Hick Trek: The Moovie

I wanted a shorter film to wrap up my second day of triple features.  Coming in at 60 minutes Hick Trek: The Moovie looked like just the ticket.  It also fit my desire to watch some films that weren’t very well known.  Hick Trek had never had a theatrical release, but had been shown at several science fiction conventions.  It reminded me of Star Wreck Commotion Picture which I had seen at Munch Con back in the early 80s.  But where Star Wreck used footage from Star Trek and elicited laughs by overdubbing, editing, and adding funny musical cues, the makers of Hick Trek shot a redneck parody using actors, sets, and props.

Hick Trek’s sets are laughable, but the actors sell them perfectly.  Nothing looks like anything more than somebody’s wood paneled basement.  There is no attempt to go for a futuristic outer space feel.  They embrace the low budget redneck atmosphere and run with that.  The plot is there mainly to string together a mash-up of Star Trek clichés and Blue Collar Comedy Tour jokes. You shouldn’t really expect Oscar caliber performances from a bunch of friends making a glorified home movie especially in 1999, but the actors do a fine job of remaining true to their characters.

I don’t know that I would re-watch Hick Trek anytime soon, but I’m not sorry that I spent the hour to watch it.  I’m definitely envious that the filmmakers were able to get as good of a final film produced for what had to be an extremely small budget.  I didn’t love the concept of merging Star Trek with redneck humor.  It’s like mixing sushi and PBR.  They may be fine on their own, but putting them together might result in an upset stomach.  I give Hick Trek 1.5 stars.

Police Squad!

I decided to start my year of TV on DVD with some one season wonders.  This will give me a chance to decide how this is going to work out and how best to review these DVDs.  I’m not sure I’m really prepared to do individual reviews on each episode, especially with shows that ran 100 to 200 episodes.  Those may rate a season over view.  We’ll see.

Police Squad! first aired in 1982 on ABC.  It was the TV show from the makers of Airplane!; David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, and Jim Abrahams.  I remember watching the show, but I didn’t catch every episode.  Of course it only aired 4 episodes before it was yanked off the air.  Six episodes had been filmed and the final 2 were burned off in the summer by ABC and the show was laid to rest.  My friend Dana Grooms had taped all 6 episodes and I borrowed his tapes to watch them.  I liked them, but I wasn’t bowled over either.  When they came out with The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad movie, I really wondered how they would make a decent movie out of the series.  Well they did, and they made two sequels as well. 

It seemed like forever before Police Squad! ever got the proper DVD release, but it finally did.  All 6 episodes are included with commentary on 3 of the episodes.  In addition there’s a gag reel, an interview with Leslie Nielsen, screen tests, and other bonuses.  I sat down Saturday morning and watched the first two episodes.  Today I watched the remaining 4 episodes and then rewatched the 3 with the commentary track playing. 

Police Squad! had several running gags including several in the opening title sequence.  Each episode opened with an announcer dramatically intoning, “Police Squad!  In color.”  This was followed by the introduction of the stars, Leslie Nielsen and Alan North, and then Rex Harrison as Abraham Lincoln.  Needless to say Lincoln never actually appeared in any of the episodes.  After Lincoln the celebrity guest would be announced and then quickly killed off before the credits were over.  The credits ended with the episode title being shown on the screen and the announcer reading a different title. 

Other running gags throughout the series included Frank Drebin (Nielsen) driving into something.  The original gag was that what he drove into would correspond to the episode number.  In episode 1 he hits one trash can.  In episode 3 he runs over three bikes.  Drebin’s visits to the police lab to talk with Mr. Olson (Ed Williams) who was always doing some sort of demented Mr. Wizard discussion with a young boy or girl, and his stop to talk with Johnny (William Duell) the shoeshine man who has info on everything were staples of all six episodes.  Each episode also ended with Drebin or his boss running down a list of all the criminals that had been put away in earlier episodes.  This joke would have worked better if the episodes had been aired in order.  Unlike Firefly and some other series, the DVD chooses to run them in broadcast order rather than their proper production order.  Finally the episodes alway ended with a fake freeze frame which would usually end up being broken by one of the cast members or a prop.

The first episode A Substantial Gift (The Broken Promise) is probably the best of the six.  This episode was written and directed by Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker, so it is the absolute closest to their Airplane! style of comedy.  The episode is packed with jokes of all sorts.  There were several I caught for the first time while rewatching this episode, and then when I watched it again with the commentary playing, I caught still another visual joke I had missed just the day before.  A couple of these jokes are so subtle, you really have to be watching your TV to get them.  Two of them work off of the initial joke in the episode where Drebin mentions that the city had recently had a large number of super models turning up unconscious and naked at local laundry mats.  Unfortunately, he adds, he had been assigned to investigate a bank robbery.  It’s a cute joke, but the follow up is perfection when Drebin states he was on his way to the crime scene from the other side of town where he had been doing his laundry.  Then later as he leaves Dr. Olson and goes to question a suspect, he states in voice over that he had been attending to a personal matter.  They don’t dwell on the line and they also don’t make a major point of making sure you see sitting in the seat beside Drebin is a basket of laundry.  If you’re paying attention, you can see the top of it, but the joke is not hammered out. 

The first episode also contains a bit of word play involving the names of several characters involved in the robbery. It’s classic ZAZ style humor and very funny.

The second episode, Ring of Fear (A Dangerous Assignment), was written in part by Robert Wuhl and Tino Insana, and directed by Joe Dante.  It involves Drebin infiltrating the boxing world to take down a crime boss that is fixing fights.  It’s not a bad episode despite team ZAZ being involved only as production staff.

Episode 3 is The Butler Did It (A Bird in the Hand).  The teleplay was by Pat Proft, and the direction was by Georg Stanford Brown (who ironically was the guest star killed off at the start of episode #2).  This isn’t horrible, but even the Zuckers and Abrahams admit it’s not the most stellar of episodes pointing out how long it takes before you get to the first joke as a major flaw.  The episodes still has some pretty funny moments despite the slow start and an ending that goes on too long and then caps off with a horrible pun.

Revenge and Remorse (The Guilty Alibi) was the last episode aired during the initial run.  It involves someone blowing up judges and lawyers associated with incarcerating a professional bomber that has been released from prison.  It was written by Nancy Steen and Neil Thompson and directed by Paul Krasny.  Krasny had directed lots of TV cop shows, so he was able to give the episode a realistic feel of the genre it was spoofing.  The scenes of the bomber setting up his kills look just the way you would expect to see them on The Rookies or SWAT or any other crime show of the period.

After a four month break, ABC finally aired the last two episodes of Police Squad!.  Rendezvous at Big Gulch (Terror in the Neighborhood), another Steen and Thompson penned story gets direction from Reza Badiyi (another director of TV dramas).  This episode concerns a neighborhood being preyed on by a protection racket.  There are plenty of visual sight gags even if there are less of the pun heavy jokes you might expect from ZAZ.

The final episode of Police Squad! was Testimony of Evil (Dead Men Don’t Laugh).  This was another Wuhl, Insana, Dante episode, but it also has the distinction of being probably the worst episode of the series.  A nightclub entertainer involved in drug trafficking is murdered, so Drebin goes undercover as an entertainer to take his place.  The scene with Drebin doing his act of jokes and songs goes on way too long and is more cringe worthy than funny.  The only thing I found funny in the whole bit was how they managed to destroy one joke in an effort to make it network friendly by substituting “hot tar” for “dog crap”.  Yes, there used to be a time when you couldn’t do poop jokes on television.  I was also surprised they got away with sneaking in the puchline, “I don’t think I can take 67 more of those” on an 8 PM show back in 1982.  I can only assume that standards didn’t know the rest of the joke.  It involves flatulence and a number two higher than the one mentioned on television.  Larry the Cable Guy has been known to tell it in his shows.

Testimony of Evil does have a few cute bits, and it has Dick Miller in a supporting role, so it’s not all bad.  It’s just the weakest of the six.  I would still rather watch it than any episode of Real Housewives, any Bridal shows, or a million other shows that have crossed the airwaves.  Even Robert Wuhl in the commentary seems to state that this is not his greatest work.  He continually talks about how he doesn’t remember this or he doesn’t remember that.  He also admits the Drebin stage performance goes on too long. 

So using a scale of 1 to 10, Police Squad! gets a 9 for episode 1, a 7 for episodes 2, 4, and 5, a 6 for episode 3 and a 4 for episode 6.  That averages out to a 6.66 which we will round up to a 7.  Amazingly if I had been asked to just rate the series, I would have probably given it an 8.

The Villain

Like Ice Pirates, The Villain was one of those movies I saw over 20 years ago, hated and wanted to give a second look.  I seem to recall The Villain playing at the late lamented Saint Albans Mall Twin Cinemas.  I know I finally saw it when it hit HBO.  The film was described as a live action Road Runner cartoon, and Kirk Douglas in the title role does go through many of the classic Wily E. Coyote gags, but for some reason it just never seems as funny in this film.

The Villain stars Douglas, Ann-Margret, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Paul Lynde has a supporting role as an Indian chief called Nervous Elk.  Other supporting roles went to Ruth Buzzi, Foster Brooks, Strother Martin, Mel Tillis, and western legend Jack Elam.  The film was directed by Hal Needham who also directed several other stunt heavy pictures including Hooper, Cannonball Run, and Smokey and the Bandit.  With that much talent The Villain should have been a home run.  There are some funny bits in the movie, but sadly it is one of Needham’s weakest efforts. 

The plot involves bad guy Douglas trying to rob Ann-Margret before she can get some money back to her daddy.  Since Schwarzenegger owed her daddy a favor, he agrees to accompany her and protect her from danger.  Schwarzenegger’s character is the pure white hat in the picture, while Ann-Margret as Charming Jones keeps trying to seduce the oblivious Schwarzenegger as Handsome Stranger.  All of her attempts work about as well as Douglas’ plans to rob the pair.

I really did have high hopes that I would like this film much better after all this time had elapsed, but the film seems to lack a driving story to tie it together.  It starts off promising, but once the duo start the trip back to Daddy’s place, it quickly becomes a series of sight gags.  Douglas tries to pull a boulder down on them.  It rolls over him instead.  Douglas tries to tie a rope around a boulder and jump onto their wagon.  He misses the wagon and the rope pulls the boulder down on top of him.  Mix in shots of Paul Lynde watching the action and doing a bad stereotypical Indian voice, and the film quickly becomes monotonous.

I do recommend the first part if for no other reason than to see Foster Brooks as the bank clerk Douglas tries to rob.  Brooks has the funniest line in the whole film and delivers it perfectly.  For that scene alone I have to give The Villain 2 stars.  I wanted to give it more, but sadly nostalgia can only help so much.

Family Guy Presents: It’s A Trap!

Back in June I watched the Family Guy parody of The Empire Strikes Back.  I wasn’t as thrilled with it as I was Blue Harvest their original Star Wars parody.  This year they came out with the third parody taking on Return of the Jedi and titled it It’s A Trap!.  I enjoyed this one slightly more than Something, Something, Something Dark Side, but I still think it falls short of the original Blue Harvest.  At this point it seems like they felt like they had to complete the original trilogy.  Even the dialogue at the beginning of the episode speaks to the inevitability of them doing a Jedi parody and warns everyone not to get their hopes up too much. 

There are some funny moments in the film, but there are also some bits that just seem to go on way too long.  Case in point being the “signal” where the various characters nod to each other.  It would have been much funnier if it hadn’t went on for so freaking long. 

I think the funniest thing about this installment was something that had nothing to do with the actual movie.  It was the box.  Each of the DVD cases has been a parody of the one sheet for that particular film.  With the release of It’s A Trap! they decided to release the entire Family Guy trilogy in a box set as well.  The box is a spot on parody of the original DVD release box art for the original Star Wars trilogy down to the gold color that indicated the Full Screen edition versus the silver-colored Widescreen edition. 

There are some funny moments in It’s A Trap!, but they are more self-referencial humor than the Star Wars gags found in Blue Harvest.  When Roger the alien from American Dad appears and the characters discuss how they’ve run out of their own characters at this point, I had to snicker a bit.  I also enjoyed Chris (voiced by Seth Green) having to continually defend the work of Seth Green.  And the end where all the characters voiced by Seth MacFarlane talk about how MacFarlane is such a wonderful guy while the other characters all say he’s a real asshole had me laughing as well. 

Looking back I see I gave Something, Something, Something Dark Side 3 stars.  That was probably a mistake on my part.  It was probably closer to a 2 1/2 with It’s A Trap! rating a 2 3/4.  If you saw the first two, you know you’ll have to see this one as well.  There was a joke in the movie about how The Cleveland Show was going to do the prequels.  Part of me hopes this truly was just a joke.  On the other hand there is a part of me that wonders how that might turn out.

The Ice Pirates

I saw The Ice Pirates at the Plaza East Cinemas when it first came out.  I didn’t really care for it.  It seemed silly and actually a little boring.  26 years later I’m browsing the DVDs at Big Lots and I find a copy of The Ice Pirates.  Surely it can’t be as bad as I remembered.  Maybe I didn’t get the jokes.  I decided that for $3 I would take a chance and check it out again. 

I am sad to report that even upon a second viewing and 26 years in between them, I still didn’t care for the movie.  I think there might be a half-way decent movie buried inside of this one, but it’s like digging through a pile of dog crap to retrieve a quarter the pooch swallowed.  Is it really worth it?

The Ice Pirates is set in the future in another galaxy where the only valuable commodity left is water.  Blocks of ice are worth their weight in gold.  Of course with anything this valuable there are bound to be people who try to hijack it.  In this case it would be Robert Urich’s band of ice pirates.  His crew consists of a very young Ron Perlman, Michael Roberts, John Matuszak, and Angelica Huston.  In the midst of one particular heist, Urich also kidnaps a princess played by Mary Crosby.

From that point on we’re taken on a cross galaxy quest to find the princess’ missing father and the mysterious 10th planet which is covered with water.  Along the way we get a robotic Bruce Vilanch, space prairie dogs, a pirate bar, and in a nod to Alien, a space herpes.  Of course the princess falls in love with Urich’s pirate and they have a passionate tryst while heading for the mysterious planet. 

The movie is definitely campy and not meant to be taken too seriously, but I still found myself rather bored by the whole ordeal.  If it wasn’t for the nostalgia factor, I don’t know if this would rate above 1/2 a star.  As it is, I give it 1 star.

Blazing Saddles

Blazing Saddles is one of the funniest films I have ever seen.  I remember when it first came out, my friend, Keith Harris, went with his dad and saw it.  Keith was telling me all about the campfire scene and how funny it was.  Bob, his dad, asked his older daughter how she would react if she had been in the theater watching something like that, and she basically said that she would probably laugh.  It’s hard to believe in these days with movies like Jackass 3-D hitting the screens without raising an eyebrow, that there once was a time when it was considered taboo to depict the act of farting on-screen.  Mel Brooks has recounted many times about studio executives telling him before the first test screenings that he needed to take that scene out because it was so vulgar.  Of course after they heard the laughter at the test screenings they quickly recanted on that demand.  Now you can hear fart jokes on television and no one thinks anything about it. 

Of course some of the things that Mel Brooks did in Blazing Saddles that didn’t cause any problems back in 1974 would never be allowed in a movie today.  Can you imagine a comedy from a white director where the N word is tossed about so casually being made today?  Can you imagine it being made without threats of boycotts and protests?  I’m not saying that racism is acceptable.  I’m just saying that sometimes comedy isn’t pretty.

The first time I actually saw Blazing Saddles was during a late 70s or early 80s re-release.  It was playing at the Virginian theater and I went to check it out.  I was surprised that the film had an R rating.  There was no nudity, no sex, no graphic violence, and no usage of the F word.  Apparently the crude humor aspect netted it the R.

The DVD features a lot of really nice bonus features, but the neatest rarity in my opinion is the inclusion of the pilot for the Black Bart television series based on Blazing Saddles the movie.  Louis Gossett Jr. starred as Sheriff Bart.  The pilot was horrible, but it was nice that they included it for posterity.  It should also be mentioned that the pilot featured the recently departed Steve Landesberg.

Blazing Saddles is a film that everyone should see at least once.  If you don’t find something to laugh at in this film, you’re probably way too uptight.  I give it 4 stars.

Saturday Night Live: The Best Of Commercial Parodies

One of the things Saturday Night Live has done and done well since the show started is commercial parodies.  I found SNL’s Best of Commercial Parodies at Big Lots recently for $3.  I decided to pop it in and check it out.  The show originally aired as a special apparently and was hosted by Will Ferrell.  The Ferrell bits were used to intro and outro the real commercial breaks from the way it looks.  They aren’t the sharpest bits of humor SNL has ever seen, but they aren’t as bad as some of the sketches they tend to throw in after the last musical performance and before the good nights.

Of course the real reason to watch this disc is to see the commercial parodies.  When SNL started back in 1975, Lorne used to constantly have affiliates cutting out during the commercial parodies because they thought it was an actual commercial break.  Unfortunately only about 3 of the parodies from the classic first 5 years are included on this disc.  You get the Bass-O-Matic, Little Chocolate Donuts, and Hey You.  Most of the parodies are from the late 90s and early 2000s.  There are plenty of bits with Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler.  I don’t remember much of anything from seasons 6 through 11 making the cut.  I keep hoping SNL Season 6 will get the complete season release treatment this year just because I’m so anxious to see just how bad that year truly was.  It was also one of the three shortest seasons in SNL history.

So keeping in mind that most of the content of this disc is more recent, how did it fair?  Well, the parodies they chose were for the most part funny.  Many of them I remembered seeing when they first aired and enjoyed revisiting them.  Others were brand new to me and managed to make me smile.  A few suffered from not wrapping up the gag quick enough.  For example did “Oops, I Crapped My Pants” adult diapers really get funnier as the two seniors kept repeating the line, and did we really need that final shot of them walking off the tennis court carrying an obvious full load in their adult diapers?  Guess that depends on your taste in scatological humor.

The Best of Commercial Parodies is a decent collection and the DVD even provides several bonus commercials to make it an even better value.  At $3 I’m very happy with the DVD.  If I had paid full price, I’m not sure I would have been so thrilled.  I give Best of Commercial Parodies 2 1/2 stars.

Young Frankenstein

After sitting with my daughter and watching Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein, I felt there was only one logical place to go after this, Young Frankenstein.  I felt that since she was wanting to see some classic films, it was only fair to watch a classic comedy.  And what better time to watch Young Frankenstein than directly following screenings of Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein. 

I remember seeing Young Frankenstein when it first came out back in 1974.  My sister took her two boys, my mom, and myself to The Village theater to see it.  All three of us boys were huge fans of monster movies and we were tickled to get to see this film.  The jokes were a little more intelligent than what we were used to getting in viewings of Gilligan’s Island or Saturday morning cartoons like The Funky Phantom, and that tended to make them even funnier to us.  Some of the jokes were even slightly adult.  The “roll in the hay” joke slipped past us, but “what knockers” was the funniest thing we had ever heard because it was so risqué to our pre-teen ears.

Young Frankenstein is a near perfect parody, but it is also a funny film on its own merit as well.  The scene in the lecture hall that opens the film is a perfect bit of slapstick, verbal humor, and the slow burn just before Gene Wilder thrusts the scalpel into his leg.  I remember not getting the joke about “pardon me boy, is this the Transylvania station” when I first viewed the film, but I also remember laughing my butt off later when I heard the song that the dialogue was spoofing.

Like most of Mel Brooks early films, Young Frankenstein still holds up to this day.  It also holds up well to repeat viewings, the mark of a true classic in my book.  I give Young Frankenstein 4 stars as well, and it deserves every one of them.  When you can recall the exact way you felt when you first saw a film 36 years later, it’s safe to say it made a mark on your psyche.

The Foot Fist Way

A lot of small independent films come out that I read reviews for and think they would be fun to see.  Wet Hot American Summer was one of those films.  The Foot Fist Way was another.  The problem is that these films seldom make it to WV, so I’m left waiting for the DVD.  Of course I won’t buy the DVD until the price drops or I find it used, and that doesn’t always happen either.  Recently I did manage to run across a copy of The Foot Fist Way at Wills, so I picked it up.

The Foot Fist Way is the story of Fred Simmons (Danny McBride), a Tae Kwan Do instructor with a huge ego and a poor sense of reality.  The film shows us Simmons’ life in much the way a documentary filmmaker would show it.  It’s like watching The Office without the interview segments.  When Simmons finds out his wife has cheated on him (she gave her boss a hand job at a party), he begins a downward spiral.  He tries hitting on one of his female students to no avail and begins discussing his marital problems with his grade school age students in graphic detail.  The only bright spot for Simmons is his trip to Las Vegas to meet his idol Chuck “The Truck” Wallace (Ben Best).

Fred Simmons plays like a Will Ferrell character which is not surprising since Ferrell and Adam McKay were “presenters” on this film.  The director is Jody Hill, who also plays Simmons best friend Mike McAlister.  Hill was the writer/director of Observe and Report and has also worked with McBride on his television series Eastbound & Down. 

The Foot Fist Way has some funny sequences, and it has its share of cringe inducing moments as well.  The scene where Simmons sits in his van with one of his students whose parents failed to pick him up and starts talking about his wife while drinking beers has a very creepy feeling.  When he asks the kid if he knows what a hand job is and then proceeds to explain the act in technical detail, there is almost a predatory pedophiliac overtone to it, but that’s not the case.  The scene is just more of Simmons self-absorbed personality and bad judgement.  This is not your garden variety comedy.  It does have a fairly uplifting ending, but it’s not a case of everyone lived happily ever after either.

The DVD contains a behind the scenes featurette, but it is the worst example of this that I have ever seen.  There is no dialogue.  It is lots of home movie style footage spliced together with some music over top of it.  There are a couple of bloopers and some deleted scenes such as an alternate ending.  These are more enjoyable, but still nothing amazing. 

As I said The Foot Fist Way isn’t for everyone, but if you want something different, give it a shot.  For my money, Foot Fist Way gets 2 1/2 stars.

Wet Hot American Summer

When I first heard about Wet Hot American Summer in Entertainment Weekly, I thought it sounded really funny and wanted to see it.  The film never made it around Charleston to my knowledge.  It did come out on DVD, but it was usually in the $20 range, which is more than I typically pay for a DVD.  It also played Comedy Central, albeit in an edited format, so that wasn’t something I got excited about.  The other day I ran into Wet Hot American Summer in the Wal-Mart $5 DVD section.  I couldn’t pass it up.

Wet Hot American Summer is a summer camp comedy with a cast composed of members of The State, SNL and Stella along with some up and coming actors (Paul Rudd and Bradley Cooper) and more recognizable names like Janeane Garofalo and David Hyde Pierce.  It is a little like a more adult and more alternative Meatballs.  It plays with the conventions of the summer camp comedy and sends many of the old clichés home on their heads.  The big misfit softball competition where the underdogs face an unbeaten rival team from their arch rival camp, the underdogs here decide just to forfeit so that they can do something else that they feel will be more fun.  The counselor love affairs also get similar treatment with the hot girl deciding to stay with the hunky guy that cheats on her instead of running off with the sensitive guy that has loved her all summer long. 

Throughout the movie I had several bouts of deja vu, and it took me quite a bit before I realized that I had apparently caught more of the film on Comedy Central while flipping channels than I first thought.  It didn’t spoil the film for me, but it was strange trying to figure out how I knew large chunks of a film I didn’t think I had ever seen.

I give Wet Hot American Summer 3 stars, but it does have an odd sense of humor that might throw some people off.