Shame Watch: Zapped (1982)

I am not putting up the poster from this movie.  Here's Aames, Thomas and Baio

Watched:  12/06/2024

Format:  Amazon Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Robert J. Rosenthal

Kids, if you want to know how much the world has changed for both the worse and the better, and to ponder innumerable imponderables about what was happening in the 1980's... I would suggest you check out this movie to see what a massive gulf you're dealing with between the wild west of 1980's b-movies and 2020's moralizing.  

Except... it's a terrible movie, and don't watch it.

Zapped (1982) is trash.  It knows it's trash.  It's studio-produced and released trash, where, apparently, the studio made them do re-shoots to insert more nudity in the wake of Porky's massive success.  YMMV.

My memory of this movie is that it was on the shelf at every video store I ever went to, and featured Scott Baio and Willie Ames on the cover using magic powers to flip up the skirt of a girl.  As a kid living in the 1980's who sometimes had premium cable and who had friends who had fun channels, I was well aware of the horny teen sex romp, and the last thing I wanted to see was Chachi plus boobs, so it took til now to see this gem.

I regret it.  This movie was bad, gross, unfunny, and wildly sexist in a way that made you feel like you were looking into a whirlpool of misogyny.  

Aside from the aforementioned Charles in Charge-foreshadowing casting, it also has Scatman Crothers as a coach, and LaWanda Page - who I'd only seen on Sanford and Son.  It features a brief appearance by none other than Eddie Deezen.  And if you know Eddie's post-Grease work, you know that he is a mark of a great film.  The love interest was played by Felice Schachter, who was in those first prep-school seasons of The Facts of Life - and I'm as shocked as you are that I recognized her enough to look her up mid-movie to see where I knew her from.  And, we have Heather Thomas, who you may just feel bad for by the end of the movie as she's never set up to be a villain, exactly, but gets a comeuppance nonetheless, which is just...  cruel.

The basic story is that Baio is a science nerd who accidentally manages to get himself telekinesis.  It leads to hi-jinks, from popping open sweaters to fixing gambling.  There's some Carrie references, from a mom who goes religious on him after he terrorizes her with a ventriloquist doll, to the prom ending not in murder, but everyone stripped down to their underwear. 

It's tedious.  But will stop for odd fantasy sequences, not the least of which is Scatman Cruthers getting high by accident and dreaming he's riding bikes with Einstein.  Because movie.  It is the best part of the whole film.

I didn't like this at all, am embarrassed I finished it, and I don't want to think about this movie anymore. 

There is a sequel, because of course there is.

The end.