Bachelor Party Films
Dardo Hameed
Bachelor Party is a 1984 American sex comedy film directed by Neal Israel, written by Israel and Pat Proft, and starring Tom Hanks, Adrian Zmed, William Tepper, and Tawny Kitaen. The film revolves around a bachelor party that a group of men throw for their friend Rick Gassko (Hanks) on the eve of his wedding and whether he can remain faithful to his fiance Debbie (Kitaen).
Party animal Rick Gassko, who makes his living as a Catholic-school bus driver, decides to settle down and marry his girlfriend, Debbie Thompson. After learning the news of the engagement, Rick's shocked friends, led by Jay, decide to throw him an epic bachelor party. The bride's wealthy, conservative parents are unhappy with her decision, and her father enlists the help of Debbie's ex-boyfriend Cole to sabotage her relationship with Rick and win her back.
While Debbie worries and goes off to a bridal shower thrown by her friends, Rick heads to the bachelor party, which takes place in a lavish, spacious hotel suite, and promises to remain faithful. Both parties start off on the wrong foot because of Cole's meddling. As the bachelor party starts to heat up, Debbie and the girls decide to get even with Rick and his friends by having a party of their own. Both parties eventually collide, leading to Debbie accusing Rick of infidelity.
The bachelor party becomes a wild, drunken orgy and the hotel room is trashed, which infuriates the hotel's frustrated manager. Adding to the confusion is Rick's friend Brad, who has become despondent over the breakup of his marriage and botches several suicide attempts.
Rick convinces Debbie of his love and faithfulness just as the party is raided by the police. In the ensuing melee, Rick and Debbie become separated and Cole kidnaps Debbie, so Rick and his friends chase after them. The chase culminates in a showdown between Rick and Cole in a 36-screen movie theater, with a fist fight taking place in synchronization with a similar fight being shown in a 3D film projected behind them; the audience believes that the real fight is an extraordinary 3D effect. Rick wins the fight and is reunited with Debbie.
The idea for the film came from an actual bachelor party thrown by producer Ron Moler and a group of friends for fellow producer Bob Israel. Several members of the film's cast and crew were at that party when the idea began to take shape.[3]
Reviews for Bachelor Party were mixed, holding a rating of 54% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 28 reviews. While some critics appreciated the humor, others found it to be vulgar and gratuitous. Film critics Roger Ebert and Janet Maslin both recommended the film, but had reservations about certain aspects, calling it "sophomoric" and "not a great film."[4][5]
In a Los Angeles Times review, writer Kevin Thomas praised Hanks as "likable, spontaneous zany" but felt that the film was 15 minutes too long: "That extra 15 minutes allows for just enough repetition (and just enough lingering over as much outrageous sexual connotation that an R rating permits) to let heavy-handed tastelessness creep in and dampen the fun."[6]
Twenty-four years after Bachelor Party was released, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment produced a straight-to-DVD sequel (in name only)[7] called Bachelor Party 2: The Last Temptation.
I came with an assumption that being a bachelor party planner would be a dream job, just off of the lifestyle. What makes the job actually difficult?
Many of the same problems that come with general hospitality. But my problem is usually compounded because we got guys out here drinking. The bachelors always have this pressure on them because they want to make their friends happy. You'll have the unreasonable types or the random trouble maker that decides to set off a fire alarm. It really stems from people managing their expectations and what they want. With all hospitality, you'll have people who think they could get whatever they want to the point of being a pain. They won't show up on time or just don't plan things properly. I mean, we had guys call off the wedding, which has happened multiple times. More than you think. I also had instances of a bachelor having an epiphany that he was actually getting married, and he fainted in the club. It's all crap like that.
So like I had my ideas with the job, did any surprises come to you also when you first started?
Yeah, it was the response I was getting. The receptiveness of people who seem to trust you explicitly to take care of their bachelor party. You have a big responsibility to make sure everything is perfect and goes well. You come to realise that it's never really about the bachelor himself, it's more about the other people going. The bachelor is already in a good state of mind because he's getting married and it's the best time of his life or whatever. For the guys, the bachelor celebration is just an excuse for themselves and the guys that are usually the most excited are honestly the married guys.
Tell me about the good or crazy moments that come with the job.
The best client that comes to mind was this guy that came in from the south. Flew in private, which is always a good sign. Turns out this guy owns a chain of chicken restaurants in the south, so he goes nuts and spent money like crazy. Kept coming at me with crazier and crazier ideas and we put them all together. He went to the best steakhouse in town and had multiple girls there. So he buys $10,000 dollar bottles of wine and at one point he says 'I want them all to eat naked,' so done. They were all eating caviar and drinking campaign naked at the best steakhouse in Montreal. It's the kind of things you get but at different levels. As for crazy, it depends on your idea of crazy.
Uh huh. And the weirdest or funniest moment?
Well for an NBA player, and I'm not gonna say his name obviously. But for his retirement party he wanted to play basketball against strippers. So we had him play against five naked strippers and this guy was dunking on them and everything. It was hilarious. Gotta be the funniest thing I'd ever seen. They were trying so hard out there too and he was wiping the floor with them as they just played naked.
So what exactly makes a bachelor party planner like you good at his job in the first place?
I think it's a combination of being on every single detail. You gotta think ahead and know what could go wrong and what could go right. It's a basic formula to make their life easy by taking care of the planning and the hustles under that and I try to make it epic and memorable by doing those out of box ideas. Topless beer pong or a little person bartender. Those things they couldn't come up with themselves. It's a unique job and I have 12 years under my belt. There isn't much I haven't done and seen myself, so it allows me to read situations better than most.
"Bachelor Party" is 1984's version of the Annual Summer Food Fight Movie. With a movie like this, it doesn't really matter whether anyone actually throws mashed potatoes across the room; what matters is whether the movie is faithful to the spirit of Blotto Bluto in "National Lampoon's Animal House" when he yelled "Food fight!" and the madness began. The story this time is about this guy who decides to get married, and his friends decide to throw him a bachelor party. That's about it. The first half of the movie sets up the party and the second half of the movie is the party. Both halves of the movie are raunchy, chaotic, and quite shameless in aiming at the lowest possible level of taste, of course.
The bachelor in the movie is played by Tom Hanks. He was the guy from "Splash" who the mermaid fell in love with. I didn't think he was all that terrific in "Splash" -- I thought he was miscast, and they should have gone for somebody who was less of a conventional leading man -- but in "Bachelor Party" he's a lot more funny and I enjoyed the performance. He plays the kind of guy who goes over to his fiance's house for dinner and drops table scraps onto the floor in case they have a dog. He has a great one-liner when he has to introduce himself to his fiance's nerdy ex-boyfriend: "The name is Bond. James Bond." During the chaos of the party itself, one of his primary roles is simply to direct traffic.
The idea during the party, I think, is to approximate the spirit of one of those Jack Davis drawings in Mad magazine, where dozens of people are running around like crazy, and down in the corners you can see strange little figures doing inexplicable things. Most of the gags depend on varieties of public embarrassment and some of them are pretty funny, especially when the women decide to have their revenge by visiting a male go-go bar.
Is "Bachelor Party" a great movie? No. Why do I give it three stars? Because it honors the tradition of a reliable movie genre, because it tries hard, and because when it is funny, it is very funny. It is relatively easy to make a comedy that is totally devoid of humor, but not all that easy to make a movie containing some genuine laughs. "Bachelor Party" has some great moments and qualifies as a raunchy, scummy, grungy Blotto Bluto memorial.
LinkedIn and 3rd parties use essential and non-essential cookies to provide, secure, analyze and improve our Services, and to show you relevant ads (including professional and job ads) on and off LinkedIn. Learn more in our Cookie Policy.
When my life is finished, one thing I won't regret is that I never attended a bachelor party. It bothers others whenever I mention that I shall never get married. Who could put up with me until death?
It was nothing I ever wanted. That does not mean there is not enjoyment from Bachelor Party. There was a time this was the high water mark in the career of Tom Hanks. Adrian Zmed was never better. Great: he exceeded Grease 2. He played the role well. Bringing us to the first lesson.
Yes, with the announcement of a wedding all the single men acted like it was the end of his good times. They supported him and threw a monumental party that wasn't what others expected. Longtime friends are going to be there for you.
c80f0f1006