How I got into College (1989)

Nowadays, I can just write “80’s” and “GLOW” and chances are you’re going to click to read more.

The Storyline
Marlon Browne, an underachiever type, decides to follow his high school crush to college. It’s Felicity for dudes. Unlike the titular character Felicity Porter, Marlon is struggling to get into the same school as his crush, Ramsey University. The most prestigious fictitious college since Stansbury University. Remember, he’s an underachiever. In trying to make himself look better on college applications, he tries to enlist in SAT tutorials and take up some extracurricular activities.

With the help of a pair of college admissions consultants, one of which played by the great Phil Hartman, Marlon tries to imagine the right hook to make him stand out. Hartman and his colleague list ideas such as, inner city tutoring, and the even more common, nuclear research. Hartman then mentions how one girl took up professional wrestling and got into Yale.

And that’s about as much of the movie I actually saw.

The Wrestling
The mere mention of professional wrestling triggers a fantasy sequence. Marlon approaches a wrestling ring that looks like it’s mostly used to shoot wrestling fetish videos, as it’s located inside a closed-off white tent. Inside the ring, there are a couple of Saturday morning Superstars-type jobbers practicing rest holds and hip tosses. Marlon trepidatiously gets inside and instead of the jobbers giving him the old airplane spin, they hold the ropes down for this monstrous woman to climb in. She looks like a Misfit from Jem and Holograms. The cartoon.

She laughs maniacally as she walks up to Marlon. Before Marlon can tell her that he’s changed his mind about taking up pro wrestling as an extracurricular she scoops him and slams him on the mat. His selling of the move while in mid-air is more along the lines of a dad trying to catch his barely walking one-year-old child from falling. A lot of “uh-ohs.” Marlon’s tone immediately changes upon seeing this woman leap into the air above him. He lets out a more realistic “Ahhh!” as the woman crashes down on top of him. End of fantasy sequence.

The Wrestlers
The two male wrestlers preparing for a life of eating pins are uncredited on IMDB. But if you’re a fan of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, the old school female wrestling promotion, not the Netflix show, then you’ll recognize the female grappler as Matilda the Hun. Credited here as Herself (Queen Kong). Real name Dee Booher. That’s right. Boo-her. She was born a heel. Someone messed up by not capitalizing on this. This wasn’t her first go at portraying a wrestler in a movie or TV show. She had previously played Woman Wrestler in an episode of Hardcastle and McCormick. And more famously, played Masked Mabel #1 on Mama’s Family.