Sherman: Up All Night -- "Zapped"!

What would you do if you were granted telekinetic powers by some accidental lab explosion? How would you deal with the ability to move objects, and affect physical reality with a mere thought? Would you try to submit the entire human race to your will, and appoint yourself as new the World Overlord? Or, if not the world, at least Australia? Maybe you'd theorize that you're the next logical step in evolution, that there might be others out there like yourself and therefore use your abilities to find them and help them cope with their new powers? Would you harness your powers and don a mask and cape and come to the aid of all those in need as a super-powered hero of sorts?

Well, Robert J. Rosenthal and Bruce Rubin got together and wrote a movie about what would happen if a high schooler got these powers. So, what would happen if Professor Xavier got his powers by accident... in high school? Apparently, as this movie shows us, he'd be a brilliant putz and use his powers for nothing at all.

Barney Springboro (Scott Baio) is the shy nerd of Blankity Blank-Blank High. He's the boy genius who only wears glasses when he's in the lab -- presumably because, although he's usually the only one in there (with the exception of his close friends who already know how smart he is) it makes him look smarter. Anyhow, Barney is quite the little Einstein, even has a little framed picture of the dude on his lab wall. He has nearly free reign over the high school's science lab -- again, presumably because he's the only science student in the entire school. We never see anyone else with so much a science book, or even loitering within ten feet of the lab, excepting the aforementioned friends.

Let's digress a bit and talk about those close friends for a sec. There's Peyton Nichols (Willie Ames) as Barney's loyal sidekick and fellow societal outcast. The problem is, he's not really. I mean he is in the movie, but consider this: he's cocky, smiles all the time, wears a letter jacket as if it's part of his anatomy, drives a nice car, his parents are rich and he plays on the baseball team... a sports activity. Oh, and he's also the school paper's photographer -- never mind that he uses the photography angle to snap pictures of girls. So, in essence, why is he not popular? He has all the ear-marks of a jock, even down to the way he treats women. By all rights he should be popular. The only reason I could subscribe his lack of popularity to was that he was a giant douche bag.

Seriously, Peyton may well be one of the silver screens' biggest douche nozzles. Case in point: he finally bags the girls of his dreams, Jane (Heather Thomas), and in order to fake maturity -- that's right, I said fake maturity -- he spins lie after lie to Jane, who apparently finds "maturity" a turn-on. So, Peyton lies about all these adult problems he's facing. Long story short: she believes him, they have sex and he photographs it! Later on in the movie, when faced with his college rival for Jane's affection, he whips out photos of the act to supposedly show that there are no hard feelings, all while smiling this giant “I'm a complete choad!” smile.

He even goes so far as to cajole Barney into the seedy worlds of drugs and gambling. Well... growing weed on school grounds and cheating at the roulette wheel on a college campus. To top it all off, he talks Barney into cheating at their last ball game. Barney uses his powers to have them win by... a slight amount, actually. Nothing astronomical. Like, two.

Peyton aside, there's the baseball coach, Dexter Jones (Scatman Crothers), who may well be the saving grace of this film. There's never a dull scene when Scatman's involved. In fact, he's the reason Barney has his powers. Dexter accidentally spilt some of his hidden stash of Jack Daniels into a miracle-gro-like concoction of Barney's. Said beaker falls over after he leaves and BANG!

More on that later, though.

Later in the movie, Barney and Peyton's stash is discovered by the faculty, so Barney and Bernadette (Felice Schachter) -- his female friend who evolves into his girlfriend -- throw the weed into the school furnace. Scatman catches them, assumes they were doing what teenagers usually do in school's basements and gives Barney a wink and advises him to take her somewhere nicer next time. He then proceeds to open up the furnace, only to inhale the copious amount of weed smoke. Ohhhh, the Wackiness!

Seriously though, he has a hallucination that involves Einstein and him horseback riding, which turns into a them being chased by the coach's wife in a chariot... and she shoots hams at them.

I bring the bit about Einstein up because there's an interesting tidbit involving the actor portraying him: Jan Leighton. According to IMDb, he is recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records of 1998 as having portrayed 3,395 roles in theater, film and in television since 1951. Holy fuck, man!

This brings us Bernadette. She is what was known in the movies of the 80's as the "ugly nerd." Or, what is known to anyone with half a brain as the other hot chick in the movie. Bernadette is the voice of reason, not to mention the obvious love interest. She realizes how much of a tool Peyton is and endeavors to enlighten Barney on that fact. For being such a bright kid, Bareny is a fucking idiot. I realize that's part of 'fun': “Don't you see? He's sooo smart, but he can't see what's right in front of him!” Yeah, I get it. But Scott Baio is no Kurt Russell, and Kurt Russell was a fucking genius in high school and college (that joke gets no explanation -- if you don't get it, then telling would make no difference).

Back to the movie: Barney uses his power, as I've stated before, to help his baseball team win by a slight margin, cheat a college roulette wheel, makes his model of the Starship Enterprise fly and manipulates his ventriloquist dummy in such a way as to convince his mother that he is possessed. I know, I know... you're wondering about the nudity right? Let me tell you, for a movie advertising itself as a teenage sex romp there was surprisingly very little nudity. In fact Barney only rips open like, I dunno... three shirts with his powers. All of them with the intent to humiliate.

And then there's the end.

The end consists of Barney realizing the Peyton is an asshole, Bernadette is the girl for him and that the whole school must pay -- Carrie style! Okay, not really. He causes a huge gust of wind blow through the auditorium, somehow tearing everybody's clothes off. It's all fun and games, with everybody trying to cover up their various parts, until we see a few groups of big guys grab some of the hotter girls -- girls who scream in PROTEST -- and the guys just laugh as the camera pulls away. Even Jane, Peyton's “girl” has her clothes ripped off and she runs away. Peyton turns to the camera does a Groucho Marx stance, twirling an imaginary cigar, smiles a creepy smile and hollers in the most oily voice ever: “Ohhh, Jane!” Then he takes off after her. So really, the movie ends in a giant, orgiastic, implied rape scene.

Barney gets carried away, bringing out the fire hose and accidentally bonking himself on the head. Uh-oh, powers are gone. Guess he'll have to go back to being a normal kid now, you know... like he was before when had his powers! As he and Bernadette leave the multiple sex crime scene -- a.k.a the gymnasium -- a weird purplish light envelops the two and they take flight over the city landscape. Apparently, Barney lied, He's more powerful now than ever! That means he's probably going to... do absolutely nothing. Barney is a putz.

Despite the best efforts of the screenwriters, the director (Robert J. Rosenthal), Scott Baio, the douchness of William Ames, a plot where a kid gets amazing powers and does nothing with them and the outright disturbing prom scene with it's uber-misogynistic undertones, “Zapped!” was still better than “Time Barbarians.”

Still, what in the holy hell was with the purple forcefield in the end? Fucking Movie!


/ 5


Yours Until Hell Freezes Over,
Jeremiah