As I finished watching Revenge of the Nerds, it occurred to me thatI had no idea where the word nerd came from. According to The BarnhartDictionary of Etymology, nerd is listed as originating around 1965 inhot-rod and surfing slang, although it was in oral use prior to 1955. It originally meant "afoolish or ineffectual person," and it derives from the similar word nert, whichmeant a crazy or stupid person.

I bring this up not to turn a review of a mid-'80s gross-out college satire into an exercise inacademic pedantry, but to help illuminate some of what is happening in Revenge of theNerds below its comedic surface. I find it interesting that nerd originallyconveyed a sense of stupidity or foolishness, because that seems to be quite the opposite ofthe meaning used in the movie (and in modern discourse, in general). Rather, the nerds hereare intelligent, creative, innovative, and cunning. In short, if there is any "ineffectualness"here, it is simply in the nerds' inability to conform to the mainstream. It is their outsiderstatus that marks them as nerds, and they are outsiders because they have different priorities.

What Revenge of the Nerds makes clear, in both the story and its title, whichhumorously suggests a horror movie of sorts, is that "beautiful people" (jocks, sororitygirls, cheerleaders, etc.) don't truly dislike nerds. Rather, they fear them. This is akey distinction, and it is one that I think often slips through the cracks because being fearedis a form of power. Nerds are to be feared because, early in life, they seem weak,ineffective, and outside the social body. Yet, as time passes, the simple fact is that nerdsbecome powerful while beautiful people, whose position in the social stratum is based onphysical appearance and athletic prowess, begins to slide. Nerds are smart, and intelligenceand knowledge increase with time, leading to professional success and the accumulation ofwealth. The athleticism and good looks of jocks and cheerleaders can only go downhill.

Thus, worked into the subtext of the movie is the jocks' latent fear of the nerds based ontheir repressed knowledge that, someday, the people they mock and torture will overcomethem. This, for instance, also comes out in Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), inwhich the class nerd in the 1950s is a successful and confident businessman at the 25-yearhigh school reunion. In real life, there is no better example than Bill Gates. You can laugh athis hair cut, sloppy clothes, and "nerdish" appearance all you want, but the fact is, he is amulti-billionaire with more power and influence than most of us could ever dream of.

So, the central joke of Revenge of the Nerds is not that nerds get their revenge(that will happen in due time). Instead, the central joke is that the nerds get their revengeprematurely. They defeat the jocks and beautiful people during the time in which they shouldbe superior. Thus, it is a double victory that is that much more humiliating for thosedefeated.

The two main characters in Revenge of the Nerds are Lewis Skolnick (RobertCarradine) and Gilbert Lowe (Anthony Edwards, now well-known for his role on TV'sER), both of whom are nerds par excellence. They fit every clich* ofnerd-dom, from the highwater pants, to the plain haircuts, to the outdated glasses, to theoverloaded pocket protectors that are literally spilling over with pens, pencils, and the like.Lewis stands out even more with his awkward overbite and haw-hawing laugh that makeshim sound like a braying donkey (apparently it's genetic because his nerd father, played byJames Cromwell, has the same laugh).

When the movie opens, Lewis and Gilbert are entering their freshman year at AdamsCollege. Lewis, the more outgoing of the two, is confident that they will have a great year.He is so sure that he and Gilbert have entered manhood and left their tortured high schoolyears behind them that he boldly goes forward, thinking they will be accepted into thepowerful Alpha Beta fraternity, which appears to be populated exclusively by the footballteam.

As one might guess, things do not go as Lewis planned. In fact, the first 45 minutes of themovie play out one humiliation after another. Along with the other freshmen, Lewis andGilbert are tossed out of their dorm rooms and made to live in the gym when the Alpha Betasburn down their fraternity house during a party and take over the dorms as their place ofresidence. They are tricked into thinking they will join the fraternity and are thendehumanized in some kind of awful ritual (thankfully left off-screen) involving condoms anda sheep. When they finally gather together with some other nerds and refurbish an oldhouse, the jocks throw a rock through their window. The final insult comes when, during aparty meant to impress the leaders of the Lambda Lambda Lambda fraternity, for which theyare a probationary chapter, the jocks let loose a dozen pigs in the house.

Thus, it is time for revenge. One of the creative aspects of Revenge of the Nerdsis the way the screenplay sets out a broad spectrum of rejected outsiders and shows howeach of them contributes a particular knowledge or skill that, when combined, is more thanenough to defeat the jocks at their own game. While their technical skills are used during ahigh-tech panty raid of a sorority house, which incorporates the use of video cameras and asatellite dish, the majority of their skills are employed in the Greek Games at the annualHomecoming Carnival, the winner of which gets to choose the president of the GreekCouncil.

Gilbert and Lewis contribute natural leadership skills and their knowledge of computers. Thevarious musical skills of the nerds, from Booger's (Curtis Armstrong) ability on guitar toPoindexter's (Timothy Busfield) violin playing, are put into good use in the final skitcompetition, in which they stage a show that is part Devo and part Michael Jackson.Wormser (Andrew Cassese), a preteen gifted child made to go to college many years beforehis time, knows aerodynamics, which he uses to design a special javelin for Lamar (Larry B.Scott), the group's flamboyantly gay member.

As the various members make clear, Revenge of the Nerds is not so much aboutthe conventional idea of what a nerd is, but rather it is about the socially downtrodden ingeneral. The group includes not only stereotypical nerds like Lewis and Gilbert, but alsominorities (in the form of foreign-exchange student Takashi, played by Brian Tochi) and thehomosexual Lamar. Therefore, it is of little surprise (although still funny) that the nerdsofficially become a chapter of Lambda Lambda Lambda, which is an exclusivelyAfrican-American fraternity. The conflation of discriminated-against minorities anddiscriminated-against nerds is something of an uneasy pairing, but it does bring out the factthat predjudice is prejudice, no matter who it's aimed at or for what reason.

Most of the cast members returned three years later for Revenge of the NerdsII: Nerds in Paradise, which is largely a rehash of the first movie. It onceagain begins with a journey, except this time, instead of heading off to college, the boys areheaded down to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for the United Fraternity Conference. Havingconquered the Adams College campus, they once again find themselves discriminated againstby members of the Alpha Betas, this time led by Roger (Bradley Whitford, who has one ofthe most sniveling voices I've ever heard), who happens to be president of the UnitedFraternity Organization.

No big surprise, then, that the plot follows the intrepid nerd heroes as they suffer a series ofhumiliations before asserting their superiority in the end. There are a few funny moments tobe had, most notably Poindexter asking a cardboard cut-out of a bikini model if she's like adrink and Booger's run-in with a mystical Chinese shaman named Snotty, whose gross-outcapabilities far exceed Booger's own.

Overall, though, Revenge of the Nerds II has little to offer that wasn't done betterby the first movie. Courtney Thorne-Smith looks uncomfortable and stiff as Sunny, Lewis'new love interest, and Anthony Edwards was wise, after his success as Goose in themegahit Top Gun (1986), to take only a cameo role (his absence is explained by thefact that he broke his leg playing chess--"Hey, don't get down on yourself," Lewis tells him."That was a difficult move"). Still, it isn't worse than the next two sequels, Revenge ofthe Nerds III: The Next Generation (1992) and Revenge of the Nerds IV:Nerds in Love (1994), which bypassed theaters altogether and for good reason.

Copyright © 2001 James Kendrick