Why bring lunch from home when you can get a hot meal at the LUNCH WAGON (1981)?

Posted by Daniel Metz

I promise I will never compare another Weird Wednesday to Lord Love a Duck, the monumental WW to rule them all. It simply isn’t fair to the competition. That said, Lunch Wagon is obviously a let down from last week, but it is still a very strong exploitation film, distinct from much of the hard-edged 1970s films that usually occupy the series. It is a comedy about a bunch of girls who run a lunch wagon, using their sexual appeal to bring in customers while simultaneously getting themselves involved in both a jewel heist and a gold robbery.

The girls in the film are fine, but honesty nothing impressive. They take off their clothes freely, but they are one-dimensional and downright dumb at times. The real person to watch in this film, though, is Rick Podell, who plays the mob boss Al Schmeckler. Schmeckler is always accompanied by a bimbo girlfriend who thinks of only two things: food and sex, and in that order.

Schmeckler and Bimbo mid-discussion. He is obviously saying something smart here.

Every line Schmeckler says he delivers with pizazz and style. It is hard to tell if he is a rotten actor or a genius freak, but it doesn’t really matter either way. The result is a fine and memorable performance that is far better than anybody else on screen. Take my favorite line from the film, which brought down the whole audience, “Let’s have sex, eat pancakes, and get the Hell outta here.” That’s class.

One fine thing about this film is the recurring band. Teddy and the Ruff Riders, a cover for the group Missing Persons, plays a few great songs in a club that the lunch girls frequent. The drummer is great, and the guitar player thrashes on a bodiless guitar. Also, between their songs, there is a vaudevillian “amateur night” competition. These are the greatest sequences of the film, which feature a singing/dancing brother act (both fitting into one pair of clothes), a baton act, and the girls doing a ridiculous stand-up routine that references the great Groucho Marx.

The strength portion of the girls' amateur act.

Overall the film is standard fare. The narrative is silly but enjoyable all the way through. For a humble, little quickie film, however, it has one structural flourish that I think is commendable. The film basically presents two parallel narratives: one about the girls and wagon, and the other about two overweight jewel thieves.

These narratives do not meet until a chance car problem brings forces the thieves to dump their diamond into the mustard contained at the wagon. This structure reminds me of Alfred Hitchcock’s final film, Family Plot, and continues to prove my assertion that Hitchcock is the most important figure in exploitation film. For further evidence of this, see my reviews for Tremors and the great Aussie truck driving movie, Roadgames.