July 7-13 Teen Movie Hell Week: From the book description on the Bazillion Points website: All-seeing author Mike “McBeardo” McPadden (Heavy Metal Movies) passes righteous judgment over the entire (teen movie) genre, one boobs-and-boner opus at a time. In more than 350 reviews and sidebars, Teen Movie Hell lays the crucible of coming-of-age comedies bare, from party-hearty farces such as The Pom-Pom Girls, Up the Creek, and Fraternity Vacation to the extreme insanity exploding all over King Frat, Screwballs, The Party Animal, and Surf II: The End of the Trilogy.

Made one after the other with Better Off Dead by director and writer Savage Steve Holland with actor John Cusack, this may not have been a success in theaters, but when it came to video stores and cable TV, it was watched over and over.

Hoops McCann (Cusack) — named for the Steely Dan song “Glamour Profession”– didn’t get a scholarship in basketball, despite his name. However, he wants to attend the Rhode Island School of Design to become an animator. He just needs to put together an illustrated love story to get in, so he does what we all would: he goes to Nantucket with his friends George (Joel Murray) and Squid Calamari (Kristen Goelz).

After they rescue singer Cassandra Eldridge (Demi Moore) from a motorcyle gang, they settle in for a summer of hijnks with twins Egg (Bobcat Goldthwaite) and Clay Stork (Tom Willard) and Ack-Ack Raymond (Curtis Armstrong), much of which is about saving Cassandra’s family home from the Beckersted family (Mark Metcalf, William Hickey, Matt Mulhern). Hoops even gets challenged to a basketball game that he loses horribly, upsetting Cassandra, all while Egg gets stuck in a Godzilla costume.

There’s a regatta, a boat race, an old man bad guy who turns babyface and a radio station blowing up real good. Plus, animated sequences, bunny versions of Siskel and Ebert exploding, Rich Little as a DJ, Joe Flaherty as General Raymond, a young Jeremy Piven as rich kid Ty, Billie Bird as a wacky grandma (of course) and two of my favorite small role players, Rich Hall and Taylor Negron, as gas station attendants. Oh yeah! John Matuszak — Sloth himself — is in this!

Yes, Summer Rental also ends with a boat race.