Some thoughts about US Golden Era 1970's-1980's film genres and the
Highschool comedy
Zapped! is fluffy nonsense but a funny Highschool comedy
with sex and cheerleaders, and one of the US most important
additions to Film History, and i'm not ironic when saying that. But
then it has to be a film from the Golden 1970's or 1980's
for that genuine atmosphere to appear. Just as with Grindhouse, Gialli
or Slasher movies, the new Neo versions just don't
work. Let's think about the flood of neo-slashers being made the last
10-15 years and they almost always turn into yet another
shitty Torture Porn flick, or the many neo-Grindhouse ones made by hipsters
and fans of that true US 1970's genre, but as
with the slashers they turn up like crap as "Bitch Slap" or
"Hell Ride".
But, some of the new Highschool films are pretty OK,
because the subject is always relevant .... what's happening in the
girls locker room ? Only the retarded janitor pervert knows, as he has
drilled a hole in the wall to watch this mystery.
No, seriously, the pecking order of nature is the same regardless of
which year or which part of the world you're in, and
the Highschool comedies sorting the students into groups as Nerds, Jocks,
Cheerleaders, Asians and Weirdos is pretty
ackurate isn't it ?
The Cheerleader - Regardless if you have cheerleaders or not in your
school, there's always that girl that the boys (and
some perv teacher) fantasizes a little extra about. The Nerds fantasize
about the Cheerleader, a symbol of the unattainable,
a distant Goddess. So, the possibilities are endless for a Highschool
movie to let her descend down to Earth, by letting
the horny Nerds (and the perv Janitor) see her without the clothes on.
In Latin countries though, the men who once grew up
attending schools run by Nuns also fantasized about the unattainable
woman, but not the cheerleader, their erotic dreams may have been about
a Nun, and therefore the Nunsploitation genre.
Heather Thomas
Zapped:
Welcome to Ralph Waldo Emerson High where the science nerd of the class,
Barney (Scott Baio) after an experiment gone
wrong finds himself to have Telekinetic powers, and only his nerd buddies
Peyton (Willie Aames) and Bernadette (Felice
Schachter) knows about it. So, what would a teenager full of hormones
use his new powers for ? Seriously. Use his power
to help Science, or to help humanity ? Sure, sure, that sounds nice
but what 99% of all teenage guys would do first, that
would surely be to explode the sweater off the hot but snotty cheerleader
Jane (Heather Thomas).
And then we have the school's confused principal
(Robert Mandan), the teacher (Sue Ann Langdon), the quirky baseball
coach, Barney's weird parents and Jane's jealous and cocky older college
boyfriend (Greg Bradford).
Film in anamorphic widescreen 1.85:1, english 2.0 stereo or mono audio
with english subtitles. No extras