A trio of typical teenaged buddies – the nice guy (Lawrence Monoson), the bad boy (Steve Antin) and the fat dude (Joe Rubbo) – are followed from one misadventure to the next in the great American high school quest to -what else – get laid.

This was Cannon Films’ entry into a wildly prolific genre of R-rated teenager comedies released in 1982 or ’83. These included Fast Times At Ridgemont High, Porky’s, Porky’s II, Private School, Losin’ It, Class and on and on. Before John Hughes put style and class (and a PG) into the high school movie, most of these titles didn’t even pretend to be anything but a variation on the time honored theme of a bunch of teenage guys (or in the case of Where The Boys Are, chicks) trying to get it on.

The Last American Virgin stands out in a couple of areas. It was a remake of a highly successful series of Israeli comedies called Lemon Popsicle, which basically had the same plot, but in a nod to the success of American Graffiti, were set in the 1950s. Writer and director Boaz Davidson reteamed with the founders of Cannon Films – Menahem Golan and his cousin, Yoram Globus – to duplicate that success in the U.S.

Their first mistake was to set the film in present day L.A. and to cake it with every halfway listenable American pop tune they could afford. 23 appear on the soundtrack and several – “Keep On Lovin’ You” by REO Speedwagon and “Open Arms” by Journey – are played twice.

The basic plot concerns the nice guy, a pizza delivery boy, falling for the new girl in town, played by Diane Franklin, who starts dating the bad boy instead. Nobody in the cast can really act. Franklin is blank, kind of like a brunette Barbie doll come to life, but was darling enough to play off John Cusack in Better Off Dead and is a decent object of affection here.

The film’s first hour is standard issue, harmless T&A. The boys talk a trio of girls back to the nice guy’s house by promising them drugs that turn out to be Sweet and Low. They encounter a Spanish accented nymphomaniac on the pizza route, but her boyfriend comes home before our hero can score. A double date makeout at “The Point” is botched when our hero kicks the emergency brake and rolls the car down the beach into the ocean.

As the film progresses, each of these incidents get a little more dangerous, less funny ha-ha and more painful, culminating in our hero finally losing his virginity to a repulsive hooker and catching crabs.

Then, over an hour into our Porky’s knockoff, the film makes a detour into reality. Franklin’s character announces that the bad boy has gotten her pregnant. Still smitten, the nice guy takes her to a clinic, a development in Fast Times handled much more realistically here. The nice guy professes his love to her, but she gets back together with the bad boy anyway. Our hero drives off in the pizza delivery station wagon fighting back the tears. The end.

While ensuring the movie would flop commerically, the ending is what has endeared the film to those who remember catching it on HBO late at night in the early ’80s. The dialogue and characters are all so flat that you wonder if Davidson was still in high school himself when he wrote this. But the film has heart, capturing the exuberance of being a teenager, tinged with the bitter disappointments. It’s real and honest.