Schlock

Low budget comedy that helped launch the careers of director John Landis and makeup artist Rick Baker. It parodies everything from King Kong to Dragnet to 2001: A Space Odyssey and more. Funny stuff but it does lose steam the longer it goes on. Still worth a watch especially for Landis fans. I would also recommend the many would-be filmmakers whose crappy iPhone-shot home movies dominate the internet today take a look at how a proper low budget (really no budget) indie film can be done.

This is a truly bad film in almost every conceivable way: Poorly scripted, amateurishly acted, badly directed, and incompetently edited, but is saved by director Landis himself: His largely improvised performance in Rick Baker's excellent "monkey suit" for most of the second half of the film is laugh-out-loud funny in places, truly saving an otherwise forgettable film.

Sadly, despite Mr. Landis's encyclopedic knowledge of early cinema, many opportunities to parody or pay homage to other monster movies are missed. For example, the sequence where Schlock is feeding the ducks at the pond is just asking for a reference to the "flower" scene from James Whale's "Frankenstein". (Or is this reference enough? Hmm.) Other similar opportunities are missed throughout.

I actually saw this in the theatre where they filmed the movie theatre sequence just a few months before. I think the movie was only out for about a week, but my buddies and I caught it twice! Even dragged our drama teacher to see it (he loved it).

This is the kind of high-school humor that was a carry over from the Three Stooges and is still going strong, but Landis was one of the first to bring it up to date.

I think they shot this in 16mm (it looks it) and the photography has all the depth of a Wilderness Family entry, but the laughs are very much there. And this had one of the most memorable ad campaign tag lines in history: "Due to the horrifying nature of this film, no one will be admitted."

It was also the only film I know of which had ads featuring a rave by Johnny Carson. It's low budget, but high yuks. I still remember it fondly (Hey, Landis, please return to your comic roots of the 70s and 80s; we don't need another Woody Allen).

This is an early film from John Landis made when he was just 21 years old and funded by family and friends but not released until 1973. He shows a deft touch for writing and directing goofball comedy and this was far more entertaining than I had anticipated.

Landis also wears the monkey suit as Schlock, courtesy of make-up artist Rick Baker, who is the missing link between ape and man. Both Landis and Baker would go on to create the groundbreaking transformation make-up effects for An American Werewolf in London (1981) with Baker receiving an Academy award. Here though the Schlock suit is not quite as sophisticated but Landis delivers some good physical slapstick comedy dressed as the prehistoric creature in a nod to The Three Stooges. This also marks the beginning of the long running professional relationship Landis had with producer and editor George Folsey Jr.

There's not much plot involved about locals discovering an ape like creature in a well which then goes on the rampage but a noteworthy highlight is a lampoon of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and quotes from other movies such as Love Story (1970) and the original King Kong (1933). Essentially this is a 1950's B movie parody with a string of gags and quickfire lunacy that sweeps you along with it's silly but good natured humour in much the same vein as the early Woody Allen films.

Schlock also features the phrase 'See You Next Wednesday', a quote lifted from the aforementioned 2001 and is a running gag featured in every John Landis movie. Some of the on screen lunacy would be later refined by Landis for his more accomplished comedies like The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977) and The Blues Brothers (1980).

Don't let this minor cult classic be the missing link in your John Landis collection.

John Landis's first movie may be as good as anything he made. "Schlock" falls in neatly with other 'progressive' US comedy movies of the early 70s, which kicked around genre conventions and added a new frankness in language and toilet humour to US film comedy vocabulary. (Others like this were sketch comedy flicks like Landis's "Kentucky Fried Movie"; plus the Mel Brooks and Woody Allen movies of around the same time).

What sets this one apart is its sustained comic atmosphere, which is goofy, laconic and giddy. Set-pieces - like the 2001 parody, the bar scene where the monster 'Schlock' observes a Jose Feliciano-like blind musician playing a piano boogie and ends up joining in, and a very funny scene where the allegedly fearful Schlock goes into a cinema to see a horror movie, and is terrified - all come off perfectly.

Some beautiful bits of background business too - the hippie in the background of the 2001 scene, just ignoring the portentous foreground action while eating his frozen custard is worth a look. This is just a really, really funny film.