User Reviews

Tomasina "Tommy" Boyd isn't like the other girls. No, she's not sneaking into school and switching her gender like Terri/Terry Griffith. But unlike all her friends, she's more into fixing and racing cars than boys. This is presented as something completely out of the sphere of reality, as if she were some mutant.

Herb Freed, who directed Tomboy, has a pretty fun resume, with movies like Beyond Evil, Haunts and Graduation Day to his credit.

For some reason, this confident woman has a crush on a total jerk, racecar driver and male chauvinist Randy Starr (Gerard Christopher, Superboy), who doesn't take her seriously because, you know, she's a girl.

Certainly, the main reason to see this is because Betsy Russell has the lead. Modern folks may know her from the Saw movies, but for my generation, she was much better known for starring as Molly "Angel" Stewart in Avenging Angel, as well as appearances in Private School, Cheerleader Camp and Camp Fear, which steals its poster art from Body Count.

I love that someone once asked about Russell how the trailer for this movie positions Tomasina as a strong woman and then cuts to her in the shower. Teh actress replied, "I've never really paid attention to that. I guess strong females still have to take showers. They still like to feel sexy, so I don't think there's one thing that should stop someone from feeling sexy and showing their body if that's what they choose to do. I don't think it makes any difference in the world."

Kristi Summers from Savage Streets and Hell Comes to Frogtown plays our heroine's friends, who cares more about boys than cars and she's normal, of course. Plus, Cynthia Thompson - Cavegirl! - and scream queen Michelle Bauer also show up.

If this movie came out in 2020, it would be decimated on social media and rightly so. I mean, can you imagine a movie that purports to being female empowerment coming out today where the main character only proves herself by repeatedly showing off her breasts?

Lovely, perky, curly-haired and highly appealing brunette 80's flash-in-the-pan B-movie starlet Betsy ("Out of Control," "Cheerleader Camp") Russell gives a winningly spunky performance as Tomasina "Tommy" Boyd, a scrappy, willful, fiercely self-reliant spitfire hoyden automobile mechanic with a humongous crush on cocky race car driving dreamboat hunk Randy Starr (handsome, dashing Gerald Christopher). Egged on by her flighty, opportunistic aspiring actress gal pal Seville Ritz (leggy, luscious blonde looker Kristi Somers), Tommy meets Randy at a jerky rich kid's (Kirk Douglas' obnoxious youngest son Eric in an unbearably grating thespic turn) posh night party and, of course, the two fall a** over teakettle for each other. The only problem is that male chauvinist Randy won't take Tommy seriously because she's a chick, so naturally the take no guff Tommy dares Randy to a high stakes souped-up auto race to win over his respect.

Passably directed by seasoned trash exploitation feature hack Herb Freed (who also graced us with the grim, unsettling, arrestingly off-kilter psychological horror sleeper "Haunts" and the atrocious teen body count slasher tripe "Graduation Day") and scripted in strictly off-the-peg adolescent comedy-drama formula fashion by Ben Zelig, this typically tacky and immaterial Crown International Pictures drive-in fluff covers all the necessary junky bases to qualify as a pleasingly silly serving of pure nonsense: a sizable number of nice-looking busty babes take their shirts off at regular 15 minute intervals (besides Russell and Somers, we also have "Cavegirl" 's eminently adorable Cynthia Ann Thompson as a frequently bare-breasted bimbo and cheesy horror scream queen Michelle Bauer in a ridiculous uncredited bit part as a topless tootsie in a flashy white Corvette), a heavy-handed "you go girl!" stand-up-for-yourself feminist subtext, a generous smattering of witless lowbrow humor (Ritz's audition for a TV commercial is a racy hoot!), the best cornball motorcycle courtship scene since "Viva Kneivel!," cheap gay jokes, stupidly vulgar dialogue ("Good night, little *beep*!"), a horrible soundtrack full of generic, mechanically bouncy Top 40 hit tune soundalike songs (the incredibly awful theme number boasts the following immortal couplet: "She's a road runner/She's a tail gunner!"), an unforgettably hideous folks in tight, clingy leotards thrusting their pelvises to and fro to crappy disco music get down and boogie aerobic workout sequence ala "Flashdance," and an utterly predictable grand finale all-or-nothing climactic car race. What's not to like about this charmingly shoddy 80's schlock artifact?

Tommy Boyd (Betsy Russell) is an unconvincing tomboy who is carefully edited. She is also a grease monkey minus any grease or dirt and always has a nice clean manicure as most auto-mechanics and welders. She was a wild friend Seville (Kristi Somers) who will do anything to endear herself to the motion picture industry. Tommy idolizes local race driver Randy Starr (Gerard Christopher) but wants his respect too which she can gain by racing cars.

On the surface, this is a lousy film. Betsy Russell gets an "F" attempting to play a mechanic. This film is available in at least two different 50 DVD collections of "B" movies and '80's films. What makes this film a hit is the classic 80's nude scenes provided by both Betsy Russell and Kristi Somers. If not for Phobe Cates, this would certainly be some of the best of 80's boy fantasy.

8 stars for the nudity.

Guide: F-word, sex, nudity (Betsy Russell, Kristi Somers, Rory Barish, Cynthia Ann Thompson, Michelle Bauer..no surprise...in fact she just drives onto the set, flashes and drives off.)

I can't help but love this film! I love the very badness of this movie. I mean, the acting is movie of the week quality, but so is the script- so I don't blame the actors. Also, the fashion, most of the sets are for crap, even for the 80's. I lived through the 80's. And the nudity is kind of ridiculous, the situations for it...the male and female changing rooms and shower are attached by an open walkway? Girls at a party will fling their clothes off and do elaborate gymnastics routines because this will get them the attention to be considered for acting jobs(hope you like your porno career) and when Tommy falls in the water, she takes off her top i front of male lead Randy, and she's not even wearing a bra? I know it wasn't Betsy Russell really on the bike, but even if you can maybe let it go that a fall like that and no cuts or bruising, just a bit damp there, thanks, but no bra? On a bike over a rocky road with that rack? Face. Palm.

Ok, all that is true, but these are some of the reasons I love it. I live watching it and cracking up on the so bad it's good aspect. Looking at scenes open mouthed. I love the fact that Betsy Russell never felt this need that actors of generation wuss feel now to apologize for their nudity. They had a good bod, they showed it off, there is nothing wrong with that. It's sexist to show the female form to titillate teen boys? Well, I'm a girl and I watched it too, it was naughty and was that little rebellion of my parents , and I thought it was just funny and didn't feel like it was exploitive. I watched at parties and sleepovers and in mixed company and thought nothing uncomfortable about it. If you went to this and expected Shakespeare, or even John Hughes , you seriously need to really think from the opening scene and the fact of R rating of this should have been a movie you want to watch. You can get where the quality of the film is centered from the go.

Just a fun, stupid movie. Ridiculous, cheesy as hell. And what's wrong with that? Nothing.

Scientists do studies to see why some human beings go wrong, but I would put it to a set an analysts to study how a film like 'Tomboy' ever got off the ground. This is not just a bad movie but a dismal, pathetic one that came out in 1985 with very little fanfare, dropped out of theaters fairly quickly without many reviews and now resides on the dusty shelves on the backwalls of video stores.

It resides there because 'Tomboy' is an a-typical Horny Teenager Movie more interested in removing the female starlets from their clothing then with any other entertainment value. As these movies go you would expect it to be at least average but this one is bottom of the barrel even by these standards.

The movie stars Betsy Russell as a character named Tomboy, a mechanic who can build her own car out of scraps from the local junkyard. She's in love with an auto racing pretty boy but they are too packed into a nothing screenplay to be able to get to know each other in any real way. How does she prove her love? By challenging him to a race. How does winning a race prove that he will fall in love with her? Beats me.

There are long passages where nothing of interest happens and in order to keep us from completely falling asleep the dry passages are filled in with an inane soundtrack from performers with names like Snuff, Souvenir and P.F. Solo (Heard of them? Me neither). The movie promises to be a comedy but it siphons in a turgid love story that is glossy, pretty and inane.

We know what the movie's draw is and yes, Russell does take her shirt off and I will admit that what's there borders on spectacular but why waste 90 minutes of your life getting there? Since you are online, why not go look for one of the movie's screenshots, save yourself a trip to the video store and let the dust fall where it may.