Screwballs

A movie that could only be made in the early 80's. It has a very USA "Up All Night with Rhonda Shear" vibe to it except with a lot more nudity. It's very much Porky's redheaded step child as the entire plot is 5 high school guys trying to see a high school virgin named Purity's boobs. A mission that no man has yet to accomplish. Yes that is the plot.

There's a scene where they go strip bowling and the stereotypical typical nerd gets his member stuck in one of the holes. A couple girls get him all worked up and he "shoots" the ball down the lane for a strike. Why did I give this movie 3 stars again?

After I finished watching this, I checked the description, and saw that it was described as being the "granddaddy of teen sex movies." It seems hard to describe it that way when it was released in 1983. There's a very minimal amount of plot to the movie. In fact, it seems strange for a movie that is so laser-focused on having a series of sex gags back to back. If I were back in 7th or 8th grade, I would absolutely love this movie. I would have found it hilarious, and probably pretty erotic. But as an adult, I didn't find it terribly funny. In fact, this is one of the strangest movies I've seen. Usually, in a teen sex movie, there's a serious plot of some sort. There will be a romance, there will be some sort of lesson learned. There will be someone struggling to pass a class... This one doesn't. This one is so singularly focused on just providing one titillating moment after another. There's only a single character who isn't fully sex-obsessed, and that's a teacher that has been bound in a wheelchair. Most of the other teachers are portrayed as being anti-sex, although later, they are shown to be just as obsessed as the core cast is. There are a few things that are memorable, but ultimately, the movie is an example of what happens when you pull all of the heart out of a movie. It narrows the audience that will enjoy it.

This film will definitely cause you to rewind a few times, and fast-forward a lot more, because huge sections of it are predictable and flat to the point of humorless. The four main male characters... I hated them, but they seem to be somewhat accurate. Rafal Zielinski is a competent director, and the editor has rendered some rather effective "speed up" gags.

Here and there, a good line is said, or a good piece of physical comedy is shown, but it's usually the script, not the way it's delivered, that's funny. And most of the nudity... To be frank, you get sick of it by sheer repetition (Wow, EVERY character is sort a deviant... boring) and want to see a character you can actually like.

Now, on to Linda Shayne,

She's hardly a prolific director these days, and some of her material is borderline vomitably kid-oriented(Flying Ryan, Purple People Eater), but she is still skilled at suiting the needs of the right target audience. Plus, she is more attractive than the rest of the female cast combined. It's a shame that she couldn't have gotten herself the female lead as Purity: her acting skills and physique are much better. Much more likely to draw a guy like me over to the cause of feminism than Ann Coulter or Oprah Winfrey

In short, she's the reason I am really mad that the local movie rental has lost its copy of this tape.

In my review for the similarly themed ZAPPED AGAIN!, I noted that it came across as a whitewashed T&A offering that was much better received as a puerile comedy than anything voyeuristic in nature. SCREWBALLS, which was apparently made on a much lower budget and with much less renowned performers, is the exact opposite - a chaotic carnival of soft-core porn in which the humor is at best unremarkable and at worst painful.

Some have compared this movie to NATIONAL LAMPOON'S ANIMAL HOUSE, but that comparison is extremely unjust. You see, ANIMAL HOUSE was not just an excuse to show drunken frat boys and girls in their underwear. It also tackled such trenchant topics as class conflict, race relations, and the lure of irresponsibility in a hopelessly puritanical and joyless world. I view it more as a poignant examination of the trials and tribulations of adolescence than as the purely tawdry slice of camp which it's usually tagged. The makers of SCREWBALLS do not deserve to lick the boots of John Landis and company.

SCREWBALLS was put together by a gaggle of confirmed slackers with absolutely no regard for taste and decency. The movie is unabashedly politically incorrect (granted, the idea of "political correctness" did not exist as such in the early 1980s; but these guys violated most of its tenets just the same) and is based on the erroneous belief that high school boys do not care about anything other than sex. While the members of Delta Tau Chi may not have been above reproach, at least they didn't spend most of their time trying to separate the prom queen from her clothes.

If you are a diehard fan of this genre, I don't want to spoil the ending for you. Let's just say that it involves sartorial decay and magnets, and leave it at that.

Female moviegoers will probably not enjoy SCREWBALLS because of its sexist nature, so I recommend that they skip it. Their male counterparts, on the other hand, might have a good time. But remember this, fellows: a movie about female stripping becomes less and less entertaining every time you see it - so limit your viewing of SCREWBALLS to one night.

Mind-numbingly awful 80s sex farce. It's probably one of the worst made movies I've ever seen, but it's so awful that it kind of goes back around to becoming almost fascinating in its pure horridness. Almost. Man, these people have no idea how to construct a gag. You watch it, and you kind of know what they were going for, but it misses its marks by so far that you kind of feel sorry for it. I really do feel sorry for all the poor actors and, especially, actresses who appear in it. The story has five high school guys who plan on getting revenge on the high school's only virgin (Linda Speciale, playing a character named Purity Busch) after she gets them in trouble. Kind of a must-see for lovers of terrible movies.