We recently watched Joysticks during one of our Dank Movie Night streams, and honestly, it was the cinematic equivalent of chugging a can of expired Jolt cola. You ever see a movie so weirdly out of touch that it feels like it was made by aliens who only heard what video games are from a guy who once walked past a Pac-Man machine in 1982? That’s Joysticks, a so-bad-it’s-something teen sex comedy that tries to ride the arcade boom and instead crashes into a CRT monitor while screaming. And not in the fun way.
What’s It Even About? (Spoiler-Free)
Here’s the basic rundown: Jefferson Bailey runs a video arcade that’s popular with the local teens while the owner, his grandfather, is out of town. Naturally, this enrages Joseph Rutter, a conservative businessman who thinks games are the devil’s joysticks corrupting the youth. He sends in his idiot nephews and a feral arcade punk named King Vidiot to shut it down. Throw in a few food fights, a love interest, and one “high-stakes” game of Super Pac-Man, and that’s the movie. It tries to be Animal House with tokens.
Characters You’ll Regret Knowing:
- Jefferson Bailey – Generic Cool Guy who runs the arcade.
- Joseph Rutter – Angry boomer played by Joe Don Baker, constantly red-faced.
- McDorfus – Bailey’s sidekick who’s basically a walking fart noise.
- Eugene – The nerd. We meet him in the most painful way possible.
- King Vidiot – A punk cartoon maniac with a pig and the best performance in the movie.
- Patsy Rutter – Valley girl daughter of the villain. Her role is mostly bright outfits and giggling and omg outtasiiiiiight.
Does This Movie Get Arcade Culture?
Short answer: not even close. If you went into Joysticks hoping for a slice-of-life time capsule of early ’80s arcades, forget it. This movie treats arcades like some seedy, underground fetish club with video games. No one plays games for fun or competition—half the time, the machines are just loud furniture while everyone dry-humps each other nearby. It’s like they wanted to make Porky’s but accidentally got licensed to use Super Pac-Man and rolled with it.
There are no real gaming scenes, no focus on skill, no actual arcade lingo—just screaming, food fights, bad punk makeup, and a villain who looks like your uncle yelling at the thermostat.
I will give this stupid movie something in that the big arcade competition take place using these giant arcade sticks and… they are a thing? That’s right- my Discord was able to find several modern day uses of those giant arcade joysticks being used today and I wonder if this movie had anything to do with it.
Production Notes & Legacy
Director Greydon Clark threw this film together in 13 days with a budget of about $300,000. He got the idea after watching teens crowd around arcade machines during a test screening of his horror spoof Wacko. Apparently, that was enough to convince investors that horny teens + video games = money. They were only half wrong.
Midway let them use legit games like Pac-Man and Super Pac-Man, and there’s even a bizarre strip-game cabinet called Streaker that somehow made the cut. Most of the arcade set was cobbled together from real machines, but they’re mostly used as background noise while people yell or fall into food.
Despite the chaos (or maybe because of it), the film made nearly $4 million. That was a solid haul for a low-budget comedy that barely understood its own subject. Over time, Joysticks earned cult status—not because it’s good, but because it’s so brazenly clueless and trashy that it loops around into being kind of fascinating. It’s had multiple home video releases, including a 30th anniversary Blu-ray and a recent reissue for the masochists among us.
Games Featured in Joysticks
Okay, to be fair, the arcade cabinets were real. Here’s what you’ll spot if you can keep your eyes open through the fog of cringe:
- Pac-Man
- Super Pac-Man
- Satan’s Hollow
- Pole Position
- Streaker (aka a weird strip game modded by Computer Kinetics that literally screams “lawsuit”)
- A ton of background machines used like furniture
And guess what? The big showdown at the end? They play Super Pac-Man… like it’s some final boss battle. Spoiler: it’s not. It’s mostly just joystick jiggling and goofy music.
Things I Liked (Surprisingly Yes, There Are Some)
- Jon Gries as King Vidiot is a full send. It’s like he wandered off a Sid & Marty Krofft set and never got the memo that this wasn’t a kids’ show.
- Jim Greenleaf as McDorfus might be one of the last truly committed fart-joke-based performances in cinema.
- The sheer audacity of putting Joe Don Baker in this movie. The man looks like he got lost on his way to a Walking Tall sequel and decided to ad-lib rage for 90 minutes.
- There’s a girl who literally plays a game with her butt. That happened. I’m not saying it’s good, but I am saying it’s unforgettable.
Things I Hated (And It’s a Long List)
- The very first scene. We meet Eugene, the nerd, on his way to work at the arcade. He gets ambushed by two bored, loser Valley Girls who seduce him into a car and promptly strip him down. The big joke? He names his penis “Simba,” and then runs around with no pants on. Instead of, I don’t know, going home and putting on new pants like a normal person, he just barrels into the arcade like it’s a normal Tuesday. I still don’t know why.
- Every character is a cardboard cutout dipped in sleaze. The writing treats women like vending machines for boobs and giggles.
- The “sexy” scenes are the exact kind of softcore you find on scrambled cable at 2 a.m., except it’s so awkward and desperate that it feels like watching your aunt flirt with the mailman.
- The plot is nonsense: a man tries to shut down an arcade with his idiot nephews and a punk because video games make kids horny. That’s not a plot. That’s a weird fever dream.
- No one actually plays games. They just exist in the background like props while people throw hot dogs or fall into whipped cream.
Let’s Talk About the Valley Girl
Ah yes, Patsy Rutter, the film’s main valley girl, daughter of the enraged moral crusader. She shows up at the arcade, instantly switches sides, and spends the rest of the movie doing… not much. Her entire character arc is: wear bright clothes, fall for the main guy, dance awkwardly, and provide occasional cleavage shots.
Corinne Bohrer played her—and to her credit, she went on to do actual roles in shows like Psych and Veronica Mars. She’s actually talented. You wouldn’t know that from this film, where she mostly exists to giggle and get groped by the camera. However, she does an EXCELLENT valley girl squeak that I give her amazing credit for pulling off.
Jefferson Bailey: Mr. Forgettable Cool Guy
Jefferson Bailey is the clean-cut lead played by Scott McGinnis, a guy who seems like the director asked for “discount Matthew Broderick” and got a high school drama teacher instead. His whole vibe is arcade messiah with no charisma. He’s supposed to be the glue holding this absurd plot together, but he ends up being the human equivalent of white bread. He’s in several awkward sexy scenes in this which I would say if you have a porn addiction, watching McGinnis in this movie will turn you into a monk.
After Joysticks, McGinnis actually made a decent shift into directing and producing. He was also in a Trek movie, a brief but memorable scene with Uhura in Search for Spock. Yes, the same guy who starred in a film where a pig attacks an arcade is somehow connected to the Star Trek universe. Yeah, that makes sense.
Joseph Rutter: Angriest Man Alive
Now let’s talk about the angriest dad energy ever captured on film—Joseph Rutter, played by Joe Don Baker. He spends the entire movie red-faced and foaming, furious that teens are playing video games and wearing crop tops. Baker was best known for tough guy roles like Walking Tall and later as CIA agent Jack Wade in a couple of James Bond movies during the Pierce Brosnan era. A lot of people know Joe Don Baker solely from Mitchell on MST3K, so it’s probably worth mentioning.
His opinion on Joysticks? Pure regret. In interviews, Baker has more or less distanced himself from the movie, and honestly, who can blame him? The man went from breaking bones in backwoods crime dramas to yelling about Pac-Man in a polyester suit. It’s a career whiplash that probably still wakes him up at night.
King Vidiot: GOAT of Joysticks
Let’s just take a moment to appreciate the only character who knows what movie he’s in—King Vidiot. Jon Gries chews scenery like he’s been starving for weeks and this film was a buffet of trash and neon. He’s a screeching punk rock Looney Toon with a horde of punk girls that feel like they wandered out of a post-apocalyptic mall. These girls barely speak but always react, like a Greek Chorus of glitter and fishnets. Half the time, I honestly wondered if anyone else in the movie could see them, or if they existed purely for our benefit, like some punk hallucination. Curses, I took something of value from Mr. Menka’s high school drama class- RIP, you poor soul.
Gries turns King Vidiot into a chaotic mess of flailing arms, random grunts, and aggressive joystick humping, and somehow it all works. He out-acts everyone while clearly knowing the whole script is nonsense. And guess what? He went on to have a real career. You probably know him better as Uncle Rico in Napoleon Dynamite, but he’s also popped up in The Pretender, Lost, and Dream Corps LLC. The man’s still out here giving weird, wonderful performances while most of this movie’s cast disappeared like tokens in a busted coin slot.
The Soundtrack That Croons “VIDEO GAMES”
Let’s talk about the soundtrack for a hot second. The music for Joysticks was composed by Ray Colcord, who also did music for a bunch of ’80s sitcoms like Silver Spoons and Boy Meets World later on. The score tries to match the movie’s chaos with synth stabs and goofy stingers, but the real standout—if you can call it that—is the opening track.
It’s just a guy dramatically crooning “VIDEO GAMES” like it’s the chorus of some power ballad about lost love and high scores. It sets the tone perfectly: loud, clumsy, and deeply embarrassing. Every time that song hits, it’s like getting punched in the ears by a neon glove. You’ll never forget it, no matter how hard you try.
Final Verdict
Joysticks is not about games. It’s about what boomers in 1983 thought arcades were: sleazy kid-traps full of noise, hormones, and anarchy. Which is hilarious because this film thinks it’s sticking it to the man, but ends up proving that even its creators didn’t get the appeal of arcades at all. It’s like someone tried to direct Animal House but only had two weeks and a bunch of unused Chuck E. Cheese tokens.
Would I recommend watching it? Honestly, yes. It’s like watching a car accident made out of neon, perms, and pure desperation. Just don’t watch it thinking it has anything real to say about arcade culture. Watch it because you want to laugh, cringe, and scream into a pillow.
Or, you know, because you love King Vidiot. No shame.
Sources and Links
- Joysticks (1983) – IMDb
- Joysticks (film) – Wikipedia
- Rotten Tomatoes – Joysticks
- Greydon Clark Interview – CF3 TV (YouTube)
- Jon Gries Filmography – IMDb
- Joe Don Baker – Wikipedia
- Scott McGinnis – IMDb