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By Gerald Clarke

Question: From the following brief plot outline, can you guess the title of the movie? A group of young men, considered outcasts from ordinary society, connives to engage in sexual congress with a group of attractive young women. They spy on the girls in the shower or while they are undressing for bed, start a food fight or something equally uplifting, crack a lot of dirty jokes, indulge in all sorts of crude and sometimes amusing behavior, and in the end triumph over the forces of stuffy convention, such as parents, policemen, school authorities and almost anybody else over the age of 25.

Answer: If you guessed National Lampoon's Animal House, you hit the jackpot. But you get the same prize--an invitation to read to the bottom of this story --if you also guessed Police Academy, Hot Moves, Hardbodies, Joysticks, Weekend Pass, Private Lessons, Zapped!, My Tutor, Beach Girls, Summer Camp, Goin' All the Way, Hot Dog . . . The Movie, Bachelor Party, Party Animal, Paradise Motel, Private School, Mugsy's Girls, Hollywood Hot Tubs, The Last American Virgin, Mischief, The Wild Life, Lunch Wagon, Night Patrol, Porky's and Porky's II: The Next Day. If you missed any of those, don't worry. Porky's Revenge! came out only last month, grossing a huge $6.2 million in its first weekend. Police Academy 2: Their first assignment opened last week and took in nearly $10.7 million during its first three days, making it the hottest picture of the year. Later this month you can also be pulled in for Moving Violations.

While cineasts around the country were rushing out to see if Amadeus deserved all those Oscars, millions of other moviegoers, most of them between the ages of eleven and 19, were going to the gross-outs. "Children love dirty," says Jerry Paris, who directed Police Academy 2, "and they love the silliness of this kind of comedy." Tom Sherak, president of domestic distribution for 20th Century-Fox, becomes almost misty-eyed when he talks about going to a theater a few days after the first Porky's opened. "I sat behind a group of kids who had already seen the movie three times. They knew when to laugh, when to scream and when to go crazy."

All those screams mean big bucks at the box office. Animal House (1978), the Godfather of gross-out, cost only $2.9 million and made $150 million; Porky's (1982) cost $4.8 million and brought in $180 million; and Police Academy (1984) also cost $4.8 million and made about $150 million. Studio executives are awed by such huge returns from such small investments, but, being over 20 themselves, they find it hard to tell which gross-out will make a big pile, like Porky's, and which will make a little pile ($22 million), like Hot Dog . . . The Movie. "Kids know what they want to see," says Sherak. "I can't tell you how they know. But they know."

The formula is simple enough. "You expect fried rice with your Chinese dinner, and you expect certain things, like a belching scene, in your teenage comedy," says Jeff Kanew, director of Revenge of the Nerds and the upcoming Gotcha! "They're basically about guys trying to get laid. When I became involved with Nerds, the script already had a party scene, a peekaboo scene, a panty raid, a food fight, a beer-guzzling contest. The studio's instruction to me was, 'Give us Animal House.' I gave it to them but tried to layer it with some humanity and real characters. I didn't think anything was tasteless as long as it was funny." But tasteless is not really in the vocabulary of a gross-out scriptwriter. Some movie people shiver when they think of great film scenes: Gloria Swanson descending the stairs at the end of Sunset Boulevard, or Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains walking into the fog at the conclusion of Casablanca. Gross-out writers receive a similar thrill when they remember John Belushi filling his mouth with mashed potatoes in Animal House--and then popping his cheeks and spewing out the contents.

"These movies are not exactly bogged down with story," says Doug Draizin, who packaged Bachelor Party. "The kids are coming back for the big comedy scenes. So it's important to give them enough, four or five big ones is the rule of thumb." In Police Academy, for example, a woman wails to one of the misfits in blue that her cat is stuck at the top of a tree. "Don't worry, lady," he says confidently. "I'll get him down." He pulls out his revolver, aims and shoots him dead.

Some Hollywood people worry that the day may come when there will be one gross-out too many and teenagers will turn to something else, perhaps even dramas or--is it possible?--books. But so long as adolescents are adolescents, probably not. Sometimes, when you are 14 or 15, say, bad is better than good, dirt is more appealing than clean, and a night at the newest gross-out is more fun than sitting at home watching television with Mom and Dad.

With reporting by Denise Worrell/Los Angeles