By Peter Bagge
Editor's Note: To appease especially sensitive and/or easily confused readers, let us do note that the following editorial feature, as should be obvious by its title, is the second in a series of MrSkin.com tributes to cinema's greatest Teen Sex Comedies. Each article in this ongoing project is penned by a guest contributor of note. The edition below is the handiwork of comic-book genius Peter Bagge.
The now-defunct Hoboken Cinema was a rather notorious place back in the early 1980s: one of those filthy, riotous zoos full of rampaging teenagers, nursing mothers, and passed-out drunks, lit only by a screen splattered with oozing candy and soda. This was the last place you'd want to go if you expected to hear the movie, and the management instinctively knew this, since they only showed the dumbest, most predictable horror and teen comedy flicks--the kind where you know exactly what the "actors" are going to do or say before they do or say it.
The only movie I ever saw at that house of forgettableness that I can still remember by name was a teen sex romp called Screwballs. In fact, not only do I remember it, but several scenes from it, as well as its general spirit d'shamelessness, are permanently lodged in my memory!
Screwballs was one of many horny-high-school (or college)-kids-gone-wild flicks that came out in the wake of 1978's Animal House, and which have since evolved into their very own genre in the form of Porky's (1982), Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), American Pie (1999), etc.
Some of these teen comedies actually qualify as good movies, while others mostly just rely on the usual clich? Screwballs, on the other hand, consists solely of clich? with "jokes" so predictable you can practically sing along with them like a Mitch Miller record.
The same with the endless sight gags, which even include someone slipping on a banana peel. Zing! Plus no hot dog goes un-phallus-ized, no boob goes un-fondled, and no plate of food goes un-sat-on or un-thrown.
The plot of Screwballs, which was co-written by Linda Shayne (Picture: 1) (who also plays Bootsie Goodhead, the biggest slut of all in this slut-filled slut-fest), involves endless, asinine ploys that "The Guys" come up with to feel or simply see the breasts of the school's lone stuck-up dick-tease, Purity Busch (played by a delectably slutty-looking lass named Linda Speciale (Picture: 1 - 2)).
Then there's the cast of characters, a veritable parade of one-dimensional stereotypes if ever there was one: the Nice Boy who loses his virginity, the Rich Kid who always wears an ascot, the Nerd who's always inventing implausible girl-spying and/or denuding machines, etc., as well as a guy who jerks off a lot named Jerkovski, and a sexy French teacher named Mademoiselle Boudoir.
Plus all the girls have big tits, and in true B-movie tradition the actors playing the students are often older than the actors playing their parents and teachers.
The one thing that every character in this movie has in common is that they're all always very, very horny--twenty-four hours a day. Even the prudish principal is eventually busted at the local strip club with his head buried in a gigantic pair of boobies (and of course The Guys capture the moment on film: "Our Get Out of Detention Free card!" they joyously exclaim); and even Stuck-Up Dick-Tease Girl is at one point shown fucking her oversized teddy bear in her sleep, while her mother tries to seduce dad in the next room by crawling around on all fours, barking like a dog.
Oddly the rampant and unrepentant horniness of this movie is one of the most remarkable (if unintentional) things about it. The girls in this flick (as well as the female teachers!) don't even bother addressing or explaining their unabashed sluttiness. They are all as ready to fuck, anytime, anywhere, as the fellas are.
The Guys, meanwhile, are like a pack of crazed hyenas, scurrying hither and tither for even the slightest peek o' pussy, without doubting for a single second whether it's worth the constant exposure and injuries they endure. What makes their elaborate, convoluted plans to cop a feel even more absurd is the fact that the girls in the movie are so willing and eager to be felt that there's no reason for them to come up with a "ploy" at all!
At this point I also must mention the film's funniest and most memorable scene, one involving the Nerd during a game of "strip bowling." True to the shameless spirit of this entire movie, the actor who played the nerd character, Alan Deveau, performs this incredibly embarrassing nude scene without even the slightest hint of shame--and it's a shame this performance didn't lead to bigger and better things for Mr. Deveau. I love Alan Deveau in this movie!
While hardly a box-office blockbuster, Screwballs became one of the first surprise home-video rental hits, which led to the easy funding of two sequels: Loose Screws (1985), a.k.a. Screwballs II, and Screwball Hotel (1988). All three were directed by Canadian master Rafal Zielinski, who went on to direct twenty-odd other films, all of which are regarded as third-rate genre shlock.
The one exception is Fun (1994), about two thrill-killing teenage girls. Fun came out the same year as Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures, which may partly explain why it's been overlooked, since both movies have similar themes (along with the fact that it apparently was shot on a Screwballs-like budget). I've never seen it, but it's the one movie Zielinski directed that ever received good reviews before being banished for good to shlockville.
