Sept 8-14 Sketchy Comedy Week: “…plotless satires, many of which were only excuses for drug humor or gratuitous nudity sprinkled with the cheapest of gags. The typical form was a channel-changing structure, which would go from one sketch to the next under the premise that this was just another night at home watching the old boob tube. The medium is the message, baby!”

Directed and written by Ben Stiller, this points to the promise that he had before making big budget movies. Here, all sorts of people find stories of Presley to tell and Stiller even plays a hairdresser possessed by his spirit. Jeremy Piven and John Cusack sell hamburgers in the shape of the King’s head. You even get the music video for Mojo Nixon’s “Elvis Is Everywhere.”

“Elvis is in your jeans
He’s in your cheesburgers
Elvis is in Nutty Buddies!
Elvis is in your mom!”

Just an incredible selection of quick hits. Could Elvis golf? I don’t know. I don’t care. I still laughed.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Sept 8-14 Sketchy Comedy Week: “…plotless satires, many of which were only excuses for drug humor or gratuitous nudity sprinkled with the cheapest of gags. The typical form was a channel-changing structure, which would go from one sketch to the next under the premise that this was just another night at home watching the old boob tube. The medium is the message, baby!”

In 1999, Vince Offer made The Underground Comedy Movie, and wow… that was a tough watch. Somehow, his success as an infomercial salesman led to an even bigger budget and stars for this, a movie that remakes much of that film without improving any of it.

Vince Offer was born Offer Shlomi in Israel and came to the U.S. as a kid. He dropped out of school, moved to Los Angeles and started appearing on public TV and making his first film. During that movie’s filming, he went bankrupt, so he sold it with infomercials on Comedy Central and earnings from swap meet vegetable chopper sales. He took the skills he learned there and became known as the ShamWow guy. He even feuded with Billy Mays, as that salesman claimed that the offer stole the SlapChop and ShamWow from him.

That’s not the only controversy. He sued the Farrelly Brothers, claiming that There’s Something About Mary stole from his first movie; he sued Anna Nicole Smith for backing out of that movie; his former personal assistant, Jennifer Kosinski, sued him for sexual harassment, including his offering her money for her eggs. He also had a sex worker bite his tongue and not let go until he punched her in the face multiple times, which ended with them being arrested. Oh yeah — he’s also an ex-Scientologist.

Offer had used his connections within the Church of Scientology Celebrity Center International, a group within the church for artist networking, to cast his film. The film was so poorly received that Scientology pretty much cut ties with him, saying that he was violating Scientology rules by spending more on his movie than the church. I love this line I found while researching this: “Statements and evidence were collected and the CoS charged Vince with 23 crimes against Scientology, and he was forced to stand trial in Scientology Court.”

Vince didn’t forget this and sued them with the money he made from his first movie. I wish I could say that either movie was good.

That said, back to this movie. Offer touches app buttons — seven of them, fortunately, as twenty are shown — and this opens up sketches.

The height of humor in this is “Flirty Harry,” in which two-time Academy Award winner Adrien Brody acts like, well, a homosexual Dirty Harry, throwing filthy lines at people like “Go ahead, make my gay.” That’s it, that’s the tweet, as the late James Caan would say.

Rob Schneider, not yet a right-wing comedian, is in this as a psychologist and, later, as a reviewer of pornography along with Jonathan Spencer as the constantly jerking off Bob and Michelle Rodriguez as Harriet, somehow trapped in this film. She’s not the only one. Lindsay Lohan, not yet making her comeback, shot a scene for this when it was Underground Comedy 2010. She’s dressed as Marilyn from The Seven Year Itch, which we all understand, but to drive the point home, someone yells, “You look just like Marilyn!” She replies, “Did Marilyn have an ankle monitor?” as the camera pans down to show that yes, she has to wear an alcohol monitoring device on her shapely ankle. Then, lest this be the end of the infamy, the camera descends to the sewers where Theo Von and Offer stare up at her lady parts, which are in panties, but then a pudendum energy form takes over the screen.

There’s a recurring segment called “Blackass” that takes Jackass and has black men take over the roles. That’s it. That’s the joke, again, except it’s also wildly racist. This sense of humor continues into “The Amazing Racist,” which was bought from a web series and has Ari Shaffir — who celebrated the death of L.A. Laker Kobe Bryant by tweeting “Kobe Bryant died 23 years too late today. He got away with rape because all the Hollywood liberals who attack comedy enjoy rooting for the Lakers more than they dislike rape. Big ups to the hero who forgot to gas up his chopper. I hate the Lakers. What a great day.” — goes around and, well, acts racist. Literally, that’s as far as it gets.

This may be the first time I’ve agreed with Common Sense Media, which wrote, “Parents need to know that InAPPropriate Comedy is comedy with humor that’s beyond unfunny; it’s hateful, racist, sexist, and wildly offensive. Language is extremely strong, with frequent use of everything from “f–k” to “p—y,” and sexual innuendo is constant. Sexual situations are also very briefly shown, and in one sequence, characters critique porn movies. Violence is a minor issue; one character is a cop who shoots a few bad guys, with some blood shown. Bottom line? This is one of the worst movies ever made; don’t waste your time or money.” and “No positive role models; the movie is full of racism and discrimination, negative sexual imagery, and homophobia. During the outtakes at the end, even the actors appear to be embarrassed by what they’re doing and saying.”

This may be as bad as it gets, a non-stop deluge of material that wants to be offensive yet doesn’t even get to that level because it’s so inept. When I hate something, you know it’s bad. It ends with Lohan gunning down the paparazzi, and you wish she’d turn the weapon on everyone who was involved with this.

Don’t watch this on Tubi.

Sept 8-14 Sketchy Comedy Week: “…plotless satires, many of which were only excuses for drug humor or gratuitous nudity sprinkled with the cheapest of gags. The typical form was a channel-changing structure, which would go from one sketch to the next under the premise that this was just another night at home watching the old boob tube. The medium is the message, baby!”

Vincent Canby said it was, “a collection of witless blackout sketches dealing with infidelity, wedding nights, impotence and masturbation, played by a small cast of not very talented actors.”

Gene Siskel called it a “sleazy, unfunny sec comedy” that was so bad that a no refunds sign was posted.

It was a dog of the week five years after it was released because it had staying power.

Yes, it’s If You Don’t Stop It…You’ll Go Blind!!!, which was followed by Can I Do It…’Til I Need Glasses? Directed by Keefe Brasselle, the star of The Eddie Cantor Story, who plays himself in this, and I. Robert Levy, the idea is that there’s the World Society of Sexual Arts and Science, and each year, they give away the World Sex Awards. You know, the Dildies.

Tallie Cochrane was out of town, and when she returned, her husband allowed producer Michael Callie to film in their home. The production crew saw her and asked who she was. She said, “I live here.” When the actress no-showed her nude scene, Tallie ended up being the woman stuck on the toilet seat. She was also in Wam Bam Thank YoU Spaceman.

67 punchlines in 79 minutes, and a few of them hit. This does have Pat McCormick as the master of ceremonies for the awards. Patrick Wright is in this, too. He’s Mr. Peterbuilt in Russ Meyer’s Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens and in Track of the Moon Beast. There’s also George Spencer from Massage Parlor Murders! and Garth Pillsbury from Malibu High and Vixen.

A lot of reviews of this movie say that most of the cast were one-and-done actresses just in it for nudity, but they didn’t look into the depths as deep as I did. Maybe I wasted my time. You tell me.

First off, Uschi Digard is in it as “various big-breasted characters.” She’s in the king of these movies, The Kentucky Fried Movie, as one of the Catholic high school girls in trouble. She’s also one of the most recognizable softcore (and later hardcore) actresses of all time.

There’s also Jane Kellem, who was in The Thing With Two Heads; Herb Graham, one of the white gangsters from The Human Tornado; Alan Sinclair from The Goddaughter and Deep Love; Lew Horn, who was an MC in plenty of things and is a game show host in this one; Russ Marin from The Sword and the Sorcerer; Barry Cooper, who was in Fear No Evil and The Witch Who Came from the Sea; Leon Charles, Boss in The Candy Snatchers; Ina Gold, who had various old lady roles in everything from The Day of the Locust to The Silent Scream; Thelma Pelish, who was also in The Silent Scream; adult actress Maria Arnold, who was in Fantasm, Country Hooker and Meatcleaver Massacre; William Hartman, a dialogue coach on Can’t Stop the Music who is also in Steel and St. Helens; Sandy Dempsey, in a ton of adult as Terry Rich, Darlene Saunders, Tiffany Stewart, and Cora Cuze and Jim Drigger, the hanging priest in The Beastmaster.

Then again, this does feature Becky Sharpe, who played adult roles as Joan Brooks, Mona Leasah, Holly Bridges, Dora Douche, and Mona Poll, as well as appeared in Curse of the Headless Horseman as Rebecca Pearlman. Mary Miller, one of the dancers, was in Raw Force and Tiger Commando. And Cathy Hall, one of the girls who sings the song about being a prostitute, was on the season 7, episode 13 Unsolved Mysteries, attending a seance with James Van Praagh.

Who else? Michael Flood, who was in Criminally Insane and .357 Magnum; Nancy Frechtling, who did makeup for both Supervan and The Van; Doug Frey, who was in Five Loose Women and Drop Out Wife; Brenda Fogerty from Fantasm and Trip With the Teacher; Charla Hall, who was in Vice Squad Women and Lemora; Kathy Hilton, who was in Invasion of the Bee Girls and was also Joanne Stevens, Lacy Stewart and Judy Pilot (she was shot by her boyfriend in what was claimed to be a suicide pact which she denied; it caused lifelong seizures that ended her career, but she does show up as Show-Me, the same character name she used in Heads or Tails in the 1986 adult film Honey Buns); Bebe Kelly, the schoolteacher who loves snakes in Fangs; Gary Leibman, a sound guy on The Last House On the Left; Hal Miller, the second actor to play Mr. Gordon on Sesame Street; Gene Stowell from Guess What Happened to Count Dracula? and Rod Hasne, who was The Flash on the Legends of the Super Heroes TV special.

The jokes are rough — sex is a pain in the ass for a gay man -some will absolutely leave you angry if you are too young to remember dirty joke paperbacks. Otherwise, you can watch it as a time capsule of a dirtier yet more innocent time.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Sept 8-14 Sketchy Comedy Week: “…plotless satires, many of which were only excuses for drug humor or gratuitous nudity sprinkled with the cheapest of gags. The typical form was a channel-changing structure, which would go from one sketch to the next under the premise that this was just another night at home watching the old boob tube. The medium is the message, baby!”

Where else could Weird Al go after several albums and music videos? To the far end of the TV dial lies this film, in which he plays George Newman, who takes over Channel 62. When he’s mistreated by the boss of Channel 8, R.J. Fletcher (Kevin McCarthy), he decides to lead his station — which is mostly reruns that everyone has already seen — to success.

Soon, the janitor (Michael Richards) is hosting Stanley Spadowski’s Clubhouse, and the ratings are great. Except that George’s gambling uncle (Stanley Brock) and the owner of the station, well, he owes money to his bookie, and they’re about to lose the station. Fran Drescher, Victoria Jackson, Anthony Geary (as an alien!), Billy Barty, John Paragon, Belinda Bauer, Dr. Demento, Emo Philips and many more appear.

But these are just simple descriptions of this movie. The joy is in watching it, a movie that has TV shows in it like Wheel of Fish and Raul’s Wild Kingdom. That has Weird Al become Rambo. Spatula City — “I liked the spatulas so much, I bought the company.” — and a car salesman who says, “I’ll club a seal to make a better deal.” You can see the station’s line-up in one scene. They are — including the ones I already mentioned — Beastiality Today, Beat the Loan Shark, The Beverly Hillbillies, Bowling for Burgers, Buddha Knows Best, Dog Racing from Rio de Janeiro, Druids on Parade, Eye On Toxic Waste, Fun with Dirt, Leave it to Bigfoot, Mr. Ed, My Three Mutants, Name that Stain, News, That’s Disgusting, The Flying Pope, The Lice is Right, The Young and the Dyslexic, Town Talk, Traffic Court, Secrets of the Universe, Underwater Bingo for Teens, Strip Solitaire, Volcano Worshippers Hour, Wide World of Tractor Pulls, Wonderful World of Phlegm and You Bet Your Pink Slip.

Anyways, you either get it or you don’t. I do, I hope you do, let’s talk about it in the comments. Ghandi II? Conan the Librarian?

Sept 8-14 Sketchy Comedy Week: “…plotless satires, many of which were only excuses for drug humor or gratuitous nudity sprinkled with the cheapest of gags. The typical form was a channel-changing structure, which would go from one sketch to the next under the premise that this was just another night at home watching the old boob tube. The medium is the message, baby!”

Directed by Malcolm Leo and Andrew Solt (This Is Elvis) and written by Dana Olsen (The ‘Burbs, Wacko, Going Berserk), It Came from Hollywood came along at a significant time for me. I’d been watching SNL and SCTV, so seeing so many of my favorite comedy people in one film — Dan Aykroyd, John Candy, Cheech and Chong, and Gilda Radner — all in one movie was a huge deal to me. I’d also started reading The Golden Turkey Awards at the library that my uncle was in charge of, and in 1982, it was impossible to know when you could see some of the films in it. This movie, which was on HBO all the time, gave me a chance to see clips of them and discover that they were real.

Movies in this are broken into twelve segments — Aliens, Gorillas, Monsters, The Brain, Giants and Tiny People, Musical Memories, Technical Triumphs, Troubled Teenagers, Previews of Coming Attractions, A Salute to Edward D. Wood, Jr., Getting High in the Movies and The Animal Kingdom Goes Berserk — and include: A*P*E, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!, Attack of the Puppet People, Atomic Rulers, Bat Men of Africa, Battle in Outer Space, Beginning of the End, Black Belt Jones, Blonde Savage, Bride of the Monster, The Bride and the Beast, The Brain from Planet Arous, The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, The Blob, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, The Cool and the Crazy, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Curse of the Faceless Man, Daughter of the Jungle, The Cyclops, The Creeping Terror, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Deadly Mantis, Don’t Knock the Rock, Dragstrip Girl, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, Evil Brain from Outer Space, Fiend Without a Face, Fire Maidens from Outer Space, First Man Into Space, The Flying Saucer, Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, Frankenstein Meets the Spacemonster, Frankenstein’s Daughter, From Hell It Came, Glen or Glenda, The Giant Claw, The Hideous Sun Demon, High School Confidential!, High School Hellcats, House on Haunted Hill, The Horror of Party Beach, I Married a Monster from Outer Space, I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies, The Incredible Melting Man, The Incredible Shrinking Man, Invasion of the Neptune Men, Isle of Forgotten Sins, The Killer Shrews, The Loves of Hercules, Maniac, Marihuana, Married Too Young, Mars Needs Women, Matango, Missile to the Moon, Monster from Green Hell, The Monster and the Ape, Musical Movieland, Octaman, Perils of Nyoka, Plan 9 from Outer Space, The Party Crashers, Prince of Space, Reefer Madness, Reptilicus, Robot Monster, Rocket Attack U.S.A., Rock Baby: Rock It, Runaway Daughters, Shake, Rattle & Rock!, Slime People, Son of Godzilla, The Space Children, Street Corner, Sunny Side Up, Teenagers from Outer Space, Teenage Monster, The Thing with Two Heads, The Tingler, The Trollenberg Terror, The Violent Years, The War of the Worlds, The Weird World of LSD, The White Gorilla, Wonder Bar, The X from Outer Space, Yongary, Monster from the Deep, Zombies of the Stratosphere.

Directors and executive producers Andrew Solt and Malcolm Leo spent about five months researching and collecting movie clips from about 500 feature films. They then decided to expand their search beyond the 75 titles that the Paramount Pictures studio, the film project’s production house, had licensed for the documentary. However, this meant that it would never be released on home media, as licensing it would be too difficult.

Since I first saw this, I’ve learned that making fun of films isn’t the right way to enjoy them. But for a ten-year-old version of me, I got to see Ed Wood Jr. movies for the first time and couldn’t wait to see even more.

You can download this from the Internet Archive.

Sept 1-7 John Waters Best of the Year Week: To be fair, these movies aren’t ALL funny, but JOHN WATERS is funny. He’s become more of a writer and public commentator these days. Still, he helps keep the arthouse from taking itself too seriously with his annual top-ten lists, while celebrating the comically serious.

I knew that Beau Is Afraid would be my Southland Tales or Under the Silver Lake.

Ari Aster made two movies that generated a lot of hype: Hereditary and Midsommar. Like the two films I mentioned above, Beau Is Afraid is very much a movie being made by a creative who has that rare moment of being able to get anything they want and going wild.

Beau Wassermann (Joaquin Phoenix) hasn’t had the best of lives. His father died while making love to his mother (Patti LuPone), and he’s waited his whole life for Elaine (Parker Posey), whom he met once on a cruise ship. Now, he’s trapped in a crime-filled city, shoved out of his apartment, hit by a truck and stabbed by a serial killer. He’s saved by Grace (Amy Ryan) and Roger (Nathan Lane), but things fall to pieces, as they do throughout, as their daughter Toni (Kylie Rogers) tries to get him to drink paint, angry that he’s replaced her dead brother. She dies instead, and her mother sends a vet, Jeeves (Denis Ménochet), after him. Roger had promised to take Beau to his mom’s funeral, but now who knows? As it is, he’s lost in the woods, watching a play by The Orphans of the Forest, which he takes on as part of his real life; then Jeeves shows up and kills everyone.

He finally makes it home and gets to make love to Elaine, who dies, and then his mother appears, taking him to an attic filled with his twin brother and his father, a penis monster who kills Jeeves. Yes, I just wrote that. Beau tries to escape, and he finds out that he’s on trial. His mother has records of every visit to his therapist (Richard Cohen), and no matter how much he defends himself, his mother refuses to listen. His boat exploded, and he decided to give in, drowning. The end, as the audience leaves.

What does it mean? Aster and cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski said that Jacques Tati’s Playtime, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window and Albert Brooks’ Defending Your Life were all films that influenced this. There’s also a realization that Mona has controlled Beau’s life all along, and everyone, even Emily, was all his employees, paid enough for their family for years to be happy as long as they were in his life. It also feels like a piss take on the audience, who are expecting a great adventure and are given strange journeys through someone’s life that go nowhere.

Is it about anything? Does it have to be about anything in particular? Maybe it’s about ambition and what you can do when you can do just about any movie you want. It speaks to a big vision, so much grander than his past films, and I can’t wait to see what happens next.

John Waters said, “A superlong, super-crazy, super-funny movie about one man’s mental breakdown with a cast better than Around the World in 80 Days’: Joaquin Phoenix, Patti LuPone, Parker Posey, Nathan Lane, and Amy Ryan. It’s a laugh-riot from hell you’ll never forget, even if you want to.”

Sept 1-7 John Waters Best of the Year Week: To be fair, these movies aren’t ALL funny, but JOHN WATERS is funny. He’s become more of a writer and public commentator these days. Still, he helps keep the arthouse from taking itself too seriously with his annual top-ten lists, while celebrating the comically serious.

Tobacco Force — Benzene (Gilles Lellouche), Mathanol (Vincent Lacoste), Nicotine (Anaïs Demoustier), Mercure (Jean-Pascal Zadi as Mercure and Ammoniaque (Oulaya Amamra) — have just blown a giant turtle to pieces with their cancer attack, covering themselves with gore, when they get a call from their commander, Chief Didier (Alain Chabat), who is pretty much a rat. He wants them to go to a retreat for a week to improve their teamwork, because Lézardin (Benoit Poelvoorde) is coming to take over the planet.

So yes — a sentai show about a team who uses the powers of tobacco to destroy evil, even having a robot — Norbert 500 — who drives their van and helps them clean themselves off when they get messy.

As they bond, the team tells stories to one another, such as a woman whose thinking helmet turns her into a slasher or what happens when a man gets his foot stuck in a wood chipper. None of these stories have an ending and neither does this movie, as a new robot — Norbert 1200, sent to replace the suicidal Norbert 500 — arrives to help them defeat Lézardin. While waiting for the robot to start a program, Chief Didier keeps calling to tell them that the issue has resolved itself, as the bad guy’s family has killed him. There’s also a talking barracuda who gets grilled.

This was directed, written, shot and edited by Quentin Dupieux, who also made Rubber. It’s delightful, just a weird movie that hangs out with you, always changing until the end.

John Waters said, “Can a movie be both stupid and effete yet unironic? Only the French can pull that off, and this moronic auteur of ignoramuses does it again. Brilliant performances and dumbbell dialogue equal a superhero movie for idiots that surpasses all the tedium of Hollywood blockbusters.”