cult film freak: JENNIFER RUNYON AND TIM MATHESON ARE GOING 'UP THE CREEK'

Jennifer Runyon in UP THE CREEK Year: 1984 Rating: ***1/2

A year following this neglected outdoor comedy, Tim Matheson would ask Chevy Chase to kill him in FLETCH. Chase was originally designed for OTTER in ANIMAL HOUSE, a part that made Matheson, a former child actor who was growing into various roles like a bad cop in MAGNUM FORCE, a household name... but only where cool people live...

In FLETCH, Matheson looked somewhere in his late thirties, playing an established businessman. Here he's a broke, grungy college slacker and actually looks much younger than in FLETCH but way too old to be a student. But that's probably intentional...

Jennifer Runyon in UP THE CREEK

He's one of four buddies stuck in a nowhere, purgatory-like university sent by John Hillerman's stuffy Dean on a river rafting race, a win garnering not only free degrees but a chance to defeat a quartet of jerky blonde dudes (including SUPERMAN teen Clark Kent Jeff East): as UP THE CREEK spends the first half partying on land and the second trudging downriver...

It's splendidly vapid entertainment most of the way through, providing terrific action shots along the roaring rapids, while either the catchy Cheap Trick title track blares, or that theme's variation plays via triumphant orchestration...

Jennifer Runyon and Tim Matheson in UP THE CREEK

Stephen Furst, our second ANIMAL HOUSE alumni, chews scenery as a fat guy who lives and loves to eat... imagine if the passively lovable Flounder took "rowdy fat guy lessons" from John Belushi's Bluto, and passed with flying colors (although he fails being funn)...

While Dan Monahan, best known as Pee Wee of PORKY'S fame, adds little more than a smiling sidekick face while GHOSTBUSTERS hottie Jennifer Runyon is fitfully pouty as Matheson's conquest, the same year being charmed by Bill Murray in GHOSTBUSTERS: only problem is, she's much too easy to win over/bed down, especially for her prime looks...

Jennifer Runyon in UP THE CREEK with Julia Montgomery, Jeana Keough and Romy Walthall

During the crashing of a lodge/tavern, there's not much our cocky womanizer can't accomplish... yet ANIMAL HOUSE fans know he's a lot funnier with more obstacles to climb: And the expendable fourth banana played the bitter SPACEBALLS nose job doctor who needs to work on his putts... Sandy Helberg is the quirky oddball of the group, and is much more likable than funny...

Meanwhile, slowing down the pace is gung ho military zealot, head of a rogue army troop initially hired (by bully's boss James B. Sikking) to thwart the competition: Almost the entire final half centers on this unfunny jerk, especially after kidnapping one of the good guys, and, after a while you'll wonder what happened to the conceited preppies or their banal beauties (including REVENGE OF THE NERDS "That's My Pie" girl Julia Montgomery), who were far more fitting...

Sandy Helberg, Dan Monahan, Stephen Furst and Tim Matheson in UP THE CREEK

Thus if UP THE CREEK stuck to the rapids and spent less time with horribly unfunny rivals and a charade-playing pooch, it would be a far more satisfying venture: Instead, throughout many VHS-only years and finally Warner Archive DVD-available, CREEK remains in that cinematic purgatory of confusion: was it a failed commercial comedy or an intentionally corny cult flick all along?

Either way, despite the flaws (at times even playing out like an UP ALL NIGHT straight-to-video), this 1980's cinematic party still provides a fun, steady beat, so a line from the Beatles track: "Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream..." in this case, is very sound advice.