cowboy outfit. As she prepares his sundae with fudge, whipped cream and a cherry on top she asks: “How would you like your nuts crushed?”

The little boy angrily pulls out his toy gun, points it at her and says, “How would you like your tits shot off?”

It’s hilarity in the dorms AND the skies, as a motley misfit group attempt to become the best stewardess crew any airline could dream of having!

It won’t be easy for this group that includes klutzes, ex-prostitues and angry ex-wrestlers, who enroll in the prestigious Weidermeyer Academy. They’re not very welcomed there and are put thru the ringer from a by-the-book instructor who hopes to crush their dreams of serving in the friendly skies.

Yet, they somehow manage to graduate and all land jobs at a failing airline. For their first flight the comedy culminates as this group have to deal with blind passengers, a secret FAA inspector and a mad bomber!

Fasten your seat belts!

You know exactly what you’re in for with Stewardess School. You should not expect Sully, Flight or even Snakes on a Plane! It’s a lowbrow 1980s comedy filled with plenty of juvenile sex jokes, silly gags and some sexy bits all meant to give fans at the time what they wanted from a brainless entry of the teen/sex/comedy film genre. If your looking for that kind of entertainment Stewardess School rewards you with just what you’re looking for.

The one major difference with Stewardess School and most of the teen/sex/comedies at the time, is that this time around it’s not teens running around through high school parties or a college dorm, but adults who get in on the raunchy, adolescent humor!

No worries, despite their more mature ages, this more grown-up cast still act like buffoons and all the staples of what you expect to see from a teen/sex/comedy are included here.

Stewardess School drew its inspiration clearly from the Police Academy films. It’s the same exact premise, only instead of squad cars they moved the comedy to an airplane. For scholars of the genre you’ll probably be able to trace many jokes and characters in it back to the original Police Academy, at least I could.

We’re introduced to Brett Cullen and Donald Most who are taking a simulated pilot test. They fail big time by crashing the plane into the city. You really see how different an era you’re thrust back into when crashing a plane into a building is played as a funny gag.

Cullen happens to be cartoonishly near-sighted and needs his thick glasses to see. Most is…well he’s like the wannabe cool, ladies man with the one-liners at the ready and always has a scheme going on. You know the type, we’ve seen these type of leading men in plenty of movies.

For instance, he walks around wearing a smoking jacket and an ascot. That’s enough of a wardrobe choice to show us what kind of guy he is. He’s like Tim Matheson’s Otter in Animal House.

We of course all know Most from Happy Days as Ralph Malph. On that show he used the name ‘Donny Most’. I guess at a point after the show ended and he moved onto heavier roles he became ‘Donald Most’. His character in Stewardess School definitely requires a ‘Don’ to play him and not a ‘Donald’.

Cullen you might recognize (when he takes off his Coke bottle glasses). The guy has done a lot of acting work since Stewardess School. I just saw him show up in a small role in The Shallows. He was in The Dark Knight Rises, tons of tv shows, I believe he’s playing Thomas Wayne in the new upcoming Joker movie.

If you’ve kept up these occasional revisits I do to these types of films, you shouldn’t be surprised as to some of the actors that can count them as some of their earliest ventures into cinema. They were perfect opportunities for young, hungry actors to score a role in. They might not have been Shakespeare, but hey, actors need to work!

So, Stewardess School was some early work for him. I’m not sure how he feels about it today, but at the time he was probably happy to have landed a paying job, like most of the actors who got cast in these films felt at the time.

Watching him in this I don’t think you’d predict that this guy would survive in Hollywood and be more than one of those ‘one-and-done’ type of actors who we see in one thing and never again, but while he might not be a huge, recognizable name, Cullen managed to go onto a long career in front of the camera.

There’s a quick introduction to the nine main characters and we see how the hands of fate have led them to enroll in this school and dreams of becoming stewardesses. Naturally they all have their own comedic quirks.