Zapped! (1982)

When I think of movies in the 1980s, there are a few things that come to mind. The first is the horror of that era. Much of what is in horror movies now was influenced by what came out in the 1980s. Then there was the rise of the blockbuster film and big, excessive action movies. Filmmakers took the groundwork that had been laid by Jaws and Star Wars and ran with it. The last thing that really stuck out about the 1980s was the sex comedy.

Much like the horror and blockbuster films of the 1980s, the success that sex comedies had in the 1980s could be attributed to the films of the late 1970s paving the way. National Lampoon’s Animal House in 1978 and Meatballs in 1979 really set the stage for what would happen in the 1980s. They found success within their demographic and people wanted to capitalize on it. They also wanted the success. Most importantly, they wanted the money.

The imitators came quickly. Two years after National Lampoon released their sex comedy, Mad Magazine had one to release. They put out Up the Academy, a sex comedy set at a military school. It didn’t fare nearly as well, which might be a reason why National Lampoon slapped their name on a bunch of movies while Mad Magazine didn’t. Gorp was another 1980 sex comedy, this time imitating the summer camp setting of Meatballs. There’s not much to say about that one, really. It didn’t leave much of a cultural impact one way or the other.

The most influential of the sex comedies would come out in 1981 and get a wide release in 1982. Porky’s was another school-set sex comedy, in the vein of Animal House, but it influenced so many more movies. The entire subgenre exploded following its release. Movies like Screwballs, Revenge of the Nerds, and Jocks would come in its wake. But that was just scratching the surface. There was an abundance of sex comedies set in schools.

Filmmakers had to add things to their sex comedies to make them stand out from the abundance of movies in the same wheelhouse. Some of them specialized the schools to make the setting a little bit different. Police Academy placed the sex comedy into a school for cops. Hamburger: The Motion Picture placed the subgenre into a fast-food management school. Stewardess School and Ski School were set exactly where you would expect them to be set. If the filmmakers wanted to set their sex comedy in a school, they needed a reason that their movie was different from all the others.

Some filmmakers took a different route, such as in the movie Zapped!, released in 1982. Barney Springboro (Scott Baio) was a high school student working on a formula that would quickly grow vegetation, while also studying the effects of alcohol on mice. His friend Peyton (Willie Aames) wanted to use the formula to grow pot for profit. When the alcohol and the formula were accidentally combined, the fumes from the new concoction gave Barney telekinetic abilities.

Zapped!, for the most part, was the stereotypical teen sex comedy. It was set at a high school and involved characters hooking up for various amounts of time. It also involved teenage boys doing horrible things to other people simply to appease their own hormones. If it weren’t for the twist, that Barney ended up getting telekinetic powers, it could have been any of the teen sex comedies released throughout the 1980s.

First, there was Barney and what was going on with him. He was holed up in the science lab at his high school, working on what would be his major project to get him recognized. He was hiding some cannabis plants in one of the cabinets. There was a school reporter, Bernadette (Felice Schachter), who wanted to write an article about Barney’s formula. They hit it off. They started a relationship. They had sex. But when Barney went along with one of Peyton’s schemes, Bernadette broke it off. Barney had to win her back in the end.

Second, there was Peyton. He was the sex-crazed friend, using any means to get laid. He slept with the secretary, Miss Updike (Hilary Beane), under the guise of a photo shoot. He constantly harassed Jane (Heather Thomas), a girl at their school who was dating a college guy. When Peyton eventually had sex with Jane, he snuck a picture of their intercourse to use as revenge against her boyfriend. Peyton was the scummy character of Zapped!, though it was a sex comedy, so all the men were kind of scummy. He was just the worst.

Third, there were the teachers. Principal Coolidge (Robert Mandan) was always in cahoots with Miss Burnhart (Sue Ane Langdon) to figure out what secrets Barney had in the science lab. Over the course of the movie, Coolidge and Burnhart got the hots for each other before getting together and continuously hooking up, in a restaurant, at the prom, or any location they could find. There was also Coach Jones (Scatman Crothers), who oversaw the school’s baseball team. He got high off Barney’s supply at one point, going on a crazy dream sequence. During the climax of the movie, he was all horned out for the high school girls while his unnamed wife (LaWanda Page) threatened him. The sex comedy was as much influenced by the adults as the teens.

For the most part, that played like the average sex comedy of the early 1980s. The big difference in Zapped! was the tleekinesis. It changed things up enough that the movie could stand on its own as something special. It could be lumped in with the other high school sex comedies, but it would be identified as “that one with the telekinesis.” Or however the kids said it in the early 1980s.

There were two main ways that the telekinesis was used throughout the movie. One way was Barney taking revenge on anyone who wronged him. His mother wanted to control his life. Barney used his telekinesis to freak her out. He defended himself against the bullies who wanted to beat him up. He also destroyed the college fraternity’s rigged roulette wheel. The other way telekinesis was used was to further the sexual side of Zapped!

The sexual stuff came early in the telekinetic powers. Barney and Peyton were outside with Jane. Peyton tried to ask her out and she pushed away his advances. Barney began staring at her chest and her shirt popped open. There would be a couple other simple sexual uses of telekinesis throughout the movie, but it wouldn’t go crazy until the climax. In what was a huge reference to Carrie, Barney threw the high school prom into disarray with his telekinesis. He opened the doors and rushed wind in. He ripped the clothes off everyone, leading to a bunch of naked women running around. The twist in Zapped! was that the main character could remove people’s clothes with his mind.

Zapped! was only one of many sex comedies trying to find its own foothold in an oversaturated market. It took the very standard high school teen sex comedy and tossed in some supernatural shenanigans. It made itself stand out by adding something that the other teen sex comedies didn’t have, and it allowed for the sex to come out in a slightly different way. It led the way for other sex comedies to try their own unique twists to give a simple subgenre something fresh to titillate with.

The over-abundance of sex comedies led to filmmakers adding whatever twist they could to try and make their movies even a little bit unique. The settings changed. Some of them were schools. Some of them were camps. Some of them were beaches. The main characters changed a little bit. Some were jocks. Some were nerds. Some had telekinesis. But they all shared their core concepts. There were characters who wanted to have sex and they would do almost anything to get it. That was the 1980s sex comedy.

Sex comedies reached their peak in the 1980s and then their popularity eased off. It never completely dissipated, though. Since the 1980s, sex comedies have still been released and found some form of success. American Pie hit big in 1999, starting a franchise that had its most recent, ninth, entry just last year. National Lampoon had Van Wilder in 2002. Sex Drive came out in 2008. The one-two punch of No Strings Attached and Friends with Benefits came out in 2011. There are still sex comedies coming out.

The major difference is that there’s not the same sex comedy saturation that there was in the 1980s. There aren’t dozens of sex comedies set in schools hitting the theatrical or direct-to-video markets. Things have quieted down, and when they aren’t quiet, they have evolved into something a little more. Rather than the school-set sex comedies of the 1980s, the characters have grown up. Many of the modern sex comedies involve adults going about their sex lives. People still want sex outside their years of puberty. The hormones slow down, but they don’t stop.

As people have, generally, become a little more respectful of other people, so have movies reflected that cultural shift. The sex comedies of the 1980s could not be remade in the same way now. The misogyny and rape in many of the movies is unacceptable in most modern movies. Characters would not be allowed to get away with half the stuff they did in the movies from four decades ago. In the heyday of the sex comedy, these antics were acceptable. Perhaps that’s what caused the subgenre to grow into something more mature. And that’s a good thing, in my books.

Now it’s time for some notes:

• Some movies that were mentioned in this post were Screwballs (week 292), Police Academy (week 400), Up the Academy (week 136), and Hamburger: The Motion Picture (week 197).
• Scott Baio starred in Zapped! He was also in a little movie called Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (week 50).
• Bryan O’Byrne returned from The Million Dollar Duck (week 119) to make an appearance in Zapped!
• Daniel Dayan was in both Zapped! and Perfect (week 195).
• Zapped! featured actress Hilary Beane, who was also in Xanadu (week 216).
• Irwin Keyes showed up in Zapped! after previously showing up in Evil Bong 3: The Wrath of Bong (week 271).
• Corinne Bohrer made appearances in Police Academy 4:Citizens on Patrol (week 400) and Zapped!
• Mews Small was in Zapped! She was also in Puppet Master (week 412).
• Finally, Demetre Phillips made appearances in both Zapped! and Stone Cold (week 423).
• Have you seen Zapped!? What did you think of it? What do you think of the sex comedy subgenre as a whole? Drop your thoughts in the comments or hit me up on Twitter.
• If there are any suggestions you have for movies I should check out for Sunday “Bad” Movies, let me know. You can find me on Twitter. Or you could leave the suggestions in the comments.
• Hop onto Instagram and check out Sunday “Bad” Movies. There’s always something going on there.
• The final thing to do in this post is look forward at what’s coming up. Next week, I’ll be tackling a movie made by a formerly popular YouTuber. Yeah. This is one of those YouTubers that people smartened up and realized was actually a terrible person. The name is Shane Dawson. I’ll be writing about his feature directorial debut, Not Cool. Come back next week to see what I had to say about that one. See you then.