Stitches opens with a medical-school professor delivering a flurry of noble rhetoric to his students just before they're introduced to the cadavers that will teach them lessons about human anatomy. Alas, three "cadavers" instead impart a more lighthearted message about the importance of tomfoolery when they "come to life" and begin running around the university naked, much to the female students' horror or delight. Needless to say, the behavior of the three faux-corpses, all of whom are future doctors, does not sit well with stuffy dean Edward Albert, who labels their antics a "damn disgrace" before vowing, "If those three students don't donate their bodies to science, I will." Led by former Hardy Boy Parker Stevenson, the troublemakers persist in their antics, unaware that they're being targeted by their natural enemy: an uptight dean assisted by a student sycophant. To give Albert his due, the shenanigans of Stevenson and his comrades often blur the line between high-spirited wackiness and criminal offenses. At several points, Stevenson impersonates a doctor, most notably in an attempt to score with a promiscuous student. He tells his male "students" that they will be required to perform rectal examinations on each other. To make it up to his male friends, Stevenson next humiliates his female colleagues by getting them to disrobe before a two-way mirror, then charging admission to watch. Albert eventually acquires proof of his misdeeds and threatens to deport the mischief-maker's crudely stereotyped Chinese buddy unless Stevenson drops out of school. Stevenson acquiesces, but his cross-dressing friend Geoffrey Lewis takes Stevenson's case directly to the school's elderly benefactor (Ed McNamara), who anticipates being frozen in the school's cryogenic chamber in a well-publicized ceremony following his imminent death. McNamara is unable to resist the charms of an ornery character actor in a nurse's uniform, and he agrees to fake his own death and pull one climactic prank on the bumbling dean. After thwarting their foe yet again, Stevenson and associates contemplate becoming more responsible before staring directly into the camera and vowing to continue their hard-partying ways.
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