SUPERBAD (2007)

NOTE: This originally ran on THE VAULT OF BUNCHENESS in 2007.

By now you’ve probably heard about how great SUPERBAD is — and for the most part I agree with the majority of the critics — so I’ll spare you the details save for the plot in a nutshell: two best friends and a dorky classmate find themselves saddled with the task of obtaining $100 worth of liquor for a party thrown by a hot girl that one of them likes, and using that catalyst for a springboard all manner of insanity ensues. It’s basically every last-shot-at-high school-fun-before-we-go-to-college story you’ve ever seen, only with the raunch factor amped up to the the level one would expect from a post-AMERICAN PIE (1999) outing for the genre, but it’s a lot funnier than AMERICAN PIE and, with the very notable exception of the two most irresponsible and over-the-top cops seen onscreen in years, SUPERBAD is a dead-on accurate look at what suburban American teenagers, especially the males, can get up to when having their youthful adventures.

That said, I’d like to discuss the thing that really puts SUPERBAD into the firmament of teen movie classics: the awesome majesty that is McLovin.

Christopher Mintz-Plasse plays Fogell, the very definition of the word “Nerd” and a truly grating presence that one would avoid in the halls of the high school when not kicking his dorky ass on general principle.

Even the other two main characters who hang out with him on a regular basis can’t stand him much, but that all changes when he acquires a fake ID that identifies him a twenty-five-year-old resident of Hawaii named “McLovin.” No first name, just McLovin, and as if that weren’t ridiculous enough he doesn’t look a day over fifteen despite being about two months shy of becoming a college freshman. Upon adopting the McLovin moniker, Fogell is pressed into doing the actual purchasing of the required liquor, but the instant he whips out his ID and actually convinces the cashier of his alleged age, the poor dork gets sucker-punched by a thug who makes off the with the contents of the cash register. When a pair of goofball cops arrive to investigate, they take him under their wing for what turns into what can only be called a young heterosexual male’s perfect fantasy night come true; over the next few hours McLovin hangs out and drinks in a bar with his newfound policeman pals, collars a drunk and disorderly bum, gets chauffeured around town in a police car with the cops getting him and themselves more and more wasted with each passing hour,

hooks up with the other two characters — who ditched him when they thought the cops were arresting him and ended up having their own adventures — makes it to the big party with the liquor he purchased, gets (mostly) laid by the cute redhead he’d admired from school — lets put it this way: he gets it in, but the cops bust the party and while searching the house for underage drinkers they bust in on McLovin getting’ some, which causes his very willing partner to flee, for which the cops are deeply apologetic — leaves the party in a style that makes him an instant legend, and finishes the evening by helping the cops torch their own now-totaled squad car while using it for target practice.

If all of this sounds incredibly puerile and sophomoric, it certainly is, but its hilarity lies in the telling and the making-of-an-urban-legend nature of McLovin’s saga; Joseph Campbell — the late sage behind THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES and THE POWER OF MYTH — would have had a field day with this modern heroic journey that traces a callow youth’s progression from inexperience to capable adulthood and coolness within the space of one night’s whirlwind of adventure, complete with wise (?) guide-figures in the form of the fun-loving and somewhat insane cops, a couple of monsters (the thug and the bum), the getting of all sorts of wisdom, and actually winning the girl of his dreams. That’s the stuff of the straight-up, classically defined heroic journey archetype, and it was fun to see it told in such a way; it actually eclipses the more realistic exploits of Mitch Kramer (Wiley Wiggins) in DAZED AND CONFUSED (1993), and as that was a hell of a story in its own right, that’s something to be proud of, Jack! And since the SUPERBAD is making a mint at the box office, it’ll probably spawn a shitty sequel and that would be a shame because the magic of McLovin is not something that can just be shat out by the studio assembly line.

McLovin: one superbad motherfucker.

As for the rest of the flick, SUPERBAD is a very solid piece of entertainment, but its raunchiness reminded me of the anarchic and unbelievably tasteless stories found in issues of NATIONAL LAMPOON that I adored when I was growing up (or not), a cornucopia of humor that was the antithesis of everything PC. So if you aren’t of a sensibility that can handle foul dialogue, drunken tomfoolery, gross-out bodily humor — most notably the felonious and hilarious misuse of one of the protagonist’s legs that’s sure to polarize the women in the audience as to whether the gag was funny or not — and young people painfully embarrassing themselves, then you might want to give SUPERBAD a miss. Otherwise, get ready to smile at a film that just may drag you on a beer-soaked, hormonally charged trip down memory lane.

TRUST YER BUNCHE!!!

MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH (1976)

 Boys will be boys: an attempted gang rape in an empty classroom. 

So, after first hearing about it some 42 years ago, I finally saw MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH (1976)

Somewhere in southern California, David (Derrel Maury), a new student, comes to Central High and reconnects with Mark (Andrew Stevens), an old friend whom he once helped out of a bad situation. Mark seeks to repay that kindness by bringing David into his clique, but David immediately discovers his old friend's crew are the school bullies, a trio of rich, entitled bastards who keep the entire student body in check via relentless intimidation, cruelty, and violence. Over the course of a few days, David observes both the oppressors and the oppressed and makes up his mind to steer clear of Mark and his buddies.

The bullies take umbrage at David's disrespect of them, but before they can do anything about it they decide to rape two female classmates whose close friendship leads the bullies to believe they're lesbians, so the lads decide to "teach them something." The girls get hauled into an empty classroom and are about to be brutally assaulted when David arrives, already brimming with anger and hatred for the bullies, and he hands the trio a righteous clobbering. (Mark, sensing what his cronies were planning, opted out.) Butthurt over their beating, the bullies plot revenge against David, lest word get around that he handed them their asses in no uncertain terms. The bullies cripple David by dropping the car he was repairing on his leg, thus ending his anger-managing hobby of running.

After a stay in the hospital, David returns to school with a pronounced limp, and it is revealed that he didn't implicate the bullies in his hobbling, for which the leader of the bullies thanks David, to which David ominously responds with "Ratting people out isn't my style." In short order, David cleverly assassinates the three bullies in ways that appear to be accidents, so he will not be suspected by the authorities. 

 

Assassination Number 1: a clipped control wire sends a bully's hang glider into live high tension wires. ZAP!!! 

Assassination Number 2: a bully high dives into the school's swimming pool in the dark, not realizing that the pool was drained for maintenance. CRUNCH!!!

Assassination Number 3: the remaining bully is trapped in his surfer van and the van is rolled over a cliff, from which it tumbles to its explosive doom. KABOOM!!!

However, it's obvious to all of his schoolmates that David was the author of the bullies' gruesome demises, and they are grateful for being liberated from their serial tormentors. But now that the power dynamic has shifted, several of the formerly-victimized now seek to fill that vacuum themselves, proving that they are just as bad as those who tormented them. Nerds, the handicapped, hippies, and. even some of the girls all approach David to join with them as the figurehead of what they seek to establish as the school’s new order, but all David sees is a new group of vicious assholes replacing the previous, so all that’s left to do is exterminate the lot of them, which he does, again in ways that will not implicate him, with the demolition of the school serving as his final measure to end the bullshit once and for all…

MASSACRE AT CENTRAL HIGH is a movie that could never get made today, for obvious reasons, and it enjoyed a heavy cult reputation during the ’70’s and ’80’s. Though bearing the look and feel of a made-for-TV movie from its era, it features enough cursing, sex and nudity, and R-rated violence to make it a grindhouse perennial, and it surprises by having more of a brain in its head than one would think. The main bullies are all dead by the end of the second act, so the third act examines how the student body vies for power in the wake of the bullies’ deaths, and it also makes it clear that we should not be rooting for mark, no matter how satisfying his kills are, because he’s very obviously shown to be a calm and methodical merciless sociopath who will kill without a shred of remorse. Oh, and look for appearances by exploitation stalwart Bainbeaux Smith, whose elfin blonde nudity is always a welcome sight, and a young pre-REVENGE OF THE NERDS Robert Carradine.

It’s all very bleak stuff, but I have to say that I would have loved it if I had seen it anytime during my years in grades 7-12. I endured bullying from some sadistic kids during those years, and as Black kid in Westport I could not fight back without risking litigation from my bullies’ parents or ending up thrown in jail by the town’s racially profiling cops. The last thing my already stressed-out mother needed was me going to jail, so I just had to take it until the eventual graduation released me from my education system jail sentence. A movie like this would have been my vengeance fantasy writ large, and I'm kind of sad that it took me so long to finally get around to seeing it. Good stuff, and it’s available for uncensored on YouTube Premium and Amazon Prime Video.

Poster from the original theatrical release.