Our fanatical devotion to cinema has come to fruition.

Through the sweat of our brows, the strain of our eyes, and the callouses-ness of our typing fingers, we have compiled for you — week by week without interruption — a full one-hundred double features. That’s 100 double features, each a full evening of paired cinematic entertainments, variously strange and wonderful, inane and insightful, mysterious and familiar.

Only serious nerds could achieve such a task. As just such serious nerds, we will now celebrate our 100th Mind Control Double Feature with a double feature about serious nerds. Or, if you will, ‘perfect squares.’ Like the number 100, which is also a perfect square.

See? Nerd humor for nerds! But nerds whom you adore due to that inexplicable nerd-chic fashion that is blanketing the nation with boxy black eyewear and obscure comic book in-joke t-shirts. Also with undeniable lust for those who maintain fanatical enthusiasm for niche subjects.

Does anyone want to talk about Hal Ashby’s terrible films? Anyone?

Never fear, though. From this week hence, the double features will continue, just not so much with the regularity. We will post them when they creep into our nerdy, cinephile brains. When you least expect them. Perhaps late on a Tuesday evening? Maybe we shall wait until the leap year to strike!? No one can say. No one will say. Fewer will understand.

Except you. You, gentle reader, you will understand, and watch this double feature and future double features, and rejoice in the fact that there are — like you — other devotees of fine and forgotten films lurking along the internets.

And you will sneer at the johnny-come-lately nerds and their nerd fashions. Or you would if you ever left the house.

Real Genius (1985)

There is one exceptional thing about Real Genius, the 1985 college comedy from director Martha Coolidge: it is about nerds, but not about nerds vs. non-nerds. While generally films — such as the previous year’s Revenge of the Nerds — depict socially challenged, highly intelligent types as curiosities who only make sense in contrast to other stock types (see: jocks), Real Genius goes in fully cocked.

Like an extra-terrestrial villain in some creepy adult Japanese manga.

Real Genius is about nerds and, also, super nerds. It is not about people whom you can laugh at before a saccharine ending reminds you that nerds are people too, but rather about people you can relate to and whom you like from the beginning. Because you are also a nerd.

So how does a film about brainiacs begin? With lasers. In a prologue, we see the C.I.A. testing a space shuttle mounted laser that can snuff terrestrial targets (see: drones). The trial of this assassination contraption goes poorly, which puts the pressure on smarmy Pacific Technical Institute (see: CalTech) professor Jerry Hathaway — William Atherton, whom you should recognize as the dickless wonder from Ghostbusters. Hathaway, in charge of death laser development, attempts to get the secret project on track by accepting fifteen-year old science prodigy Mitch Taylor (Gabriel Jarret) as a student and research assistant.

Mitch, like most everyone else, doesn’t suspect the laser’s military applications. He’s just psyched to be rooming with the fabled physics genius Chris Knight (Val Kilmer, in his best role that doesn’t involve imitating Marlon Brando). To Mitch’s surprise, however, Chris is irreverent, unfocused, and more concerned with pulling practical jokes than building a five-megawatt laser. College is also rough for a small, nerdy teen — particularly when Professor Hathaway disrupts the social order by putting Mitch in charge.

There is much more to Real Genius, too: it includes one of my favorite screen romances, sparky dialogue, intrigue, and someone living in the bowels of closet accessible only by theme-park ride. You ask if it’s as good as its better known nerd-world peers — WarGames and Weird Science? No. It’s better. Real Genius is one of those ’80s films that dances cleanly through the icky minefield of the era. Michelle Meyrink (also in Revenge of the Nerds) is great as Jordan; beautiful in a way nerds can believe and not just there for the gawking at. Robert Prescott’s Kent — the film’s primary antagonist — manages to be a joke without being impotent. Or rather his impotence doesn’t keep him from wreaking havoc.

Compare Michelle here to, say, the fabricated, idealized woman in Weird Science.

And that havoc is authentically emotional, even if Real Genius‘ climax centers on a house being destroyed by popcorn.

Director Martha Coolidge and the film’s trio of writers (Neal Israel, Pat Proft, Peter Torokvei, plus a few script doctors) made a film that seems crazy, except much of it has basis in real life, and even real life at CalTech. The contest scheme closet dweller Lazlo (Jon Gries) comes up with? Really happened. The character of Jordan? Based on a real CalTech student known as ‘Tigger.’ The Tanning Invitational party? It was an annual staple.

Giant lasers that will kill you from space, on the other hand? The C.I.A. claims they do not currently have such a device, but who you gonna believe?

My faith lies with a young Val Kilmer, even though he cannot, right now, nail a six-inch spike through a board with his penis.

After all, a guy has to have his standards.

Office Space (1999)

Mike Judge’s Office Space is to 1999’s software nerd what Real Genius was to the swinging physics nerds of the 1980s: a paean to their undervalued ascendancy.

While I certainly hope all of you have seen Office Space — a film currently being lauded for helping the world rid itself of ‘flair’ — perhaps some of you have not. It is a film that did not dominate the box office, only gradually becoming known as a cult favorite. And a favorite of mine.

Why? Because it perfectly achieves a nearly impossible task: it makes your own horrible life funny. The comedy of Office Space, of which there is plenty, all revolves around the reality of shitty jobs. Its characters aren’t superheroes or even super nerds, just everyday nerds who happen to be locked in a hypnotic state.

Allow me to explain:

Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingstone) works for Initech. His job is a nightmare of pointless bureaucracy and mismanagement. His colleagues, Samir Nagheenanajar (Ajay Naidu) and Michael Bolton (David Herman) are, like Peter, at their wits’ end. Simple frustrations like copy jams threaten to kill them all by aneurism. If you work in an office, I’m sure you can relate. 

Peter is so unhappy that his girlfriend forces him to see an occupational hypnotherapist — who hypnotizes Peter and then dies of a heart attack before he can wake Peter up. This is the best thing that has ever happened to our hero. Left in a state of permanent relaxation, he skips work, lets his cheating girlfriend go, and then shows up at Initech to tell everyone — including the consultants hired to thin out the workforce — exactly how stupid and pointless everything he does at work is.

It is, frankly, your dream come true. Especially as Peter’s frankness does not result in his dismissal; it results in his promotion. And from there, we work our way into a plot about getting your own back from your corporate overlords. Jennifer Aniston plays Joanna, Peter’s waitress love-interest; Gary Cole is perfect as Bill Lumburgh, the detestably oily manager; and Stephen Root steals the show as Milton, the co-worker who doesn’t realize he’s been fired.

Office Space should be required viewing for every college graduate. If you’re a nerd — and you are — you can take solace from it and its heartening message: you can’t win, but at least you’re not alone.

You nerd.