AN OFFICER AIN'T NO GENTLEMAN

AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN (1982)
dir: Taylor Hackford

MAD #238, April 1983
w: Stan Hart
a: Mort Drucker

Drama about a man who joins the navy to prove he's a man and marry the woman he loves.

Zach Mayo (Richard Gere) is orphaned and raised by his father (Robert Loggia), a navy veteran in the Phillipines who neglects him all his life and spends the whole time with prostitutes.

Zach leaves home to join the navy in Fort Rainier, Washington, never looks back, and covers his tattoo. Sgt. Emil Foley (Louis Gossett Jr.) is the drill sargeant during the first few weeks. Paula (Debra Winger and Lynette (Lisa Blount) are two girls that work in the local factory and date naval candidates with the goal of eventually entrapping them with pregnancy if they're promoted to officers.

Back then, it was acceptable to gay-bait cadets during training.

Zach and his friend, fellow cadet Sid (David Keith), meet Paula and Lynette and start dating them. They're harrassed by townies and Zach fights them, Paula tries to probe Zach's human side.

Bunkmate Lionel Perryman (Harold Sylvester) needs a shiny belt buckle for inspection and asks Zach for one, knowing he sells equipment on the side. Zach's caught by Sgt. Foley and asked to resign, but refuses to and is forced to go through a tough regiment to break his spirit until he quits, but he won't. That weekend he has dinner with Paula's family.

Paula reveals he's not her real father, her father was also a naval soldier who left them. Her mother did the same thing she was planning to do but she loves Zach and wants to break the cycle. Sid quits the navy because he couldn't pass a breathing exercise, asks Lynette to marry him, but she won't because he's out of uniform. She was going to get pregnant to entrap him, but she was never pregnant after all.

Sid has nowhere to go, and checks into a hotel and hangs himself. Paula was in on the entrapment scheme all along. Zach goes back to the base, feels Sgt. Foley is responsible for Sid's suicide, and fights him. It's a draw and later they all graduate. Having been promoted to officer, Zach now goes back to the factory where Paula works and takes her away.

During the fight, references are made to Rocky III and Howard Cosell.

The movie was on the cover of the Mexican edition.