Here is the trailer for a movie whose existence is solely predicated on the fact that the Twilight franchise has made roughly 87 trillion dollars. You'd think they'd be a little kinder.
While previous generations of young people were concerned with weighty issues like the Vietnam war, women’s rights, and the military industrial complex, the youth of today have ushered in the present with their own set of worries, namely:
1. Is Bella gonna fuck Edward? 2. Is Edward gonna fuck Bella? 3. That wolf dude has great abs. How does this enter into the equation?
Well, who can blame them really. Who wants to worry themselves about wars and politics and genocide? That shit is BORING. They’d much rather chill with Bella and the boys, watching them play baseball while covered in glitter, or whatever it is that fake vampires do in their spare time. Moping about important shit is no way to go through life.
***
Right away, we meet our Bella replacement, Stella Ennui, who explains her situation in voice over. She notes that her mother died of “committing suicide disease”. I laughed at both the Ennui bit of her name (vaguely clever, I would say), and the suicide disease bit. Not because the line is necessarily that funny, but because she uses air quotes to describe the disease, despite her voice over being an interior monologue. It’s a cinematic joke you don’t usually see in movies this stupid, more often reserved for the likes of Frank Tashlin or Mel Brooks.
Immediately, we are supposed to sympathise with the filmmaker’s disdain for Kristen Stewart’s aloof acting style. I admittedly haven’t seen the Twilight films, except for parts of the first one, but am somewhat of a fan of Kristen anyway, having seen some of her other work. She shows an interior intelligence and ephemeral honesty, coupled with an exterior apathy and disdain of craft. I, for one, wish more young actors would take this route. Usually, you get something like: “Hey, look at me! I am full of confidence! I took a bunch of acting classes and workshops and stuff! I CAN EMOTE!”. Hey professional thespian…shut the fuck up. Characters are usually, first and foremost, PEOPLE, and not showcases for how confidently you can utter lines and stomp your feet. I heard people complain that, during the Oscars, Kristen sat slumped in her seat, bored with the empty spectacle in front of her. I applaud it. Caring about shit is overrated, I say. Also, she’s pretty hot, but that also ties into the apathetic moping thing as well. If she had a big perm and wore loads of makeup and had a bubbly confidence about her, I probably wouldn’t be licking the screen everytime Catch That Kid pops up on cable. I’m kidding of course. Really I am.
Normally, a spoof like this only works if it can repeatedly string together funny gags. Airplaneisn’t great because The Concorde…Airport ‘79 is retarded (and lordy is it retarded), and the Zuckers have the courage to point this out, and both filmmaker and audience can nod in agreement. Airplane is funny because funny shit happens throughout; no more, no less. Pointing at a film and saying it’s stupid is a waste of everybody’s time. It’s just an inanimate object, after all. As Jean Luc Godard said, “the best way to criticize a film is to make another film”. Saying something sucks fifty different ways is not “real” criticism in the way that creating a better version and having the other pale in comparison is. I didn’t find very much to laugh at here, but keep in mind, I’m no Twilight groupie, so maybe there’s a bunch of obscure references that I missed, all of which I'm sure were brilliant and witty and tubular and shit.
Apart from the opening monologue. I also liked the line where the fake Edward says “I’m not of this mortal coil”, because it’s a clever approximation of what one of these goth emos might actually say, and also doubles as a reference to an awesome band. Speaking of which, the fake Edward mugs horribly throughout the film. It’s another way of pointing and laughing at the real Edward’s performance, which apparently involved a lot of moody furrowing of the brow and what not. It’s the sort of thing that seems funny when a bunch of drunk frat fuckers get together and make fun of something, but sits there dead on the screen when actualized. After all, when a bully points and laughs at some nerd wearing a Legend of Zelda baseball jersey, he may be enjoying himself at that moment, but it’s because he has declared himself superior to something. Anybody standing around watching is not likely to chortle at the situation, except as an accessory to the bully’s meathead insecurity.
I also liked that there’s a guy that seems to be doing an Emo Phillips impersonation, although I’m not sure if that was the intended idea. I think it would’ve been hilarious if they actually got Emo Phillips to play the part, with the characters acting as if he’s just a normal teenager. It would be inexplicable, yes, but funny as balls. After all, inexplicable Emo Phillips is always funny. Other than that, this movie can lick my taint. They should put that on the poster. Oh wait, it’s direct to video. Never mind.
Now, I agree that vampires sparkling and moping around is fucking stupid, but replacing this with pointing out that vampires are sparkling and moping around is not any less stupid, if you follow me. I guess my generation’s equivalent to Twilight would be something like The Lost Boys, I movie I loved as a kid and continue to enjoy. Say what you want about this MTV vampire opus with the Coreys fighting the undead against all odds, but at least shit actually HAPPENS during the film. I don’t quite get how you can write three books about a girl maybe or maybe not fucking a vampire dude that doesn’t even do any cool vampire shit, like sucking out a hooker’s neck before crashing out of the third story window of a cheap motel, flying onto a motorcycle and revving away into the night. Any asshole can play baseball.
***
Here is another movie with the word “taint” in the title (the other being Tainted Image) that is not, as of this writing, listed on IMDB (not including porn, of course). That may be the narrowest film genre in all of moviedom. Unfortunately, both taint movies have left me down, discouraging me from seeking out further taint related cinema. Strangely, whenever I see the word “taint”, I think of the Mr. Show sketch, featuring an up and coming male porn star and a character based on Larry Flynt. However, instead of a giant cock, this guy has an impressive taint (I’m not quite sure what qualities one compares when judging taints, however). I guess the image of Scott Aukerman spread eagle has never quite left my subconscious. I’m no homo, mind you. Really I’m not. Well, I’ll just point out that his meteoric rise inspires the creation of a magazine called “Under Your Balls Quarterly”. Now THAT is some fucking comedy. To try and explain why that’s funny and most of Taintlightisn’t would just ruin everything, so you’ll just have to figure it out for yourself. Such is the enigma of humor. However, this sketch is not without pathos, what with tragedy inevitably striking in the life of this pseudo Larry Flynt. Specifically…CAPTAIN TRAGEDY!!!
here is the awesome pop art trailer for Dillinger e Morto, as the Eyetalians call it
Michel Piccoli is enjoying another productive and fulfilling day at the gas mask factory, helping to design a useful product that allows hard working people a way to filter out harmful external particles. After all, if you cut into the health of a worker, you cut into his productivity. Unfortunately, a fellow co-worker breaks up this chain of focus by reading an essay he wrote aloud to Mr. Piccoli, who is barely listening to all of this. This essay asserts that the gas mask testing chamber is a metaphor for the modern man. That is, man must wear a mask to survive in this chamber, while making him subservient to this hi-tech piece of equipment, just to be able to survive in this very chamber mankind has managed to create. In the process, he loses his identity (he’s just another guy in a mask, after all), and also loses his position within the physical world (being that he is stuck in a chamber). I guess the gas mask represents the role one finds within a modern industrial society (career, family), and the chamber represents the industrial living quarters (home, office), and the “disease” is both raw humanity and the chaos of the universe, that which conflicts with this industrial structure (like the uncertainty of life and the world around us, or an imagination unfettered). The gas mask keeps man well enough alive and seemingly healthy, just as modern society aims to provide for basic functions and desires, including entertainment, to sustain man. Well, that’s my interpretation anyway, but, then again, what in the hell do I know about anything.
The director, Marco Ferreri, is one of the unsung masters of Italian cinema. If forced to sum him up in a single line, I would probably call him the Italian Luis Bunuel, that is, a sly, rule breaking satirist. However, Dillinger is Dead is of a different mode from most of his work, and, in surface terms, it resembles what might happen if Godard made a film parodying Michelangelo Antonioni. The opening speech is eerily similar to something you might find in a Godard film post 1966, but hardly something that would interest Michel. Instead, he is a strong male of the industrial age, and not one to concern himself with intellectual babble. He grows restless listening, pointing to his watch, as he wants to get on with his night. However, this speech sets off something within his mind, allowing doubt about the structure of his life to creep into his subconscious.
Well, Michel drives home, where his hot trophy wife (Anita Pallenberg) is lounging in bed. She is so stricken with middle class ennui, it seems, that she can’t so much as get out of bed at any point during the entire film. The extent of her wonder of the world is confined to the vague amusement she feels staring at the goldfish jar next to her bed. She is not quite curious enough, however, to notice that the jar could be another in-frame metaphor, like the gas chamber. What is a goldfish but a little man forced to live in a bowl, with the necessary nutrients for survival periodically sprinkled in from above? He exists mostly to exist, and sustain this industrialized aquatic system. Maybe that wasn’t the best linking of metaphors, but I think you get the idea.
Hungry, he sits down at the dinner table, finding a meal left out for him. This particular food bores him, so he browses a cookbook, hoping to find something to appease his desires. He turns on the T.V., where a “reporter” is interviewing some pretty young girls of the day. “Do you wear lipstick?” is the first question asked. Here is a piece of vapid entertainment that is perfect background noise while one decides on what to eat for dinner. Still, I am reminded of the speech from earlier, which referenced something about how part of modern man’s sustenance consists of entertainment of the safe and non-disruptive sort.
Well, as a man’s man, Michel throws on an apron and whips out a nice slab of beef, ruminating on how he should prepare this piece of dead flesh. This quest for garnish leads him into a closet, where he finds, not some mythical steak sauce, but, quite curiously, a gun wrapped in an old newspaper. The paper seems to be a special edition dedicated to John Dillinger’s recent (at the time) death. We see some newsreel footage of Dillinger’s final days, a recap of the media’s treatment of a gangster that captured the imagination of the common man. Here is a mythical figure, unbound by the formal rigors of modernization. He also died in his early thirties, but hey, at least he went out with some individual style.
Well, Michel continues to prepare the meal, but simultaneously starts work on a most unexpected project, preparing the gun itself, this most masculine of symbols, for what we know not. He takes it apart and cleans it in oil, and searches the bedroom for a file. His wife asks him to come to bed, but he is enthralled by his new project. She asks for sleeping pills, a glass of water, and a hot water bottle, after earlier complaining about a headache. Michel obliges, and she appears to be content staying in bed, as long as her desires are satisfied, and any potential “illness” is filtered out. She even takes her nightie off and wraps it up with the water bottle, and sticks the whole thing under the cover, as if she is about to become intimate with it. I guess this crude substitute for a man will have to do, being that her husband is too busy wandering off on some “quest”.
Michel happens upon the maid as she is performing a sexy dance while wearing a mesh body suit. One would think that, if Michel was indeed bored with his wife, refusing to join her in bed, this is just the sort of exciting female encounter to spark him out of this boredom. However, he completely ignores her, enthralled as he is by his new gun, and the splendid meal that HE created. He enjoys some sports programming while he eats, but changes the channel, and happens upon a program where a film critic is discussing a Godardian short film where a long take of a woman’s face is later destroyed through technique. Meanwhile, Ferreri’s camera focuses on the maid, as she keeps repeating the phrase “it was fate” to whomever is listening on the other end. She seems to still be slyly seducing Michel, but he remains distracted by the television. Fate is boring him these days, it would seem.
Michel's “normal” evening, first interrupted by the speech at work, is being further intruded upon. First, there was finding the gun, and now here is a television program that seems to be commenting on the very scene that is taking place within in his “real” life. During this scene with the maid, we notice a pop art painting on the wall of the dining room. It shows several faceless human drones, with the word “futurism” ribboned across. I’m sure it was originally selected for the room because it stylishly filled up the wall, but now, in light of the current events, it appears to be ironically commenting on the situation. The painting attempts to provide an abstract distance with which to view the impending facelessness of this mechanized society, but Michel still lacks the self-awareness to logically apply these potential lessons that surround him to his own life. He proceeds as a child that has been thrown off his middle class track and onto to a different track, but not as a child that is shaken off course, and thereby able to analyze the structure to which he was previously bound. Michel plays some home movies of him and his wife on vacation while he polishes the various pieces of the gun. He is shown in attendance at a bull fight, and Michel warps the footage, standing in front of it and participating within the image itself, breaking out of his normally passive viewing. Ironically, the film playing shows a scene from his own life, starring himself, and he proceeds to “destroy” it, in a sense. There is also footage of an exotic woman making erotically charged tongue gestures to the camera. Michel playfully reciprocates her, but quickly turns off the film when his wife pops back on screen. He pulls out a white divider on which to project this argument with his wife, which turns into an extended sequence of him doing an interpretive dance with his hands.
This home movie, showing a rote tourist trip descending into another constricting argument with the wife, becomes a wellspring of creativity. Inspired by these flexible images, he finishes reconstructing the gun, using his new toy to create a shadow play on the screen. He ends this performance by pretending to shoot himself in the head. Now in his studio, he paints the gun red, hangs it up, and adds little white dots. We notice a Time Magazine cover hanging above, showing a pop art painting of someone holding a gun. Surprisingly, Michel, a gas mask man, went completely off the scripted page one night in his life, and ended up creating a piece of pop art.
His wife is dead asleep, but he playfully tries to seduce her with a toy snake. As he has been seemingly demasculinzed, this is the best penis substitute he could come up with in a pinch. This existential crisis has derailed his role as a strong modern male. However, she refuses to wake up, so he gets into bed with the maid, armed with his new gun. He pours honey on her, still in chef mode, but armed with only a pistol lacking bullets, it ends there.
So, he heads back to his studio, putting a safety on the muzzle, pointing it at a gas mask schematic, as if destroying his professional identity. He finds a bag of bullets and lays them out on a dinner plate, loading the gun and pulling the safety off. His temporary impotentcy now cured, he heads back into the bedroom and pretends to shoot himself in the head while looking in the mirror. After awhile, he turns the music up and places two pillows over Anita’s head and shoots her twice. I guess that’s one way to end a boring, suffocating marriage.
It's already early the next morning, and he dresses as if he's headed to work. Murdering his wife also conveniently forced him to skip town, leaving his career behind in the process. However, he is still stuck in his early morning routine, starting his day off like any other. He drives to some seaside ruins and goes for a swim, wearing a towel and an exotic necklace. He approaches a ship, where a funeral for the cook is taking place, his body ceremoniously dumped into the ocean. Well, opportunity knocks, it appears. Luckily, the owner of the ship is a hot young chick in a bikini, and she agrees to hire Michel as the new chef. They sail off for Tahiti, but, ominously, everything turns red, and the film stock becomes printed in negative, as if this ship to paradise is really headed for annihilation.
The movie strikes me as a parody of sorts of Antonioni. The central “plot”, if you can call it that, concerns a man stuck in his ways, whose imagination is “set free” when he takes on an unexpected project and becomes obsessed (the gun), and this allows him to separate himself from the prison of his own life. This is very reminiscent of Blow-Up, where an artist’s life of moral aimlessness is interrupted when he thinks that he accidently photographed a murder. He becomes enthralled within his craft in order to attempt to solve this mystery. The environments for the two films are different, though. Michel lives in a standard upper middle class bourgeois environment, while David Hemmings (Blow-Up) lives the life of a popular photographer, a spoiled egomaniac.Hemmings' fate is left up in the air, quite literally, as he vanishes during the film's climax. However, Michel Piccoli in Dillinger is Dead only escapes one prison to sail sea to another, so to speak.
. The husband and wife relationship, on the other hand, somewhat reminds me of the one in L’Avventura. In that film, Sandro is a failed architect, a male emasculated from his identity, while Claudia is the aimless existential drifter. Dillinger is Dead presents a slyly ridiculous version of this, where self doubt creeps into Michel, and he becomes an aimless child, no longer a strong male with a clearly defined societal role. On the other hand, Anita’s crisis is that of complete apathy, as passive as one can possibly be, never doing much of anything during the entire film, nor showing the desire to.
Michel curiously shoots his wife without a care in the world, and this is followed by an ending where his ideal fantasy is fulfilled. He murders his wife to finally be able to escape this modernized chamber he has created for himself, only to escape to a naïve fantasy. He found he had some sort of passion for cooking, and doubled this with a totally banal view of paradise, the kind you might find in a vacation commercial. Even if his current life was on the wrong path, that doesn’t mean that the opposite path is the one to take. His entire struggle is completely self centered, so much so that he cannot even conjure up enough empathy to care having just shot his wife. Little does he realize that this paradise is but a postcard fantasy foisted upon him outside forces, and not from any inner desire to explore his true passions in life. After all, he never really cultivated or explored any passions. He may have cooked a steak and cleaned a gun for the first time in his life, but a revolution of the mind is not something that can be easily achieved overnight.
here's a clip from the super extended version of the film that plays in my head
While a standard empowerment tale at its core, Revenge of the Nerds does contain a profound fortune cookie nugget if one is willing to search. Namely, the scene where the nerds stay up all night and watch live feeds of sorority girls go through their nightly routine. This includes the occasional shower, where we learn that college coeds have breasts so dirty they need to be scrubbed at least five or six times, but it mostly consists of girls brushing their teeth or sleeping. Still pretty damn hot though. Even so, you'd think they'd get bored at some point, but no. The night turns into morning, and they remain utterly fixated, not only by the feminine wiles on display, but the resolute hope that, any minute now, they will see something truly mind blowing, like a 19 year old cheerleader suddenly deciding to a nude aerobic routine.
Well, the token gay nerd enters the frat house (he also doubles as the token black nerd, a good example of screenwriting economy), asking "did you guys stay up all night?!?", incredulous at this revelatory insight into the heterosexual mind. While the gay nerd was probably having a productive morning running errands, even getting some important studying time the night before, these "normal" males spent endless hours transfixed by these hot chicks, who were (mostly) engaging in the least interesting activities imaginable. Even a male mind that supposedly exists for higher educational purposes (like programming code on one of those high tech Apple IIe's) is stopped dead in it's tracks by the feminine mystique (and the promise of bush, of course).
***
Pretty Smart is an all female version of Revenge of the Nerds, with an ingenious reversal. Instead of the heroes using surveillance camcorders to capture an innocent whiff of a nipple or two (well, sorta innocent), the villain in Pretty Smart (Mr. Crawley), the smug asshole dean of an all girl boarding school in Greece, is the one to use this equipment to his advantage. He rigs the dorms with cameras so he can peep in on any of these unsuspecting nubiles at any given time. What a piece of shit. Keep in mind I would probably do the exact same thing given the same opportunity, but still. He even sells tapes of the girls, and also deals coke on the side. What a pile of rich white garbage.
Our group of ultra spunky heroines not only have to deal with this asshole, but also the stuck up "preens", the privileged cunts who like to make the lives of those who are both less rich and different from them miserable. Here are a group of outcast girls fighting the system, both the heartless fist of authority and the cold judging eye of the "in crowd", who seek to try and exploit the girls while attempting to shame them into becoming sheep who dress like rich sluts, respectively.
Here is our main heroine Daphne Ziegler ("Zigs" as she is known), waking up in her awesomely quirky bedroom. Notice the giant inflatable Godzilla on the right.
She gets into trouble in spectacularly quirky fashion. She shows up to her bank job dressed as a goth hooker of sorts, and an armed robber points a gun in her face. Instead of handing over the cash, she gets up on the counter and starts stripping. Whatever helps you blow off steam in a stressful work environment, I guess.
Zigs is arrested for this transgression (I guess it's illegal to flash your bra while a bank robbery is in progress), and her parents decide to send her and her "normal" sister Jennifer to a boarding school in Greece. That is certainly not tubular in any way shape or form. Of course, I am inferring some of this, as this is mostly conveyed with a series of stills over the opening credits. I guess the filmmakers thought that nobody would really care about how the plot was setup, but I would have loved to see the full scene of Zigs dealing with the bank robber. It all seems both inexplicable yet vaguely erotic.
Here's an example of how the plot setup is explained away in a series of stills. Here is Zigs in her care free glory:
This progresses to a much more sinister form of the still photo:
And, finally, to an ironic postcard of sorts, as her sad face is superimposed over a tourist landscape of Greece:
The sisters arrive at the school, two birds of differing flocks:
Zigs is none too excited about being forced into this place, and often states to others that she plans to get out of the boarding school as soon as possible. She also dresses like a bereaved Madonna, mourning with sass. Lord what a hot look.
Free spirit Zero (Patricia Arquette) manages to cheer her up:
Joining this squad of misfits are Yuko and Torch, relegated to outsider status on account of them falling short of the caucasian ideal.
Zigs immediately starts rebelling when forced into this structured environment.
She is, after all, a total badass, bored as she is with the concept of mediocrity.
Look no further than this pendant, one of those skull bat deals. God that's fucking metal. Oh yeah...look at her goddamn outfit! If anyone has fashion balls, it's Zigs.ZOWIE!
Her outfits clash with the preens, who generally prefer the rich and slutty look. At the fore front of the group is a 19-year-old or so Julie K. Smith, soon to be Penthouse Pet and B-movie starlet (Sorceress II, Midnight Tease II, a couple of those Andy Sidaris movies).
She never looked better here, as this was pre-silicone and what have you. I mean, just look what she wears to school! How can you not love a girl like that, villain or not. She's got a see through dress, a headband, a skinny tie of sorts, and her panties are flying out. I guess she does have some sort of that individual style that the other preens lack, but as she usually struts through the film in various states of undress, it's pretty hard to notice.
Here is one such example where Julie shows off her ample talents. She dances in the nude after a shower, and Zigs bumps into her.
WAIT A SECOND! Is that a Nagel poster on the wall? I BELIEVE IT IS!
Here she does her hair and nails in the buff because, well...why not. As you may or may not know, Penthouse put out a bunch of cheesecake videos where Pets would dance to some righteous rawk song, or maybe have an erotic encounter with a David Hasselhoff lookalike, or whatever. Through sound intelligent research, I have located a clip from one of these Penthouse videos. Notice how "different" Julie looks in this clip below (oh yeah, and it's definitely NSFW).
Not that anyone would notice, but this is a film about SCHOOL, and here the girls are getting down to business.
Zigs still looks damn stylish and sexy even in study mode, chewing her pen like a feral beast.
I just noticed that the school uniform for the girls consists solely of a pink sportcoat they wear over whatever they normally wear, but with the sleeves rolled up. Forcing girls to wear rolled up pink sportcoats in school circa mid 80's is the equivalent to making all of the boys in a summer camp wear half shirts. Regardless, it's a solid look. Of course, you need teachers for this dynamic to work, and this school supplies a couple of oddballs. There's the sex ed teacher, of course:
Her presentation is called "The Penis: Friend or Foe". I guess that depends on what mood she's in. There also this other guy:
I don't quite understand the "lesson" here. I guess he's trying to tell everyone to "go fork yourself". I can sympathize with this sentiment, but does he have to SAY IT SO LOUDLY?!? There is also the "cool" teacher, a strong, beautiful female who encourages the girls to be tough, smart, and independent. She also provides a shoulder for the misfits to lean on. Of course, she gets fired. What a joke. All just because she was sunbathing with little band aids covering her nipples. I guess avoiding tan lines is wrong somehow.
The girls are rightfully upset as they watch her get shipped out of school.
Even Yuko, normally the bubbliest of the bunch, is reduced to blubbering (or, from bubs to blubs, if you prefer).
Here are a couple of stills of Yuko in her element, as portrayed by Kimberly Delfin, in her only film role.
It seems to me she could have had a successful career portraying cute, spunky Asian sidekicks.
Then again, maybe the whole "Asian-y sidekick" phenomenon turned her off from acting. Who can say really. There are also actual plot developments, like when Zigs develops a crush on a groundskeeper dude. He seems to be the only real male in the nearby vicinity, but regardless, he seems a nearly perfect fit for Zigs.
She initially scopes him out, walking by in her inimitable style, showing off clothing even Cindy Lauper wouldn't have the balls to showcase to the public.
I, for one, would be immediately taken by such a figure, bored as I am by fashion that decries fun and expression. However, he takes a bit more convincing.
They quickly talk about music. He chuffs at what's in her walkman, some techno pop he considers a product of crass commercialism. He recommends to her, get this, Public Image Limited. This is exactly what a truly cool dude, circa 1987, would be rocking out to, and not whatever pop pablum bullshit was foist upon him. He may actually be worthy of her hand, it would seem. He lets her borrow his PIL cassette, hoping to further enlighten this child of pop culture. While I can't exactly argue with his assessment, I think he could stand to learn a thing or two from Zigs and her freewheeling aesthetic.
Of course, I can't mention Public Image Limited and not share the clip of their infamous interview from the Tom Snyder Show. I reckon that this is in my short list of favorite music related interviews of all time, along with the Chris Holmes interview from Decline of Western Civilization Pt. II, and the interview with El Duce where he talks about fucking a cokehead chick and making her cry.
This situation begats further drama when Zigs' sister decides to join the preens. Fucking turncoat.
By the way, Jennifer...Bonnie Tyler called. She wants her hair back. Also...the jerk store called. They are upset that your jerkface freelancing ways are cutting into their bottom line. They are a "company" after all, as John Lyndon laid out previously. Either way, your soulless ways are taking its toll on your sister. Well, Zigs still manages to go about her quirky business. Here, she pisses off the preens by pretending to be knocked up.
They are extremely annoyed by this incorrigible display, incapable of understanding humor, these preens are.
The "subs", on the other hand, don't construct their lives on a base of unchecked self esteem. They are therefore able to laugh at themselves and their own. It's called a "sense of humor".
I should've mentioned that Zigs and friends are labeled "subs", as in "subhuman". I guess anyone that fails to meet the preens standard of being rich and made of plastic aren't even worthy of being called human. That kinda reminds me of another group. Hmmm...oh yeah, they were called Nazis! AND THEY PRACTICALLY WIPED AN ENTIRE NATION OF PEOPLE OFF THE EARTH, JUST LIKE YOUR CIGARETTES ARE DOING NOW!!! Well, to lighten things up, Zigs jumps out of a cake during an awesome party.
She finds herself surrounded by grade A beef, but manages to enjoy yourself while not being swept up by carnal surfaces.
Instead, she is, most of all, a music fan, swept up by the house band, while bringing a goth style rooted in FUN, and not in sad bastard heroin whatever.
Who can blame her, what with this "musician" busting out the synth chords on a "wave 2.3". Fucking technology is awesome.
The other girls are also enjoying this entire scene. Free spirits as they may be, they don't quite have the balls nor ingenuity to come up with the patented antics Zigs seems to dial up.
Of course, any film of this ilk will have a "girls just wanna have fun" montage. Here Zigs kicks things off in her typically quippy fashion, yelling out "SCHOOLGIRLS FROM HELL!", in fist pumping unison.
They go montage balls out, shuffling across Grecian ruins, defying these ancestral societies with a new world order of new wave spunk.
Even Zigs gets in on the beach babe action, an area normally reserved for the vacuous. She manages to supply several witticisms, while still delivering in the hotness department. "Cool is the rule", she utters to her cohorts.
A hot piece of beefcake catches the eye of Zigs (and every warm blooded female in the vicinity).
"YOWZA!", their loins cry out. Stand and attention, girls...stand and attention.
Of course, once the female populace finds out that he is a lifeguard, they feign drowning, hoping to be rescued by this robust figure of mulleted masculinity.
"White chicks!", comments Zigs to Torch. Yes, only a lame honky girl would resort to drowning herself to be saved by a hunky lifeguard. It's all a bit too forward. After all, "cool is the rule".
This montage gives us a sense of these "subhumans" empowering themselves through fun and free expression.
The film also supplies several inserts of topless women, like her:
And her...
Here's one more. I guess not everybody watching the movie is going to be enthralled by the girls feeling empowered and expressing themselves, or by Zigs' verbal wit, so instead they get some tits to stare at. Finally a montage to please everyone!
Zero also finds a cute statue in a gift shop, what looks to be a minotaur with a hard on. I guess giant monster cocks are humorous to most people, but this mostly just frightens me, to be honest.
Later, the girls throw Zigs a surprise birthday party. Hmmm...I wonder what presents await her?
A BOOM BOX?!?
FRIGGIN' SWEET!
Her sister also gets her some gold razor blade earrings. While not the greatest gift in the world, more importantly, it's Jennifer's way of saying that she is ditching the preens and joining forces with the Zigmeister once again. I take everything back about her being a jerkface ripoff of Bonnie Tyler. TIME TO DANCE!
Unfortunately, the rest of the preens continue to watch on with a judgmental stare. Mr. Crawley later breaks up the fun. I guess he believes that the girls only exist to be exploited and to finish their school work, in that order. Fun is not part of the curriculum, it seems. Fucking fun police.
So, to get back at him, the subs decide to investigate his office. They are quite shocked to find a vast network of video cameras used to take secret footage of the girls at the school.
They learn that the school is a farce, just a front for a series of reality cam VHS tapes of girls doing everday stuff. For example, the brushing of teeth:
The full cleansing of the body:
My personal favorite: lingerie boxing. I'm unsure of the scoring format here, though. Is it a 10 point must system? Or, maybe they use Golden Gloves rules. I'm just not sure.
Of course, there's lingerie aerobics. There's no reason you can't get a workout in before you get your beauty sleep. None whatsoever.
Well, the girls alert the preens, and they decide to join forces to fight the TRUE scum of the earth. This entire time, the preens and subs were at each other's throats, while a rich white asshole was secretly profiting off of them behind closed doors. They come up with a plan of attack. While the dean is showing off live footage to several "clients", they decide to turn this sexy footage into a series of horrors.
Here, Julie is having sex with a dude. Standard operating procedure, you ask? Well, she starts suffocating the dude with her ass. That's NOT normal!
The subs then dress up all scary like and attack a girl, making faces into the "secret" camera.
Others follow suit. These clients were expecting everyday footage of sexy schoolgirls, and not sexy schoolgirls wearing plastic fangs knowingly staring into the lens. His business model crumbles, and his clients bail. I for one would've been happy either way. Well, the subs confront Mr. Crawley:
Surely, he has broken a couple of laws with this camera setup, but they also reveal that they have footage that proves him to be a coke dealer. YOU'RE GOIN' UPSTATE PAL! I hope you like your rape big and black.
Finally, a Vietnamese hooker with STYLE! Oh wait, it's Yuko again. She's smiling because her squad is victorious. Also, I dig the chain necklace. Really I do.
Zero celebrates by doing her "Yahoo Serious getting a crank call from Yakoff Smirnoff" routine. This one gets me every time:
-"In Russia, I wait in line long time for loaf of bread. I wait so long I die of hunger. In America, they give you free pussy and beer. I LOVE AMERICA!!!"
-"How many times do I have to tell you, I'M AUSTRALIAN MATE!!!!"
Here are the girls, teaming up to give fuckface a final farewell, dripping with sarcasm as it is. I should've known he was evil with a name like Crawley. Ozzy, I think, put it best (Crowley, Crawley...close enough):
Finally, everything comes together. Zigs is no longer held captive by her anger, a freak forced to the outskirts of happiness. She is practically glowing with confidence:
Not only does she bond once again with her sister, but she hooks up with her dream man:
The strong female teacher is hired as the new dean for the school. Not only that, but the uncle of Zigs' new boyfriend offers them a lease on some living quarters for the mere price of four goats a year (?!?). I guess that's how the Greeks do business. And I thought our economy was fucked.
Either way, it's fucking victory all the way around. Sweet, sweet victory. Remember kids...you don't win no silver...you only lose the gold. ZIGS 4-EVER!!!
