Goofballs (1987)

Directed by Brad Turner
Starring Ben Gordon, Wayne Robson, Cynthia Belliveau
Not Rated
Canada

“So you play the guitar?”
“No.”
“It says on your resume that playing guitar is one of your interests.”
“Well, that’s true. I am interested in it.”

I should know better, really. A low budget, direct-to-video Canadian Caddyshack rip-off? How could this possibly be any good? Clearly, it cannot. Clearly, I am a fool for even entertaining the notion. But listen, it’s got “balls” in the title, and there’s hot girls in bikinis on the VHS cover, so it was unavoidable, really. Sigh.

Josh (Ben Gordon) is a would-be gangster driving the getaway car during a smash n’ grab fur heist. But when the cops suddenly come screaming down the alley, he bails on his mobster pals and escapes to the Bahamas (actually the balmy side of Toronto, but whatever), where he gets a job working at a down-on-its-luck golf resort. When his old boss, Weasel (Gary Salsberg) suddenly calls him up and tells him that two on-the-run wiseguys are heading his way, he convinces his new boss, Ernesto (John Kozak) that they’re actually golf pros. Therefore, they need to throw together a golf tournament the very next day. Ernesto doesn’t know what the fuck he's talking about (neither do I, really), but Josh sweetens the deal by telling him that several celebrities will also be visiting for the tournament, including Clint Eastwood, Jack Nicholson, and Tom Jones. That’s a lie, of course, so he hires his idiot nephew Stanley (Ron James), a failed comedian, to do terrible celebrity impersonations to confuse Ernesto.

If that all doesn’t sound horrible enough, there’s also a bunch of Arabs (actually white guys and one black guy) running around the resort hiding gold. God knows why. The gangsters show up, hear about the gold, and chase the Arabs around. They say stuff like this:
Stick (Wayne Robson): “He’s gonna cough up that gold or he’s gonna cough up blood.”
Aldo (Jim Hemphill): “I wonder which one he’ll choose?”

Meanwhile Stanley falls in love with Holly (Cynthia Belliveau, Loose Screws), who at least provides us with a brief but satisfying glimpse of girl-flesh during a shower scene (mostly ass – great ass, by the way – and a little side-boob), and somebody invents a robot golfball (the “goofball” of the title, which also comes with an ear-gouging ska theme) to use in the tournament. It all races towards the expected happy ending.
‘Races’ is the wrong word, actually. ‘Crawls’ works much better.

Honestly, I just felt bad for myself watching this. Suddenly this whole project seemed like some sort of persecution, like I had somehow damned myself to this lifetime of watching terribly unfunny Canadian comedies because I foolishly drank my way out of college and this was all that was left for me. Sure, the film is littered with minor Canadian comedy stars (John Hemphill is from SCTV, Ron James was in Strange Brew), but that’s only notable if you’re actively Canadian. For the rest of us, it’s just a long and torturous grind of super-lame slapstick gags and golf jokes. Were it not for the chance to ogle the always fetching Cynthia Belliveau, this would have been a complete and utter washout.

In Summation: Josh has a talking parrot in the movie. It figures prominently in the plot. He’s sort of a smart alecky Greek chorus.
“Stop the movie,” squawks the yappy bird, seconds before the final credits roll. “It’s enough already.”
If only he had suggested that an hour and a half ago.

Availability: Goofballs is available on VHS.
-Ken McIntyre

Loose Screws (1985)

AKA Screwballs II
Directed by Rafal Zielinski
Starring Bryan Genesse, Lance Van Der Kolk, Cynthia Beliveau
Rated R
Canada

"You like getting your perverted little hands wet?"
"I guess I'm gonna have to answer yes to that one, sir."

I suppose, given the cultural barometer of the times, that it made sense, this comical name-giving that Loose Screws presents us with. After all, the mid 80's was a time when idiotic names were willfully accepted, when it was perfectly ok to call yourself Nikki Sixx, Blackie Lawless, or Jizzy Pearl. But I feel you should be forewarned, as these are truly moronic waters we will be navigating today. Here, then, is a smattering of character names in Loose Screws: Hugh G Rection, Marvin Eatmore (he's the fat one, haha!) Nikki Nystroke, Tracey Gratehead, Hilda Von Blow, Mona Lott. If you can hang with that sort of company, then let us proceed.

Although he has mostly abandoned the genre at this point, director Rafal Zielinski - an MIT graduate, incidentally - helmed an impressive amount of teen sex comedies between 1983 and 1989: Screwballs (1983), Loose Screws, Recruits (1986), Valet Girls (1987), Heavy Metal Summer (1988), Screwball Hotel (1988), Ginger Ale Afternoon (1989). His style has a distinctive 70's grindhouse feel, a willful grubbiness that mashes weird looking characters, cheap sex gags, shabby production values and often surreal dialogue into a slimy grab-bag of bad fun. A Zielinski film leaves you off-kilter, unsure as to what just happened or what happens next. They're like the cinematic equivalent of sucker punch.

Case in point: the first breast-baring in Loose Screws occurs a mere 26 seconds into the film, which may be some sort of record. The opening credits roll out a montage of fun-loving hijinks courtesy of our four main mischief makers: Blonde alpha-jerk Steve Hardman (Lance Van Der Kolk, whose real name sounds equally phony-baloney), zany cocksman Brad Lovett (Bryan Genesse), mad tinkerer Hugh G Rection (Alan Deveau, Screwballs), and fat-ass Marvin Eatmore (Jason Warren). It's the last day of school at Beaver High (ahem) and they spend it mostly harassing women. Life seems pretty sweet until their Bill Murray-esque principal informs the four young troublemakers that they'll be spending the next three months in summer school. "A college for morons," he tells them.

Off they go. For condemned men, they seem pretty happy about it, zipping down the road in a convertible laughing and carrying on. I guess they really are morons.

The boys arrive at summer school - Coxwell Academy, natch - and start pulling pranks immediately. The first bus full of students pulls in, so the fellas pretend to be doctors and perform breast exams on the girls, until the fat one - who's been hiding in a closet - has an intimate encounter with a skeleton, which sends the girls screaming naked through the halls. It's up to Principal Arsenault (Mike McDonald, Oddballs) to straighten these fuckers out. Meanwhile, in saunters the sexy new French teacher, Mona Lott (Cynthia Belliveau, Goofballs), lighting fires under both Arsenault and the boys. There, in a nutshell, is our plot: who gets to bang Mona, the stuffy principal, or one of the smart-ass kids?

You can sorta understand their preoccupation with the woman, since everything she says is soaked in porn innuendo. This is what tells the kids in French class:
"A well-lubricated throat is essential. Remember, for good French, you must take a very long...deep...breath."
Etc. That kinda thing can drive a man nuts.

Lott's dirty mouth notwithstanding, there are plenty of other fleshly distractions at Coxwell, so the guys decide to start a get-laid competition. Mona Lott is the big prize, netting a cool hundred points, but there's a myriad of ways to rack up the numbers as the summer wears on. For example, the female students all live in a giant dormitory room where they cavort in tiny underwear, smoke weed constantly, and fiddle with vibrators. Brad decides to infiltrate this nest of vagina by dressing in mall-brat drag and pretending he's a new student, Bradine. He moves into the girls' dorm and starts hunting for half-blind bi-curious co-eds to seduce, eventually ending up taking a bath with a near-sighted cutie who mistakes his penis for a rubber duck. It's pretty creepy.

Eatmore takes an aerobics class. Rection stuffs his pants with Kleenex. Hardman takes French lessons with Mona, but garbles her commands and jumps into the shower with her, causing her to chase him, naked, out of the house.

So that all goes on. And then there's a late-night beach party, for really no reason at all.

Later on, Hardman meets a top-heavy redhead named Claudia (Stephanie Sulik) and gives her tennis lessons. And by lessons, I mean he fucks her in the dirt. Turns out she's the principal's wife, so that gets sticky. Rection invents some formula that makes swimsuits melt. Obviously, he tries this out during the girls' swim class. Lovett glues on a Fu Manchu mustache, adopts a Chinese restaurant waiter accent, and gives Mona Lott a massage. She freaks. Then the fat kid tries his hand at Lott-seduction by crawling around in the air vents above the girls' locker room and spying on her as she undresses. Does he come crashing down from the ceiling in a rain of dust and plaster? Yes.

Afterwards, the guys go to a bar and watch a wet t-shirt contest, followed by a 'best ass' contest, followed by a whipped cream bikini contest. That takes up a good chunk of time. Then, of course, they get expelled, which brings us to the expected revenge-driven climax. Hint: it involves Marijuana and hidden camera footage. Don't they all?

I know, this all sounds more like a series of Benny Hill-esque skits than the plot of an actual film. It also plays a lot like a slasher movie, with Lott as the perpetual victim, getting stalked by not one but four very bungling would-be lady killers. Funny? Not really. Amusing? Tits everywhere, so sure. In fact, Loose Screws is extremely generous in it's toplessness, practically wall-to-wall in it's heaving pulchritude, and so blunt-force simple-minded that it practically defies criticism. Only a drooling subhuman could call Loose Screws a 'classic', but I will give it this: it is relentless in it's quest to provoke laughs and boners. And while it fails miserably in one, it scores quite highly in the other.

And yes, at the end, you finally get to see Lott's Frenchy floppers. And even though they're bathed in an eye-wrenching red glow, they still look pretty spectacular.

After Screws: Everybody's fine. They're Canadians, they're probably eating bacon.

Availability: Loose Screws is available on DVD.

-Ken McIntyre