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By Veronica Chambers
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EARLY IN THE FILM ""CRUEL INTENTIONS,'' one of a spate of eye-opening teen movies due out this spring, a high-school girl offers her stepbrother a wager of interest to all guardians of family values. The challenge: to deflower a newly arrived virgin. If he loses, the stepsister gets his prized classic Jaguar. And if he wins? Kathryn (played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, star of the WB TV series ""Buffy the Vampire Slayer'') offers a visit to her bed. Sebastian (Ryan Phillippe) needs a little more persuading. Kathryn coils herself provocatively on the bed, then coos to her almost-sibling, ""You can put it anywhere you like.''
Every generation has its teen-exploitation movies, designed to tap adolescent wallets and maybe tweak a few concerned parents along the way. Cheaply made, these movies locate both adult anxieties and teen fantasies of the moment. If the coming batch is any indication, the current moment is clinically hormonal. We have moved beyond rebels without a cause, the mild miscreants of the breakfast club, even the kitschy slashers of 1997's ""Scream.'' Way beyond. In ""Cruel Intentions'' (due out March 5), which is a tartly hilarious update of ""Dangerous Liaisons,'' Kathryn fuels her raw sex talk by snorting cocaine from a silver crucifix. A teenage boy in ""American Pie'' (May 28), already being heralded as ""this generation's "Porky's','' masturbates into a warm apple pie. It makes ""There's Something About Mary'' look tame. In ""Go'' (March 25), the second movie from ""Swingers'' director Doug Liman, kids take drugs, sell drugs, have sex, get shot at, and it's all in a weekend's worth of fun. Real-life parents--even the parents of Tori Spelling--are shocked. ""I abhor some of these teenage movies,'' says producer Aaron Spelling, whose vast resume includes ""Beverly Hills 90210'' and the upcoming movie ""The Mod Squad.'' ""I think they're going too far. If they're going to have sexual affairs, I like to see condoms. We do it on TV. I think they should do it.''
Where past teen films created stars, from James Dean to Molly Ringwald, the new batch lifts them ready-made from television. Upstart networks like Fox and now the WB have thrived by working the teen market, creating a new set of cool young stars: Gellar, Neve Campbell (""Party of Five''), Katie Holmes and James Van Der Beek (""Dawson's Creek''). The film industry is capitalizing on their teen appeal with a glut of movies both naughty and nice. In January the R-rated ""Varsity Blues,'' which stars Van Der Beek, made a startling $17.5 million in its first weekend. In February the relatively tame ""She's All That,'' featuring a highly publicized cameo of Gellar, as well as the teen R&B star Usher, made a hefty $16.5 million its opening weekend. Both films opened No. 1 at the box office and cost about $10 million to produce.
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The directors of these teen films acknowledge a debt to John Hughes, who defined '80s teen movies with classics like ""The Breakfast Club'' and made Ringwald a generational icon. ""Hughes is like the Capra of our generation,'' says ""Cruel Intentions'' director Roger Kumble, 32. But the new films are a long way from the innocence of John Hughes movies: these teenagers have more sex, take more drugs and are a whole lot slicker. Reese Witherspoon, 22, who plays the chaste heartthrob in ""Cruel Intentions,'' admits she was at first uneasy about the material, which features little nudity but some very ripe language. ""I had to remind myself that this is based on a classic story,'' she says. But she felt the sexual manipulations of ""Cruel Intentions'' reflected current teen life. ""The great thing about this movie is that it blows the lid off any stereotype of kids' being gentle and demure. Kids are horrible to each other. It is a very sexual climate in high school. This movie shows parents that this is where your kids are at.''
The movies are also more casual about racial and sexual diversity. In ""Cruel Intentions,'' a rich girl's unsuitable suitor isn't poor, but black. When her patrician mother screams that she has taken the young man off the streets, the film mocks her prejudice. ""But I live on 59th and Park,'' he says, quoting an address as tony as her own. Gay characters, similarly, are no big deal. In ""Go,'' Jay Mohr and Scott Wolf (""Party of Five'') play two friends who are revealed, offhandedly, to be lovers. ""When we tested the movie, a lot of the kids don't realize the two soap-opera actors are gay,'' says one of the producers, Chris Lee. ""It may be that they don't want to think that about Scott Wolf.'' By the time the two characters start bickering like a couple, says Lee, the kids get it. They're ""on the floor'' with laughter.
Most of these movies are rated R but are heavily advertised on the WB and MTV, where they are bound to attract an audience under 17. ""American Pie,'' which is awash in bodily fluids, had to lose several scenes just to get an R. The assumption is that underage kids can and will get in, no problem. ""Well, let's hope so,'' says Kumble, who argues that there's no way to make a PG-13 film that will have credibility with teenagers. ""I go into meetings [with studio executives] and they say, "Can you make it like "Caddyshack'? Can you make it like "Fast Times at Ridgemont High'? These are R-rated movies. I can't do a PG-13 "Dangerous Liaisons'--it's going to be fluff. I told them I won't do nudity in this movie but I am going to talk about it a lot so audiences can have a mental image of what these kids are up to.''
What may shock parents most about the new movies is the absence of parents. Where James Dean's dad was an apron-wearing object of ridicule in ""Rebel Without a Cause,'' the new parents lack even that stature. If they aren't falling into bed with their sons' friends--that would be ""American Pie''--adults are rarely in the picture. In ""Cruel Intentions,'' the two leading characters spend the whole summer without seeing their parents at all--and certainly don't miss them. When told that ""the parental unit'' has called in, Sebastian asks his stepsister, ""How is your gold-digging whore of a mother enjoying Bali?'' Kathryn responds: ""She suspects that your impotent, alcoholic father is diddling the maid.'' Kumble says that the teenagers' bad behavior is meant to be a reflection of their family situation. ""When people ask, "Why are these kids so screwed up?' I tell them, "Hello, their parents are not there'.'' The pattern returns in movie after movie. In ""Go,'' Sarah Polley's character gets involved in a drug deal because she doesn't have $375 in rent money. But she's only 17. ""The fact that there are no parents may not be the literal truth for most teens, but it's the subjective truth,'' says Lee. ""With latchkey kids and divorced parents, many kids feel their parents just aren't there for them.''
Whether or not these movies reflect the world most American teenagers live in, the filmmakers think that the teen audience is primed for the ride. Doug Liman describes ""Go'' as ""a celebration of being a teenager and the freedom that gives you to do pretty much anything and get away with it. While you're a teenager, you have a get-out-of-jail-free card. And that's a great thing. The only thing you can do wrong is to not do anything.'' And certainly, for most teenagers, the wrong thing to do will be to not go to these movies. R stands for Restricted, but for them it is code for Rebellion. Sneaking into these movies will be half the fun.
PHOTO (COLOR): Cruel Intentions: 1999 'Dangerous Liaisons' remake updated with snooty Manhattan preppies, features hot-bodied TV stars and raunchy sex talk, but little skin
RAGING TEEN HORMONES Contemporary teen films are much more explicit than such classics as "Splendor in the Grass" (though maybe not as erotic). A survey of some recent landmarks.
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
1982 Casual nudity, sex scenes and profanity: big hit
The Breakfast Club
1985 Talkathon featured minimal skin. Dirty mouths earned R rating anyway.
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
1986 Teens play hooky, attend ball game, parade. Wholesome to the max.
Heathers
1989 Do what with a chainsaw? R rating for black comedy about teen suicide.
Clueless
1995 Heroine is 'a virgin who can't drive.' Jane Austen plot brought PG-13.
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