After secret military scientist Combs is killed by punks with ice picks in a nightclub, it falls to his motorcycle-lovin' girlfriend to save the titular Cyclone motorcycle. I love this early scene where the now-dead Combs has left her a videotape explaining how to use the motorcycle. For some reason, it includes a brass knuckle knife and a bunch of rockets. OK, the rockets make sense.

But then we have to wait through the whole damn movie, watching Thomas get tortured and then lectured by Martin Landau, before she actually uses the damn bike to blow anything up. In the meantime, she's chased by the punks in a series of old cars, shocked repeatedly with jumper cables, and wears indescribably awful skin-tight jeans which don't even flatter the infinitely lovely form of Thomas. When she finally escapes, rescued by the one non-corrupt person in the movie - a butch older cop lady in an awesome jumpsuit - she finally lets the Cyclone rip in this awe-inspiring scene. Here's the sad part: The true breakthrough technology isn't the Cylone, it's the power source for it. The power source is an infinitely renewable form of infinite energy that can replace fossil fuels and make the Earth green. But we wouldn't want it to fall into the wrong hands (i.e., the Chinese! Or maybe the Japanese! Or maybe just, you know, Them Orientals!). Why it would be bad for anyone to have a power source that replaces fossil fuels is never explained.

But luckily, before the bad guys can start cleaning up the planet or something dastardly like that, Thomas throws it into the flames created by Cyclone. Thank goodness that evil technology is gone, where nobody can get to it! Ah, the 1980s. Good times.

Cyclone via IMDB

• 
  
• Originally titled The Wiz Kid, this 1982 movie was meant to be a parody of Carrie. They both end at a dance, although Carrie's ending was quite a bit darker.
• 
  
• The plot of Zapped! is pretty simple: Science student Barney is working on a experiment, and through a series of events that he isn't aware of, other things (like whiskey) get added to his formula, and eventually this leads to a lab explosion. However, as a result both Barney and his lab rat (who we never see again) have developed telekinesis. Barney uses his powers to make Heather Thomas' shirt pop open, helps buddy Peyton (Willie Aames) woo Heather, makes his baseball team win, and finally lands a girlfriend. However, his girlfriend doesn't think he should use his powers for "evil", and this leads to a rift between Peyton and Barney. All is patched up in the end, however, and there's a huge naked scene to top it all off, as seen above.
• 
  
• Scott Baio played the lead character Barney Springboro, although the role of the rich boy best friend Peyton was supposed to be played by Greg Bradford. The producers decided to cast Willie Aames instead, hoping for a little more star power (Aames had just come off of Eight is Enough, and was also cast in Paradise with Phoebe Cates... a sort of Blue Lagoon ripoff with more T&A and Willie's willy). Bradford apparently held a grudge against the producers for this.
• 
  
• Baio and Aames would go on to star together in Charles in Charge, and Aames would also go on to appear as... Bibleman.
• 
  
• Heather Thomas was cast as snooty cheerleader Jane Mitchell, but she was never into the nudity in the film. In fact, she had the producers put a line in the credits stating that they used a body double for her topless scenes. That wasn't enough, however, and she later sued them, stating that no one reads the credits anyway, and people would assume those were her breasts on screen. Um, duh?
• 
  
• To that end, Thomas wears a body stocking in the famous scene at the end where Baio makes her dress fly off. Thanks the the wonders of DVD (which this film just appeared on for the first time in February), you can see this pretty clearly.
• 
  
• Even more bizarre was the fact that when an advertisement came out in the Los Angeles Times, readers complained that the characters in the poster could see up the girl's skirt. Now mind you, the advertisement didn't show that, and the complaints were based on the point of view of the painted versions of Scott Baio and Willie Aames. As a result, the artist had to go back and extend the skirt, so even Baio and Aames can't quite see up it. Stupid, but true. See the main image up above for the modified artwork, then weep for humanity.
• 
  
• The film has a couple of scifi cameos, including Merrick Buttrick who went on to play Captain Kirk's son David in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, and Eddie Deezen who would later be ubernerd (the only role he played) Malvin in WarGames.
• 
  
• There's also an entire Star Trek parody scene in the movie when Barney comes home after the lab explosion and his parents think he's on drugs. He gets grounded in his room, and uses his new powers to make a model spaceship fly, apparently through an aquarium, and into his dog's mouth.
• 
  
• The most bizarre role in the film probably belongs to Scatman Crothers, who had worked on The Shining just a year or two before. Imagine going from working with Stanley Kubrick to playing a pot-smoking baseball coach. There's a truly bizarre scene where he gets high and imagines he's with Albert Einstein and fleeing from his wife, who is chasing after them with a salami-firing bazooka. Strange, but true.
• 
  
• There's a whole fan club devoted to Zapped! at MSN Groups, and they feature things like in-depth analysis photos of all the different versions of the movie. Particularly whenever Jane's clothes pop open.
• 
  
• Oddly enough, Zapped! spawned a sequel in 1990, Zapped Again!. In this update, a student finds Barney's old formula hidden in a wall, and uses it to more naked abandon. Linda Blair stars as a fairly hot teacher, and the only cast member to return was was Sue Ane Langdon, who played randy teacher Rose Burnhart.
• 
  
• The Onion covered it best when they published this image from their Alternate History newspaper: