68 - Screwballs 2: Loose Screws (1985) Summer Sequel Month Part 4
Screwballs 2 is the quintessential Grindbin movie. A film that exists in a crowded genre yet stands above the rest - not because of quality but because of depravity. I have never seen a sex comedy that is so blatantly over-the-top with puns and the types of sex crimes that would not only land someone a life-sentence but demand chemical castration. Loose Screws is a movie that must be self-aware; at least we hope it is.
When four degenerates who've repeated the 12th grade a number of times are finally expelled and sent to an academy for troubled students, they use it as an opportunity to commit even more sexual crimes and then lament about their inability to be taken seriously and go to college - to commit even more sex crimes.
So what is it about this movie that makes it so different from the sea of teen comedies from the 80's? It's the absolutely non-apologetic and brazen attitude towards the subject matter. No consequences arise from our protagonists' actions, the "villain" of the movie is simply an older version of our "heroes" that admonishes them but later commits deplorable acts of his own.
It's almost as if the filmmakers were trying to create a subversive spin on the teen-sex-comedy genre that simply fell on deaf ears. None of the supposed protagonists of the film are sympathetic, they are depraved sex fiends in need of incarceration. Yet all of their actions are greeted with a wink and smile; right and wrong simply don't exist in the Screwballs universe, the word "no" is simply a conversation starter.
Now you might think that the opposite sex would be clueless to their crimes or rebuke their sexual advances; quite the opposite. Not only do our "heroes" commit sex crime after sex crime, the girls at the school (which are all described as freshman - making this movie even more reprehensible) actually reward them for their efforts. They know they've been had, they know they're being taken advantage of, yet they laugh, smile and open their arms to let the perverts in.
It's a troubling precedent we establish yet the audience is also taken in by their pervert charms and we find ourselves going along for the ride. We don't agree with them, we certainly don't sympathize with them, but in a Stockholm-syndrome daze we let it happen and shut down our brains for 70 minutes to see just how far this movie will push the envelope.
Did we mention this "film" was written by three people? One of the them was a woman. Think about that as you fire up Screwballs 2 for another watch.
Next Week's Film
Dead End Drive-In (1986)
Director: Brian Trenchard-Smith
Writers: Peter Carey (story), Peter Smalley (screenplay)
Stars: Ned Manning, Natalie McCurry, Peter Whitford
