The one thing that becomes
readily apparent when one enters high school is that everyone is in a clique of
some sort or another. And as broad and
dismissive as it may be to say it, they really are as we’ve come to expect from
pop culture. You have your nerds, your
jocks, your loads, your punks (Goths, whatever), and so on. Most people, however, are not defined solely
by the company they keep nor by the seemingly self-defined, self-limiting rules
ascribed by their social status, so they can, will, and should associate with
those outside their clique, at least on some level. What’s interesting is that once one gets out
of high school, one discovers that cliques carry on through college, into the
work place, and they even run the world (shocking, I know). It’s all a part of man’s tribal nature. We gravitate to those who either share our
personal belief systems or seem to have the most to offer us (or a combination
of both). Of course, this isn’t meant as
a blanket statement. There are
exceptions to every rule. But I think
that even a person engaging with the broadest spectrum of societal cliques
recognizes that these do exist, and that they, in fact, belong to them, even if
they belong to a lot of them. Thus do we
come to the main characters of Rafal
Zielinski’s Screwballs. I don’t think anything else needs be said
(but I’m going to say it, anyway).
Five high school horndogs, jock
Rick (Peter Keleghan), rich boy
Brent (Kent Deuters), nerd Howie (Alan Deveau), slob Melvin (Jason Warren), and new kid Tim (Jim Coburn), all find themselves in
detention because of the cruel manipulations of the snotty, virginal Purity
Busch (Linda Speciale). The five disparate youths vow to get a
glimpse of Purity’s boobies before the Homecoming dance and set about making it
happen. Hilarity is supposed to ensue.
The Teen Sex Comedy has a long
tradition, and following in the popular trend in youth-oriented media of the
time (think Happy Days, Porky’s, The Wanderers, etcetera), Screwballs
is a period piece. Outside of the
window dressing (and scant though that dressing is due to budgetary
constraints), the film doesn’t feel of the Fifties. This is really neither here nor there, since
it’s so focused on its grabassery, you would never notice the disparities. Despite the film’s more graphic sexual
references (throbbing erections [yes, really], blunt character monikers, female
nudity), it is little more than a collection of misadventures along the lines
of a Wile E. Coyote cartoon or a silent comedy of the Twenties. We don’t need more development of the characters
or the plot than what we’re given, because none of it matters. This is the broadest of broad comedies in the
vein of a turd in a punch bowl.
Characters have names like Jerkovski, Howie Bates (get it?), and Sara
Bellum (before The Powerpuff Girls). The librarian silences people who use sign
language in her library. The school is
referred to as T&A High (named after Presidents William Taft and John Adams,
natch). The film lacks any of the
sophistication of its aforementioned ancestors.
In a way, this makes Screwballs
almost critique-proof. You can’t truly
complain about its prurient interest or its unsubtleties, because the only
reason it exists is to give fourteen-year-old boys hard-ons (witness the fascination with and multiple
closeups on women’s lips, tongues, and breasts) and make them giggle at humor that
would likely still make fourteen-year-old boys groan. Yet, there are some things at play underneath
because of its base, primal makeup.
Comedy and Horror share a lot of
common traits, perhaps the most prevalent being the attention given to obvious
set-up and payoff scenarios. So, in
Comedies like this we have things like Howie setting up an elaborate series of
mirrors just to see up the skirts of the school’s girls. Similarly, in Horror films, we have lone
characters walking through excessively dark spaces. Both build tensions on simple expectations
and then pay them off by fulfilling or subverting those expectations (and if
you’ve seen enough of either, those subversions can be rare). Nonetheless, Screwballs very intentionally uses Horror-type images to play as
humor. Bootsie (co-writer Linda Shayne) finds herself (and more
importantly her breasts) pushed against the rear window of a van as she screams
and struggles in vain. Melvin rises out
of the beach like a member of the living dead.
A girls’ gym class feign being hypnotized and march, arms out, like
zombies. Most telling on a subtextual
level is the scene where Purity cuts into and eats a sausage, while the lads wince
in sympathy pain.
Along those same lines, the plot
of the film is a Revenge tale. Purity is
the antagonist, and she delights in tormenting everyone around her by getting
them into trouble for following their natural instincts. The other characters are all fascinated by
her, because she’s a virgin, and in a way, this is the sin she commits
(combined with her attitude of superiority) that garners the indignation of her
peers (and something which would signify her as a Final Girl in a Slasher movie
of this era). For being slighted, the
boys seek revenge, and the route they choose to achieve it is through Purity’s
humiliation. This seems sort of
lopsided, since none of the boys seem in any way humiliated themselves in how
they came to be in detention. If
anything, they are proud of how they got there.
In fact, it seems like a regular occurrence in their scholastic
careers. What they are miffed about is
that they got caught at all.
For all her haughtiness, Purity
is little different from everyone else, and she has the same urges they
do. She simply represses them, making
her shenanigans something of a werewolf motif (work with me on this). This is illustrated in the scene where, while
deep in dreamland, she hits on and dry humps her oversized teddy bear. It serves to knock her down a peg and almost
even humanizes her in the eyes of the audience, but it doesn’t absolve her
misbehavior. So, like Larry Talbot, she
has to be proverbially clubbed with a silver-headed cane. Purity may be a human in private, but she is
a monster in public. The cost is her
chaste public image. Even though she
doesn’t lose her virginity, her exposure comes close, because now everyone has
seen what she has held back. It somehow
feels anticlimactic, since there are so many naked boobs throughout the film,
another pair really doesn’t seem all that special. I’ll leave it to you to compare and contrast,
if you like.
MVT: There is pulchritude in
excess herein, and if your life has been short of this, then Screwballs is the perfect remedy.
Make Or Break: The opening
scene is the Make. Bootsie and Rhonda (Terrea Smith) are hanging a sign
outside the local diner. Meanwhile, a
giant inflatable sausage flops thither and yon between them, poking both lasses
in the nethers. Really says it all, doesn’t
it?
Score: 6/10
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