Revenge of the Nerds
Revenge of the Nerds stars Robert Carradine, Anthony Edwards, John Goodman, Ted
McGinley, and Julia Montgomery. This movie finds nerds and best friends Lewis Skolnick
(Carradine) and Gilbert Lowe (Edwards) heading off to Adams College to study computer science.
They are to share a dormitory room in a building housing other first-year students. However,
they are thrown out of their dorm by the domineering Alpha Beta fraternity, whose members had
carelessly burned their own house down at one of their wild parties. Most of the Alpha Beta
members are also members of the football team, and Coach Harris (Goodman) demands the
university allow the jocks to take over the freshman dorms. The freshmen are to live in one
half of a school gymnasium, but the Dean allows the freshmen to join fraternities early or move
to other housing. However, Lewis and Gilbert have no luck at joining fraternities and are stuck
living in the gym with other outcasted freshmen. When the nerds get fed up with the gym, they
go out and search for other housing, but their best find is a run-down house. Working together,
they do manage to fix it up quite nicely, but the jocks will not stand for it and threaten the
nerds to leave by throwing a rock through a window of their house. The nerds are referred to
the Greek council for resolution of this conflict, but they are informed that they must have a
national fraternity sponsor or they cannot file a complaint against the Alpha Betas. The nerds
petition for several sponsors, but the only one who will consider them is Lambda Lambda Lambda.
They throw a party to try to impress the Lambdas, but it ends in disaster - at first, the Pis
(the female equivalents of the Alphas) offer to be the nerds' dates to their party, but it was
a joke and they do not show up; even though the nerds do manage to find dates from the Omega Mu
sorority, the Alpha Betas wreck the party by unleashing pigs on the nerds. The nerds do not
stand for this, and they get even with the Pis - by installing hidden cameras in their dorm
rooms, and in the process, going on a panty raid in the Pi house - and the Alphas, by pouring
liquid heat in their jock straps. After this feat, the nerds officially become TriLams, and it
seems all is well.
However, the Alphas will not give up, and they burn a sign on the TriLams' lawn (symbolic to burning crosses on African Americans' lawns). Even though the nerds are a fraternity, they still cannot have action taken against the Alphas, because the Greek Council is headed by Stan Gable (McGinley), who is also an Alpha and anti-nerd. However, the nerds still have hope, as the president of the Greek Council is chosen by the winner of the previous year's Greek Homecoming Festival, which consists of some athletic events, a charity fund raiser, and a talent show. Even though the nerds stuggle with some of the athletic events (although they do manage to win a few of those by using some of the TriLams' aptitude for science), they do win big with the charity fund raiser and talent show, and they actually end up winning the festival overall, which means they will have control over the Greek Council the following year. Also at the festival, Lewis manages to steal away Stan's girlfriend, Pi sorority sister Betty Childs (Montgomery), by donning a costume Stan wore for the fundraiser event and following her into a room full of air-mattresses behind the carnival - Stan had refused sex with her, and Lewis seized the opportunity, as he had been in love with Betty since the moment he first saw her. The Alphas are more furious than ever, and they respond to the TriLams' victory by destroying the TriLams house. At this point, the nerds almost give up hope, but Gilbert decides to take one last stand against the Alphas at the homecoming pep rally. While Gilbert is beaten up at first, the national TriLams show up and demand the Alphas leave him alone. Gilbert is finally successful at getting the jocks to leave the nerds alone when he is allowed to take the microphone; he announces that he is proud to be a nerd, calls other nerds to join him, and the jocks are soon outnumbered. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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