“Like Warm Apple Pie”: Things We Can Thank the American Pie Movies for

April 6 sees the release of the eighth American Pie flick, with American Reunion reuniting the original cast for another romp in East Great Falls, Michigan, for the first time since 2003’s American Wedding.

Released on July 9, 1999, the first Pie movie was a torrid, hilarious and somehow heartwarming teen tale about high school parties, first loves, virginity and making love to an apple pie that managed to help create a genre, make a few stars (briefly) and create a perfect late ’90s teen time capsule. Check out all the cargo pants and Caesar cuts, you guys!

I’m still kind of confused about which reunion the Pie kids are celebrating here in 2012. If they graduated in 1999, then does that mean that American Reunion is a period piece from 2009, or was there a school so backwards and unique that they only throw reunions every 13 years?

The stars of the series would all go through numerous post-Pie phases. Cherubic star Jason Biggs would become a go-to Everyman in movies like Saving Silverman and do a lot of TV work. Seann William Scott would play a variation of his “Stifler” character for the next decade. Chris Klein was engaged to Katie Holmes for five years, and then vanished, last showing up on FX’s Wilfred last year.

Only one of the female stars, Alyson Hannigan, would find wide success, co-starring in the hit series How I Met Your Mother for the past seven years. The rest would make appearances in smaller films and have their share of tabloid run-ins. Poor Tara Reid got butchered by a few plastic surgeons, too. You remember her wardrobe malfunction back in 2005? A lot of us do. Aside from all of that, AP brought bountiful amounts of great pop-culture gifts to the table. If it weren’t for those films, we may have not known what to call sexy older broads, or even gotten that Dukes of Hazzard reboot.

The Rejuvenation Of Eugene Levy

Before AP, we only knew Levy from his SCTV work and those stellar Christopher Guest ensemble farces. He remains the only actor to appear in all of the eight, yes eight, AP movies and low-budget spinoffs. Those eyebrows belong in the Smithsonian when he dies.

Pie Never Looked The Same Again

Sure, pie will continue to be delicious and suitable for throwing at celebrities and clowns, but once Jason Biggs’s character Jim decided to stick his Johnson inside a warm baked apple confection, we couldn’t stop giggling around them. It made Thanksgiving all the more entertaining forever.

Turning Alyson Hannigan Into A Sorta Symbol Of Dorky Girls…

We all knew Ms. Hannigan as Willow from the WB’s Buffy The Vampire Slayer, but it wasn’t until she told Jim exactly what she did with that flute one time at band camp that we really noticed her. Soon she was posing for men’s magazines in her bra and panties and a pin-up. It didn’t hurt she had red hair either.

And Made Us Take A Second Glance At Our Friends In Band

After the first Pie movie, stories and rumors around my high school about the less-academic behaviors of some of the “good” kids in band began to come out. The movie did more to make band geeks seem like sexual conquerors than those itchy uniforms ever could.

Web Cams As A Sex Toy

Sure, we knew that Web cams could be used to do naughty stuff, but back in 1998-1999 the technology wasn’t all there. Today you can do everything a Webcam did over a decade ago on your iPhone, meaning you don’t have to plug in your cam near a computer. But it did plant the seed for untold countless embarrassing encounters.

MILF

Before John Cho uttered the phrase in the first film in reference to Stifler’s mom, played by Jennifer Coolidge, we can’t rightfully remember what phrase it replaced. “Hot older chick”? “Mature and attractive lady?” Nothing cut to the chase better than MILF could, and to this day it’s a part of the societal lexicon, and has spawned thousands of porno titles and subgenres, including the DILF and the GILF. Google it.

John Cho

Little did we know that the Korean-American teen who said “MILF” would be one of the most fun and gifted comedic actors to come from the series. A series of Harold & Kumar pot movies and a stint on House would come after. He even played Sulu in the new reboot of Star Trek.

The Dopey Pop-Rock Soundtracks

Heavyweights like Blink-182, Green Day and the Foo Fighters all contributed songs to the first three film soundtracks. But there were also forgotten groups like Oleander, Gob, Sugarcult and Tonic littered around, too. I admit that I have been listening to a Rdio playlist of all of these songs lately. Shuddup, I liked Sugar Ray a lot.

Birthed The Modern Raunchy Teen Comedy

AP came out when teen movies were still cutesy and happy, like She’s All That and Can’t Hardly Wait. AP managed to marry the sensibility of those films with the previous year’s There’s Something About Mary to make crude sex jokes and liquids the norm in R-rated teen flicks. And a generation of young men were made all the better for it.

Way, Way Too Many Spinoffs

You have all seen American Pie, American Pie 2, American Wedding and you will more than likely see American Reunion, but have you seen American Pie Presents: Band Camp, American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile, American Pie Presents: Beta House or American Pie Presents: The Book of Love?

Those were direct-to-DVD flicks that you probably only saw sitting un-rented on Blockbuster shelves. I have seen one or two of them on lazy afternoons and couldn’t tell you anything about their plots beyond girls in bikinis and jokes about jerking off.