Dances With Wolves: Teen Pop Culture Redux, Part Whatever

"I've got a bad outside hook shot, I'm allergic to eggs, I got a six dollar haircut. I mean, I have problems. I don't need this one." - Teen Wolf

For real, Teen Wolf. Don't we feel your angst.

And, because there is no end to my love for bad '80s teen movies, I got real excited about having a Teen Wolf and Teen Wolf Too double feature night. Weren't you invited? I had this double feature party all by myself. But I'll sum these movies up for you, since - trust me - you missed out.

Wolfie's prettyin' up for prom!

Teen Wolf was made in 1985, and stars Michael J. Fox as a high school basketball player named Scott. Scott is crushing on some snooty blonde girl named Pamela, but she has a boyfriend and thinks Scott's a dork. Meanwhile, Scott's best female friend, Boof, is in love with him, but he's pretty clueless about it. It's a love triangle! But since we've seen this plot in thousands of other teen movies, everybody knows he's gonna end up with the nice girl whose name sounds like a slang word for her vagina. Boof + Scott = high school lurve 'til prom does them part.

To complicate things, poor ol' Scotty has been going through some werewolf-y changes recently. This mostly means that his nails sometimes grow super long in a matter of seconds, his eyes flash red, and his voice gets real deep and sounds weirdly computerized. Poor Scott is at his wits' end and is all, Man, what is this, late on-set puberty? It's a hard-knock life, bro.

But it turns out that being a werewolf comes in handy when you want to stock up for a high school kegger:

You know he got that keg. Anyways, Scott finally figures out what all those weird changes are about when he transforms into a werewolf during a full moon. And it turns out that werewolfiness is genetic, because his dad's a wolf too.

Scott tries to hide the fact that he's a werewolf from the kids at school, but eventually he transforms in front of them during a basketball game. At first, they're weirded out, but then he gains a sudden cool factor and becomes the high school phenom. There's a whole sequence devoted to Teen Wolf as the cool guy in school, walking through the hallways, high-fiving guys and wooing girls.

High fives: universal sign that you're cool.

There's even a part where Teen Wolf sasses the vice-principal, swaggers away and then break dances in front of some black guy in a newsboy cap, who high-fives him while a group of kids cheer him on. Why doesn't this kind of thing happen more often in real life? I mean, really.

Anyway, Teen Wolf gets to have hanky-panky and hang with his crush Pamela for a while, but she doesn't want to date him, she's just attracted to his cool factor. Being a wolf apparently means that he has lotsa sexual confidence and is suddenly a really good basketball player. And now he can open soda cans with his wolfy incisors, which for some reason the ladies (i.e., Pamela) are totally into:

My, what big teeth you have.

And his goofy best bro-pal (who is the most ridiculous, and therefore probably my favorite character in the whole movie) capitalizes on Scott's new popularity by making and selling Teen Wolf souvenirs, like this rad T-shirt that Teen Wolf''s boudoir-buddy Pamela has on:

Teen Wolf shirt: advertising a movie within the movie.

Don't you want your woman to wear a T-shirt with your nickname on it? Yeah, you do. Anyway, this movie ends with Scott realizing that you don't need to be a werewolf to win a basketball game or to settle for your best female friend/the yuppie brunette girl who has liked you all along. Inspiring stuff.

Fast forward two years later, to 1987, and we've got Teen Wolf Too (no, I'm not spelling-challenged, that's the title). I guess the creators wanted to capitalize on the lucratively successful teenage werewolf genre. And boy, am I glad they did!

There are only two things you really need to know about this movie: one, that it stars a young Jason Bateman as Todd, Scott's cousin. If you watch TV ever, you're sure to remember Jason Bateman as the actor in Arrested Development who plays Michael Cera's dad. The other thing you need to know is that he's a babe in glasses. That's right, his character sometimes wears a pair of clear plastic specs, because he's a Biology nerd or whatever. I don't really care why, I just wanted him to wear them more often instead of sticking them in his jacket pocket after finding a slide sample.

Rad specs, bro.

The whole time I was watching this flake of a movie, I was thinking, put those damn glasses back on, Jason Bateman. Don't agree that these specs are hot stuff? Well, get stuffed.

Next time: lingerie, France, La Séduction, and cultural appropriations in fashion -- not necessarily all in that order or in one post. Yes-uh, please-uh!