Ugh

I reeled off a string of movies in the last few days, all on online streaming. I think I need to gain some distance from my tapes at the moment. First I watched "The Octagon", but giving my impressions of that one would probably not be terribly worthwhile, as similar as it is to a lot of Chuck Norris' movies. Instead, I think it would be interesting to get into the next movie I watched, which was "Zapped!" This is an interesting and problematic movie.

Scott Baio plays a nerd who apparently serves as some kind of scientific research and development department for his high school. Making him not look like a good looking guy is tough, but they try. They also try and make him not have an easy time with women. His buddy is even worse: a super-handsome, super-rich kid who just happens to be a little younger than the guy going out with his dream girl. That one's a real tough sell.

In any case, an experiment gone awry imbues Baio with telekinesis, and a dark-haired nerd girl is into him when she finds out. Of course, he has to go too far and learn the error of his ways, but in the movie "too far" is just using his powers for gambling. To the very end, there seem to be no repercussions for the countless times that he uses his powers to strip women naked for displeasing him or for just being someone you'd want to see. His buddy, meanwhile, fails to win the dream girl but does get a one night stand out of her. He has the last laugh by taking a covert picture of it and giving that to the boyfriend she decides to stick with.

I was struck, of course, by how offensive the movie is. It is heavily creepy most of the way. Baio's girlfriend is very upset by his inclination to use his powers to win movie from evil frat guys, but she is delighted by him reducing a roomful of their classmates to nudity. Everyone seems to like that, actually. Only the baseball coach's wife is displeased when he openly goes after a girl right in front of her, but that is more one of those "wah wah wah" moments. It's pretty troubling.

You couldn't, of course, make one of these movies any more. That is mainly a good thing. It's rather upsetting to see what my contemporaries call all the "rapey" stuff going on. I can't believe that was cool at the time. For horny teens, there could be some regret that they don't make raunchy comedies as awash in nudity as they did back then, but then today's horny teens have access to more pornography online than they could watch in twenty lifetimes.