Among all the Porky’s rip-offs and T&A romps of the era, Screwballs strikes me as one of the most repellent. Basically, the “plot” is this: At the world’s most depressing-looking high school, four or five guys — I really can’t remember; they were all overly horny — make a bet at who will be able to see the breasts of popular virgin Purity Busch (Linda Speciale). Yep, that name is as clever as Screwballs gets — sorry, Bootsie Goodhead and Principal Stuckoff — which is to say, not at all.
Oh, what a different movie Screwballs might have been had it stuck to this plot! Instead, it goes off on so many illogical tangents that we have the tragic tale of a boy who gets his penis stuck in a bowling ball, or the ironic spectacle of a slut’s gelatinous chest pressed up against the back window of a van.
In the end, our zeroes — skilled they are at staging free breast exams at school — succeed, by blowing Purity’s clothes off with a giant fan at an assembly. With patriotic music blaring in a way the composer certainly never intended, Purity’s not-that-great-to-be-honest bosom is shown in full close-up as the end credits roll.
What, no epilogue to tie up all the nagging loose ends? No jokey “where are they now?” titles? I wish we could measure how far back Screwballs set the women’s movement, but the fact that it was co-written by a woman (Linda Shayne, who played the aforementioned Bootsie) certainly pushes it back even further. —Rod Lott
I’m curious what other titles they came up with before they decided that “Screwballs” perfectly captured what the movie is about.