Nick Danger in The Case of the Missing Yolk

This early '80s, straight-to-video title presents the Firesign Theatre at a very funny period of their long career. Though member David Ossman is absent, the three remaining members more than make up for him with fresh takes on their most memorable characters. The TV commercial parodies are hilarious and the film has a quirky (though cheap) look all it's own. If you've never heard or seen the Firesign Theatre, a good place to start.

Back in the late sixties, the so-called drug culture provided an excuse for all sorts of breaks with convention, especially breaks with linearity in musical melodies and as much in linear narrative as well. Disconnected narrative, lost threads, comic rambles and self-referential devices were with us long before Tim Leary, but they were for smart people. All of a sudden they were embraced by a generation, composed of the same ordinary minds as any.

Into this opportunity stepped the Firesign theater. These guys were considered brilliant in that day, great fun. Sort of like Doug Adams would be much later in a more controlled way.

Their technique was to be opportunistically disconnected, to develop some small themes drawn from the new age notions of the day. and to allow overlapping voices in an accelerated attention deficit manner. We allowed that it was deep because we poured our own insights into it. It was less nourishing than we believed, rather a container with nourishing labels into which we poured our own universe. Their hopskipping through narrative was less wise than the magical cosmology we imagined under those stones.

Now here they are still alive, and still doing their bit. They still get funding somehow, enough to continue. Now its just silly, like a Soupy Sales on speed. Their excuse now isn't that they are cosmic humorists, rather they go for the territory now claimed by Tim Burton, but with a few old jokes (third eye) layered in.

If you are an old hippie like me, you'll find this bittersweet, like seeing Nixon on "Laugh-in." Fascinating in a way, like toenail clippings. Dead, familiar, part of a prior adventure, perhaps rich and now trash.

Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

I loved Nick Danger and The Case of the Missing Yolks. Never found anyone who had seen it but me and some friends (some liked it, some hated it.) It's great to find I'm not the only one who likes it. Were there other Nick Danger movies? Was this the Oz (Peter Bergman) who was broadcasting on the radio in the LA area on public radio in the mid to late 60's? I loved listening to him. Liz