Starring Marc Price, Jackie Earle Haley, Tiffany Helm, Bobby Jacoby, Eric Gurry, Jason Gedrick and Ben Vereen is absolutely a real film that happened.
Not only that, but it’s also one of the first films to don the PG-13 rating.
This flick’s a proper historical artifact and it’s been mostly dust-covered and forgotten since it fell behind the video store shelves. But – For better and for worse – it’s probably the most 80’s Teen movie to ever 80’s Teen. Montage et all.
Yes, it’s a desperately dated B-movie with a preposterous plot that solely aims at entertaining 13-year-olds for 90 minutes – but that worked for me then, and it works for me now.
For the uninitiated, regardless of that blurbage, it’s about a group of very 80’s teens who, through various hijinks, defend their very 80’s night club (the titularly confusing ‘Zoo’) from local thugs and an unscrupulous wealthy cigar chomping moustache twirling land developer type.
Because it was the 80’s and that was THE plot, from *Batteries Not Included to every other episode of the A-Team. Here it fits like a comfortable old sweater.
If you’re looking for something that sits awkwardly on the shelf between The Monster Squad and One Crazy Summer…. or even Ernest Goes to Camp and Breakin’ 2, you could do a lot worse than this long-forgotten time capsule.
It still smells of old gym socks, Bubble Yum and Aquanet. -Pop