I’ve reviewed my share of weird, hard to find stuff in my days, but 1994’s Score With Chicks is perhaps the most obscure. It was released by Colossal Entertainment, a company I cannot find anything on because there’s a current video game developer with the same name. It’s set up very similarly to a mid-90’s Cinemax or Playboy produced title, but I don’t think it aired on cable. It seems like it was produced for the softcore video store shelves.

Anyway, from the back of the VHS sleeve:

Narrated by Comedian Marty Keegan (they’re using “comedian” VERY liberally here)

Women & men reveal their wildest sexual fantasies
Jump start your dead or dying relationship
Innovative date ideas that are romantic and affordable
Mistakes men make when trying to pick up a woman

It name drops a few of the featured women - Tracy Dali (the only one with a picture on IMDB, which is always a good sign), Julie Smith, Reiko and Brooke Morales. Other hot chicks listed include “Sport Magazine Bikini Model” and “Coors Spokesmodel”, apparently women who aren’t worth their names in print. At the bottom of the box, it reads, “Quality guaranteed”, which is blatant false advertising.

The tape starts with the full title, How to Score With Chicks, and quickly hits us with a full length rock music video that starts with the lyrics, “Little bit o’ classroom, sexy 103, professor stops a teachin’ bout the different sexualities” and features ladies just kind of awkwardly dancing in different areas (and by dancing I mean shuffling around like they have a case of the crotch crickets) and riding around in cars and stuff. After that, we’re introduced to Professor N. Likeflynn (Marty Keegan, who also wrote, directed, produced and probably served grilled cheese for lunch), the man who is going to teach hapless 90’s gents how to pick up women in a pre-Internet world. Framed in front of Yankee Stadium (the guy is clearly a baseball fan, this thing was produced by Homerun Productions, another entity I can’t find anything about), N. Likeflynn looks less like a guy who spends his time on mattresses with women and more like the guy who would sell you a mattress. He lets us know that you can’t score without a game plan, and promises to help you build one over the course of the next 50 minutes or so.

We’re then treated to our first “comedy skit” in which comedian Vic Dunlop (who also starred in the cinematic gems Meatballs: Part II in 1984 and Can I Do It ‘Till I Need Glasses? (another film I have to seek out from 1977) talks about how he doesn’t like to date because you have to clean yourself up and then starts making animal noises. He’s got coverings on his eyes that look like the Saw spiral for some reason and is wearing a dad hat that simply says, “HEAD.”

*Fitting that a misogynist movie about picking up chicks starts with nightmare fuel.*

After each segment is a short music video with a generic backing track showing off topless women, the real reason people spent $19.99 at Suncoast Video, afterall.

The tips start with pickup lines. We see a few people bomb with a lady at a bar after trying tried and true lines like, “Hey baby, you got a boyfriend with a Trans Am? You want one?”, before transitioning into N. Likeflynn’s real winners - attacking womens’ “Mommy Complex”. At the grocery store, ask them how to tell if a melon is ripe and then tell them you don’t know where the shit on your shopping list is, and by the end of the interaction, you’ll be on their shopping list. It continues at the laundromat where N. Likeflynn gives some sound advice about not hitting on women who are folding men’s underwear, and then acting like you’ve never seen a washing machine before to ensure that female’s clean clothes end up on your floor. Nothing like appearing to have never done basic household chores to win a lady’s heart. The professor also gives you some unconventional places to snag women, like the ladies room at a stadium or, if you’re ugly, the Braille Institute. There’s also a pretty funny shot outside of a Sanitarium where N. Likeflynn is spouting nonsense and an employee just walks out and stares awkwardly at the camera, like “What the fuck is this guy doing in our parking lot?”

Vanessa Williams has a short cameo sitting in her living room, a credit curiously missing from her IMDB page. After that, we see a few Studio City dummies giving their best pickup lines. I’d be shocked if any of the people featured are still alive today.

Some more sound advice from the Professor - women are programmed to say no to everything except the word shopping. He tells us that your advances need to be vague, and all you have to do is say, “Do you want to get together sometime?” In the beginning of this scene, Marty is outside of the WB lot, a place he’s definitely never been inside of. There’s also some random radio chatter going on so it sounds like Marty forgot to turn the stereo off in his Trans Am. At the end of the scene, Marty is walking out of the New York Stock Exchange building talking about high yield prospects as people in the background again stare at the camera.

We’re then treated to a skit where a child takes out an older woman set to a laugh track and then a segment on what women look for in a man. Unfortunately they were only able to convince two people to participate in the strip mall parking lot that day, so to pad the scene, there’s an odd skit where someone dressed as Cher belts out a parody song while a guy walks by the Greek Theater in the background looking at the camera wondering why he didn’t choose to walk one block over.

The next piece of advice is to ask a woman out for lunch, because from her point of view, it’s safer and she only needs to stick around for an hour. And for the man, it’s cheaper than a night out and counts as a first date, so she can rationalize sleeping with you on the second date without feeling like a floozy.

I’m obviously a fan of lists, so I was looking forward to the Professor’s worst 10 ideas for a first date. He pulls some gooners off the street and critiques their ideas. There are some insanely weird moments here with some “Blind Date-esque” graphical overlays used straight from Marty’s camcorder menu.

An extremely inebriated guy who has never worn a baseball cap before goes on some weird rant about bat sizes that is supposed to be funny but he sounds like Donald Trump when he’s asked a question - he rambles and slurs his words until he thinks you’re confused enough to roll his eyes into the back of his head like The Undertaker and just stops talking as if he’s finally completed his very first thought. He finishes by pointing off camera saying, “And here’s the perfect example over here, she loves the big thick ones.”, but we never cut to anything. We also get an extremely disturbing first date idea from a guy who says he would take a woman to a party because you can “get them drunk and take them home quite a bit easier.” I was expecting the Professor to jump in here and tell him that’s wrong, but instead we’re told that taking a woman to a party on a first date is a bad idea because they might meet someone more interesting (and definitely less rapey) than you.

He then interviews some women who read their ideal dates from queue cards and, I’ve got to be honest, I just couldn’t go any further. I skipped through the last half hour hoping there would be something I thought was dumb enough to find funny or something I could mine for comedy but it was complete and utter garbage. We end with a Batman parody character who wears a Batman Halloween costume cowl but calls himself Cat Man because…reasons, who drunkenly tells us that he learned something from this video - we’re all home run hitters, and next time we step to the plate we’re trying to take one deep, we’re not looking for a walk. A supremely insightful way to end this 56 minute bomb. The credits then roll to absolutely no music.

Martin Keegan is clearly a big baseball fan - turns out, he had a podcast in 2012 based on the Anaheim Angels baseball team. Like most podcasts, it lasted 4 episodes, but he did get to talk to Tim Salmon and Jim Abbott. He’s got an active yet seldom seen YouTube channel and I’ve looked for a way to reach out because I have so many questions about this project but I keep coming up short.

Some other tidbits for you - in the credits, there’s a special thanks credit to a producer named Lang Elliott, and I don’t know why I do these things but I looked him up on IMDB. He produced a film last year called Max Patkin: The Clown Prince of Baseball which doesn’t have any information, not even an actor, but it’s his first thing produced since 1989. His other production credits include two parody films starring Tim Conway as a dwarf named Dorf - Dorf on Golf and Dorf and the First Games of Mount Olympus, and a video store dust collector from 1989 called Cage that stars Lou Ferrigno. The IMDB description of Cage reads, “Vietnam vet suffers brain damage, he and buddy open bar. Gangsters pressure them into brutal cage fights, which they resist, leading to conflict. Brain-damaged vet’s childlike mentality juxtaposed with violent situations.” After watching this “film” I may not be closer to being able to score with chicks, but at least I got a new filmography I can chase after.

Score With Chicks (1994).

52 Pick-Up (1986).

The Order (2024).