Jefferson Bailey (Scott McGinnis, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock) owns the hottest of all businesses in 1983: a video arcade. It's driving local business tycoon Joseph Rutter (Joe Don Baker, a man whose name I screamed into the ear of a sleeping girlfriend once, which is a long story I should really get to sometime) nuts, so he gets his two nephews and plans on shutting down the arcade. Mean! Unfair! No!

Bailey's too smart for Rutter and has two pals named Eugene Grobit (Leif Green, Davey Jaworski from the legendary bomb Grease 2) - who is molested by swimsuit girls before he even gets to the arcade - and McDorfus who are ready to deal with this affront.

This movie was such a big deal that Midway allowed the image of Pac-Man to be used as well as their new game Satan's Hollow and the as-yet-unreleased Super Pac-Man during the big showdown at the movie's end.

Corinne Bohrer, who is pretty much teen movie royalty thanks to appearances in films like Surf II, Zapped! and Stewardess School shows up, as does John Voldstad who played "my older brother Daryl" on TV's Newhart.

There are two real reasons to watch this movie. One is the theme song, which has beeps, boops and promises "video to the max" and "totally awesome video games!" This song will infiltrate your mind and not leave, trust me.

The other big reason is John Gries, who completely owns every scene he appears in as King Vidiot, a punk rock maniac surrounded by punker girls who only communicate in video game noises when they're not all riding around on miniature motorcycles. In a more perfect world, King Vidiot would be the star of the film. Every other person pales in comparison to his greatness. Gries would go on to steal the show in plenty of other films like Real Genius, Napoleon Dynamite, Fright Night, The Monster Squad and TerrorVision.

This all comes from Greydon Clark, who directed The Uninvited - a movie where George Kennedy does battle with a house cat - Without Warning and Wacko, as well as appearing in movies like Satan's Sadists.

The saddest part of this movie was that even though the good guys win, arcades would be dead by the mid-1980's. So really, the bad guys did win. King Vidiot? Well, no one knows what happened to him.

Right, well I wasn't overly expecting much from a movie such as this, but I must admit that I was actually pleasantly surprised that the movie turned out to be as entertaining as it was.

Sure, this was corny and very 1980s in terms of how the movie fared and went. But it was that exact corny level of nerdiness and glorious old fashioned video arcade and the games that added to the charm of the movie.

The storyline in "Joysticks" was basically as simple as they come. A local video arcade is in risk of having to close as a local powermonger has taken a personal quest to see it closed. The youth of the video arcade must come together in order to ensure the survival of their beloved video arcade.

As for the acting in the movie, well it was adequate. And let's just say that you will get exactly what to be expected for a movie such as this. However, having been watching movies since the early 1980s, then there is definitely a heap of familiar faces on the cast list. Including the names such as Jon Gries, Joe Don Baker, John Diehl, John Voldstad and Corinne Bohrer.

While "Joysticks" by no means is a classic, then there is definitely some nostalgic value to it, especially if you grew up with video arcades around. "Joysticks" is worth watching a single time, but hardly can sustain more than a single viewing.

JOYSTICKS is an amusingly cheesy teen sex comedy from cult director Greydon Clark. The setting is a videogame arcade, where various cool and geeky characters hang out and just try to have fun while punk rivals and some adult bigwigs try to shut them down. It's a rather mindless affair that nonetheless captures a little bit of the madness of ANIMAL HOUSE, and there's an absolute ton of nudity from endless blonde actresses for those who enjoy that sort of thing. Joe Don Baker plays the antagonist of the hour and is quite fun, although not as much fun as the '80s trappings (check out those outfits!) and, for nostalgia lovers like myself, the glimpses of the big hit games of the era, Pacman in particular.