Zapped! (1982)

When it comes to the movies of my youth, I never promised that I was a connoisseur of the best of the best. As a matter of fact, I'll be the first one to admit that my taste in films back then was really really lousy. How else can I explain the fact that some of my fondest memories were in watching The Cannonball Run and Happy Birthday to Me? Well, suffice it to say that youth is stupid; and I'm speaking from first-hand experience.

A good example of such youthful stupidity is something else i remember from the days of my youth that I, for one, never took part in but heard of. I know these still exist but they also play a part in the movie I'm about to review, which makes it all tie in. So chillax. Growing up, most of my readers will recall such magazines as Tiger Beat which features various teens and young people which are either pop celebrities or featured in popular TV shows/movies of the day. I recall the bright, fresh faces of Shaun Cassidy, Leif Garrett, Parker Stevenson, Donny Osmond, The Bay City Rollers - if just to make you all feel that much older. You're welcome.

Thing is, just to keep these youngsters in the public eye they would also make sure they were in every kid's magazine of the day. Not just the aforementioned Tiger Beat but also Teen Beat, Super Teen, 16 Magazine, Bananas, Dynamite, Pizzazz and a whole slew of others. The main purpose of these magazines was to keep up a strong (if all-too-brief) teenage fan base. Usually, their pictures were accented with neon starburst text balloons that screamed out “John Travolta wants to date YOU!” or “Peter Frampton is SUPER COOL!” or some such superfluous nonsense.

It’s almost as if these teenybopper Flavors-Of-The-Month of the day knew (or at the very least their managers knew) they weren't going to be young and pretty forever, and so went to great lengths and took great pains to make their gravy train last as long as they possibly could. Magazine after magazine of flashy pics of these teen idols grinning broadly, feathered hair in place and radiating all of the sweetness and light that marketing can glint off of them.

Now keep in mind that for the most part these teens were actors - some of them tried their best to be singers but that's just walking and chewing gum at the same time, so let's move on - and whereas some had television to fall back on (Shaun Cassidy and Parker Stevenson were in "The Hardy Boys", remember) and others had movies (Travolta had Saturday Night Fever and Grease to his credit), there were some who were juuuust wavering on the fact that the most famous thing about them is that they were able to look nice in their pictures. So with that being the case, these were the ones who felt that they needed at least one movie to star in that not only showcased their talents and proved to their legions of fans and cynical onlookers alike that they were not only the real deal, but was also a project that evoked the youthful ideals of their day and age and would stand the test of time for future generations.

You want to know a little secret? This kind of thinking works sometimes...but not always.

But seldom does the concept not work as badly as what we’re about to witness now. With the movie Zapped!, we look on an example that tries to shoehorn a horror parody with a teenybopper comedy and frat house laughs which only served to make previous teensploitation schlock efforts seem almost beatific in their simplicity and humor.

National Lampoon's Animal House looked like The Godfather, comparatively. Porky's was Battleship Potemkin. Even King Frat was Goodfellas.

Are we intrigued? GOOD.

In the early Eighties, Scott Baio was still riding a wave of fame from the TV classic "Happy Days" as Chachi Arcola, cousin of Fonzie and forever pining for Joanie Cunningham. Willie Ames was also up there with him from such TV shows as "Family" and "Eight is Enough". Being that they had so much in common (well, they were both on TV, at least), they apparently felt the need to expand their horizons beyond the screen of your friendly neighborhood Sylvania Solid State TV set. It's about this time that director Robert J. Rosenthal came to them with a proposal: "hey guys, wanna star in a movie about a nerdy guy who gets telekinetic powers and funny hi-jinks ensue?"....

It must have been the use of the word "hi-jinks" that sold it because before you could say "teenage pandering" they signed on the dotted line to star in the movie Zapped!, which was sure to make all their Tiger Beat-followers squeal with delight.

First off, let’s consider this for a plot: Baio plays high school student Barney Springboro. He’s a typical glass-wearing, bookish nerd who cares only about his science experiments and not getting beaten up day to day. His girl-crazy best pal Peyton Nichols (Aames) gets himself and everybody else into trouble with his antics (as best friends do in these movies). Then one day Barney’s experiment blows up and he is endowed with telekinetic powers he uses to elevate mooning frat house jocks into trees, expose crooked gambling houses, stop bicycling girls in their tracks, projectile vomit, float ventriloquist dummies around, fix football games, woo fellow bookish student Bernadette (Felice Schachter, herself a veteran of TV's "The Facts of Life") and periodically undress cheerleader bombshell Jane Mitchell ("Fall Guy" bombshell herself Heather "Bikini Poster Spokesmodel" Thomas).

Baio, simply put, comes across as too old as a teenager (like everyone else, I guess, does), but his acting fares far worse. As the serious kid, his psychic powers make it look as if he's giving one of those stern faces you give your beagle when it piddles on the living room carpet. Ames simply extends his "Eight is Enough" character of Buddy onto a feature film where he chases after chicks and leers and makes inappropriate comments. Felice Schachter doesn't really come across with much personality or expressiveness, but that's okay - she's only the gonna-be girlfriend. Heather Thomas - well, she plays Heather Thomas as a teenager. THAT, in and of itself, is a selling point. Guys, you wanna see Heather Thomas act like a teenager? Here you go.

Of course, you can't have a movie like this without stupid adults and this movie sure does follow the rules in that respect. The principal is played by no less a man than Robert Mandan, who made foolish dullard-ism an art in TV's "Soap", and proves it as no fluke here as a pompous twit who also horns after a lady teacher at school with typical leering results. Barney's folks are your standard-issue prune juice-drinking dullard fools who barely notice they even share a house with a teenager unless it's to make incorrect assumptions about him. At one point, Barney’s mom (Marya Small) thinks he’s possessed and calls in a couple of priests for an exorcism. Just so they can work in an Exorcist joke with everything else, I suppose.

Speaking of the writing, director Rosenthal co-scripted with Bruce Rubin and wrote a script that could scarcely be called....

Oh, no. No, no - wait! I didn't say Bruce JOEL Rubin, who wrote the scripts for Ghost, Stuart Little and Jacob's Ladder. I said Bruce Rubin, who wrote scripts for this, Blood Rage and an episode of the Disney TV series "Recess", and nothing else. Get your facts straight.

Anyway, this script is supposed to be taken as a farce of such movies as Carrie with the outsider getting revenge for years of ostracism and bullying. Thing is, this is such an innocuous piece of fluff and panties that the biggest thing it has going for it is not the thought that this is something that may, in fact, be funny.

Sure, there are inexplicable scenes where Barney's model space ship levitates and inside are miniature "Star Trek" character wannabes (with a Mr. Spock ripoff!) and a dream sequence where the late great Scatman Crothers is burning marijuana plants in the school incinerator and passes out, dreaming that he's being pursued by wife LaWanda Page (another late great) as she is dressed like Hagar The Horrible's wife and firing a salami-shooting bazooka at him. Some scenes elicit a giggle, maybe. But that is not why this film was made.

In fact, there’s the film's climactic senior prom where everything comes to a head and Barney's powers are unleashed in full force. And in doing so, the remainder of the young teen cast is either stripped, pantsed, laid bare, their Rolling Stones underwear flashed for all to see or trying to pretend they're in The Seven Year Itch or whatever. But that is not why this film was made.

There's even parts in this movie for such stand-bys of these teensploitation films as Eddie Deezen (whose record stands for itself, thank you ladies and gentlemen of the jury) and a part for Merritt Buttrick - for whom 1982 was his big year seeing as he also played the heretofore unknown son of James Kirk in Star Trek sequel The Wrath of Khan. And parts are even built-in for regular exploitation feature players Irwin Keyes, Jewel Shepard, Rosanne Katon and Corinne Bohrer. But that is not why this film was made.

Lest we forget that there are waves of males who also regularly lust after the nubile blondness that is Heather Thomas. From "The Fall Guy" on, she had found every single possible situation where she would need to wear a bikini, underwear, a towel, bedsheet, short shorts, spandex, clingy dresses or fuzzy little negligee. No nudity, though - it's in her contract. But here, Heather does her very best to give the viewer their money's worth as she wears cheerleader uniforms, short pink skirts, an angora sweater that would do Ed Wood proud, thoughtfully gets popped out her clothes no less than three times. What breasts you DO see of hers - stunt breasts. But that is not why this film was made.

This film was made to make superstars out of the comedy team of Baio and Aames. They were supposed to be the 1982 version of Martin and Lewis. Hope and Crosby. Abbott and Costello. Olsen and Johnson. They work well together, mind you, they just don't have the same chemistry that ignites the screen like Jay and Silent Bob do. Oh, they had a long partnership riffing off one another in TV's "Charles in Charge", but you half-expect a nubile teen girl to skip by in her skivvies for them to leer at and comment on. Say what you will about Martin and Lewis; they never had to rely on half-naked teenage girls for laughs.

There comes a time in your life when you’re watching a movie that you just have to push the "PAUSE" button, stand up, leave the room, stand out on your front porch, focus on the horizon, and ask yourself what producers of stuff like this were thinking. Oh, I know that they were looking to make a buck in the teensploitation market. This is a long-standing money-making genre that did plenty to fill the drive-ins around the country and stand proud alongside such like fodder as Malibu Summer and The Van (these, coincidentally, were also written by director Rosenthal). The world may have been wanting, but think about this: in the Eighties, there was plenty of other movies as inconsequential and light as this - however, there were also other teen comedies like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Sixteen Candles, Risky Business and The Breakfast Club, which not only offered laughs but also an opportunity to sympathize with the characters onscreen who were struggling through that confusing period of their lives with all the grace and power they could muster. In comparison, did the world really need another cookie cutter excuse for brain-dead stupidity? Probably not, but it's not like the movie depositories of the world would be any fuller if they stopped making them.

Maybe Rosenthal and Rubin believed if they cross-pollinated such genres as teen comedy, gross-out, science fiction, Airplane!-spoof and rom-com, they could come up with something so irrepressibly funny and original that they'd invent a whole new genre?

If the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker writing/directing team made a movie like Zapped! whilst in their Eighties prime, there you’d have a movie to end all movies. Though something along those lines was attempted with the Jon Lovitz loser High School High, that effort fell somewhat short. As it stands, what Rosenthal and Rubin have created here is simply filler for 4 am on Skinemax.

Not surprisingly, this $2 million flick made $15 million when released and spawned a sequel (Zapped Again!) which did far worse. All in all, this became one of those movies that people look back on with a nostalgic grin and a nod, thinking to themselves that maybe it wasn't as bad as they thought it was back in the Eighties. Until they find it and watch it again and it all comes back to them like the rush of blood to their face as they sit there, embarrassed that they watched Zapped! - again.

As for someone who remembers this cast when they were in their prime and still fresh-faced on their teen magazine cover stories, let me just say that - as concerns Zapped! - it's funny how watching something as willfully dumb and goofy as this makes you think fondly of the days before teen comedy consisted of having sex with apple pies. Or maybe that's the grumpy ramblings of a man who once looked to John Hughes as the voice of reason in a world of teen comedies.

Of course, when you're confronted with teenagers discussing their feelings or Heather Thomas popping out of her sweater, which one are YOU going to choose?

Zapped! (1982) 2011-02-12T18:31:00-08:00 Rating: 4.5 Diposkan Oleh: admin