Screwballs

Screwballs (1983) is a movie I recently watched on Amazon Prime and tells the tale of T&A High School and a bunch of horny guys doing everything they can to see nude females.

This movie is directed by Rafal Zielinski (Fun) and stars Peter Keleghan (Ginger Snaps), Linda Shayne (Big Bad Mama II), Nanci Chambers (JAG) and Jan Taylor Hendricks (In the Heat of the Night).

The storyline has little to no meat but there are some fun sequences throughout the film. The dialogue and reactions are hilarious and the teachers are over the top cliché. The sign hanging opening was perfect for this genre and the mirror idea in the hall was brilliant. The drive-in and "My First Strike" scenes were great and the pool sequence was pretty random. I will say they did a good job "picking their talent."

Overall this is a movie only worth watching for T&A. I would score this a 4/10 and would go into this with the appropriate expectation.

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.

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.

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?

You don't go into this one expecting Shakespeare, folks. You expect first off, a little skin, and if you are lucky, a lot of skin. You expect broad locker-room type sex jokes. You expect that someone will be sexually humiliated at some point ( a must in the genre ). You expect all the cliques at your high school to be wildly parodied. You expect teachers to be portrayed as Nazis. You go in expecting all this and this film delivers. This movie was made just before video broke big time. Thsi was one of the early hits and many video hounds from way back can fondly look back as this being a rental they enjoyed. Check brain at the door and enjoy. It's all done in s spirit of goofy sexy fun and that is the spirit it needs to be seen in. Would make a great double feature with "Porky's".