I remember seeing this on cable a year or so after it was released - maybe in 1983, when I was 13 - and even with my mindset back then I didn't think much of it. Mind you, back then I was watching all sorts of dumb movies back then. Slasher flicks, teen sex comedies, stupid gross-out b-movies. Heck, back then I found the 1981 movie Student Bodies amusing (still do). National Lampoon's Class Reunion always struck me as, at best, mildly amusing to my 13-year-old brain.

For some reason, I bought a VHS copy of it in the 1990's and continued to watch it once in a blue moon. Several years ago, I bought the Kino Lorber dvd release because I just HAD to have it finally in widescreen. But why?

I dunno. Although a very early slasher movie spoof, Class Reunion isn't gory in the least. Although rated R, Class Reunion far as I can remember doesn't have any rough language re: the f word. Nor does it have any nudity other than a brief side-boob shot.

What it does have are a lot of dumb jokes and a sensibility carried over from the 1970's Lampoon era. The characters include a couple of Cheech & Chong wannabe stoner-types who smoke dope and can't remember anything. One of the more memorable roles features Zane Busby playing a formerly handicapped student who made a deal with Satan to become not handicapped. Steven Furst (Flounder from Animal House fame) turns up as the class slob. One of his lines is "I see London, I see France, I see so-and-so's underpants"...I mean, it's literally that type of elementary school playground humor on display throughout the flick. Chuck Berry shows up and sings 'My Ding-a-Ling'...a couple of people in the cast I've seen in other movies featuring SNL alumni, but for the most part most of the cast are people I'd never seen before nor would go on to see in much else.

All I can say is that this lowest common denominator (and now in 2023 VERY dated movie regarding the humor) flick has inexplicably grown on me over the decades. Inexplicably meaning I'm at a loss to explain as to why since I STILL don't find it particularly amusing (it's not like I enjoyed it much 40 years ago and am giving it the ranking I am for the sake of nostalgia). In point of fact, it's fairly undistinguished in nearly every way...not violent in a gory way, not revealing in a horndog sense, mildly humorous at times at best. So, like I said, it's an R-rated horror spoof that neither scares nor amuses.

Must be some reason I've seen it perhaps 40 times over the last 40 years, but darned if I can figure out what that reason is.

You can't convince someone to like this movie. I found the image of a high school class singing The Supremes over the ornate corpse of a Krishna to be comically endearing. I also liked the image of Scatman Caruthers bicycling through flying sausages in "Zapped!" with Scott Baio; neither of these films can be called excellent, but each has a tepid silliness which is pleasant. Gerrit Graham and Michael Lerner make memorable characters, and the rest are painless. 'Painless' is a high rating for any as jaded as I.

Never having read the original lampoon concept, and never having seen a 'John Hughes' film prior to this one (it is hard to recognize John Hughes in here - although the film takes place in a high school, the characters are all adults) I thought it was at least as funny as Animal House, which I never really found that funny.

The Class of 1972 from Lizzie Borden High (nyuk, nyuk) is all gathering together for their ten-year reunion. All those guys you remember are back. The jock, ms. Popular, the cripple, the nobody, the class pump, the girl who sold her soul to the devil so she could get rid of leg braces and now breathes fire and has an Exorcist thing going on and let's not forget Howard Baylor. Baylor escaped from the loony bin just to get back at the poor slobs who pulled the senior prank on him (he made-out with his twin sister) and put him there to begin with. All that and a National Lampoon charter to boot…Whoa Nelly!

Certainly not the most popular National Lampoon film (it's got a serious reputation for being bad) but I actually had fun with it. It moved at a pretty fast pace with enough bad jokes and screwiness to keep me entertained. Give it a view. "National Lampoon's Class Reunion" may grow on you like that rash you got from gym.