Thursday, August 27, 2009

Screwballs (DVD Review)

Screw Balls

Screw Balls (1983)

Directed by Rafal Zielinski

It's the grandfather of the balls comedy.

I'll be honest, I was a wee lad when Screwballs came out in 1983. When I hit my teens, I rented all the classics: Fast Times, Last..Virgin, Porkys, Private School, etc. The one thing about video rental stores back then (mine was called Flagship Video) was that they'd rent anything to anybody.

So disgruntled video store employees let me rent the sicko horror and the T&A sex comedies.

I gotta admit, I missed seeing this one during my VHS rental days. So I'm glad Severin Films finally released this classic sex comedy on DVD (and on glorious Blu Ray). Seeing an 80s teen sex comedy brings back memories of seeing boobies for the first time on the screen. It's a turning point in a kid's life. You'll always remember your first pair of boobies from the movies.

Thank goodness for Screwballs because there's a ton of em in this flick.

Boring Plot-O-Matic

(From IMDB)

Starting a new tradition of sex comedy, T & A High School, five boys meet in the detention room thanks to the evil virgin princess urity Busch. RICK - dressed as a doctor and gave breast exams to the high school new comers. BRENT - sexually teased Purity in French class. MELVIN - caught masterbating in the meat locker. HOWIE - rearranged the mirrors in order to see up the skirts of cheerleaders after practice. And TIM - tricked into entering the girls watchroom. Each one fooled by Purity. They want revenge. Each one makes a packed to deflower the virgin, but all have failed. Their only chance is to work together with others of the school to get her at the homecoming game


Awesome Review-O-Matic

If your a Gen X-er, you grew up in a time before the Internet, before cable and before you had any access to porn. I grew up during this time and it was hard to see any nudity whatsover. So when Porkys was released, it turned the teen sex comedy into a gold mine. And luckily for everybody else, we got see to see some serious T&A every few months.

Screwballs comes from canuckland, which was funded by the Canadian government and produced by the b-movie auteur Roger Corman cha chinged Screwballs for the American teen audience.

Screwballs follows the same formula that would be the staple for this genre. Bunch of horny teen dudes want to score some sex and peek some boobies. The dudes are your stereotypical class society high school reps.

1.) Rick - Our kooky Bueller like smart ass
2.) Brent - Our rich and wealthy tennis racket wielding Trump snob
3.) Howie - Our nerd, geek and mad scientist
4.) Melvin - Our jerkmeister, fat slob
5.) Howie - Our transfer kid goofball

Each of them gets Republican-ized by Purity Bush (what a name), a blonde bombshell, uncorrupted and hot. They all soon go all Mission Impossible to try to score with her and get a look at those glorious boobies.

The plot is really filler, because most of Screwballs is the insanity of the situations so that we, the audience get to see some grade A boobies. So what are these situations? Here be your Nude-ipedia

1.) Rick gets to see some freshman boobies playing doctor
2.) Howie's plan to see Purity has him seeing girl boobies by the pool
3.) Howie shoots and scores some boobies at a drive in
4.) Nude bowling
5.) Purity's glorious boobies are revealed at the very end

That's just a areola tip of the nude-ipedia.

There are also a couple of goofy, cartoony like scenes that make the action go POW! BOOM! UHHH! VROOM! One of our goofy posse gets a bowling ball stuck in his [HONK!] Others have a near riot at a Drive In and some close moments at Purity's house.

All in all, it's a classic in a sense that the sexual innuendos, the goofy visual jokes and the super duper boob shots are all hitting the right notes. With this genre coming back in the 21st century, it's always good to see what started it all.

Thanks to a cool anonymous reader, a good solid list of where to start can be found here (check out the comments).

It was so hard back then to see nudity. Now it's as easy as clicking a button. Just another leap for mankind.

WTF moment

The boobies of Purity seen around the world

The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis

Screwballs is now released on DVD and you can order the regular DVD or Blu Ray on Amazon.com. Thanks to Severin Films for sending me a screener of this classic.

As for the DVD extras, there are a couple of solid features.

  • Cast and Crew interviews (Director's Rafal Zielinski is an interesting one)
  • An Interview with Canuxspoitation Scholar (this was very informative as we learn the Canadian government thru some tax loopholes was solely responsible for birth the "balls" comedies and even Cronenberg's first films!)
  • Mr. Skin Talks Sex Comedies of the 80s (I didn't even know what these dudes looked like, and their commentary is quite funny and retrospectivy)
  • Deleted Scenes
  • Trailers
  • Audio Commenary with Director Rafal Zielinski

Rating:


The trailer



Screwballs (1983) - These bloopers are hilarious



Tags:
, , , , , , , , , , ,

0 comments:

Post a Comment