Zapped!
With this film having been given a special place among film buffs as being perhaps the dumbest comedy of the 80s, one must look closer to see if it has those qualities that make it a given for the Turkey Hall Of Fame. First, there is the story: A teenage science nerd who has a chemistry accident in the lab (complete with bad special effect) discovers he suddenly has telekinetic powers, but, being a horny teenager and all, mostly puts his abilities to use in the fine art of ripping girl’s tops off in order to expose and humiliate them. In the lead roles, we have Scott “Charles In Charge” Baio, and he isn’t bad when it comes to projecting what it was like to be a dorky, awkward teenage boy, and then we have Willie “Bibleman” Aames as his best friend, arguably among the most annoying actors ever, and especially ridiculous playing a supposed ladies man here, mostly because he’s a spoiled rich kid as opposed to actually being charming and smooth. On the (majorly) plus side, we get two of the hottest, sexiest female leads ever, one being Felice Schachter as the “nice” girl who falls for Baio, and the other being Heather Thomas (subject of one of the hottest bikini posters of the 80s) as the bitchy, stuck-up blonde whose materialism only seems to make her sexier even when she gets seduced by Aames. The dialogue is as inane as one could expect (“What’s it like seeing the world through cracked glasses?” “Cracked.”), and the film veers off on a completely unnecessary subplot by developing how the single high school principal falls in love (or lust) with one of his own teachers. It is interesting to see such D-level stars of the era as Eddie “Eugene” Deezen, Jewel “Hollywood Hot Tubs” Shepherd, and Merritt “Captain Kirk’s Son” Butrick show up in bit parts, and we even get the revered Scatman Crothers as the high school’s baseball coach (who’s never won a game) who gets a huge face-first whiff of genetically engineered marijuana and gets to have his own pot hallucination sequence, and the film even throws in a bizarre, out-of-left-field Star Trek spoof as well. However, the idea of Baio’s mom thinking that her son is possessed and calling in some exorcists is not as funny as advertised (except when he brings a dummy to life to fly at her) and the ending goes way off base, as Baio, while basically unprovoked, shows up at the prom and decides to humiliate the prom queen and the rest of his fellow students, by making EVERYONE’S clothes come tearing off, but at least we get some copious nudity and the sight of the Scatman trying to accost a young woman. Overall, pretty much as bad as its reputation, but watchable if you just want to shut your brain off…
5/10