Luggage of the Gods!

I caught this movie once when it first came out, it was billed at the drive-ins with Karate Kid - yes Karate Kid. I split my gut and you will too if you play along. The film was shot in Van Cortland Park of NYC on a really, really low budget. Yes, Neanderthals in VC Park. Since I had no expectations of the movie - no one would have since there were virtually no reviews of this ultra-low-distribution film, everything in the film was unexpected. The risk is in the buildup for this movie - saying too much and building too high expectations will kill the effect of its humor. It was released very near the date that The Gods Must be Crazy was released, as a coincidence, and neither was shot with big budgets and both were entertaining.

So, very doubtful you were looking for this film directly and happened upon it by chance.

Strange is right! But LUGGAGE OF THE GODS doesn't make itself a terribly bad comedy, either! It's so off-the-wall that the intimacy of its cornball humor makes this enjoyably fun from start to finish, and it's a good idea that it wasn't a raunchy sex comedy that would've trashed this into oblivion. The cavemen are drop-dead hilarious when they get a new breed of life through the discoveries of radios, clocks, jumpsuits, and tons of baggage. Character names like "Yuk" and "Hubba" fits the personality of this extra-unusual comedy perfectly. In other words, a short little programmer that doesn't make any complete bit of sense (not even its minimal dialogue), but manages to stay funny while the imagination rests upon how history would've changed the books forever. That's the work of simple creativity! Try something different for a change, and you may find this one to be pretty good.

And as every single of us know in the beginning of time and destiny, AIRPLANES DIDN'T EXIST!!!

This movie was obviously inspired by "The Gods Must be Crazy". The general concept is the same: A primitive but stable society is thrown into chaos when it encounters a modern artifact. In this film, though, the primitives are living in the wilds of North America and what sets things off is luggage jettisoned from an airliner.

This is not a big-budget movie. There are no big stars, car chases, explosions or shootouts. There's only one optical effect in the entire film.

On the other hand, "Luggage of the Gods!" is a good movie. The acting, for the most part, is excellent. Lots of good laughs, mostly in the form of sight gags.

Overall a good but severely underrated movie.

Let's face it, Luggage of The Gods isn't GONE WITH THE WIND or CASABLANCA. THE GODS MUST BE CRAZY was a very odd foreign film that somehow got a cult following around the world. Director David Kendal who would go on to shows such as GROWING PAINS did a nice attempt with this very low budget film. The actors in this film are New York stage actors. Not necessarily Hollywood stars, but good actors nonetheless. Especially Mark Stolzenberg. Mark Stolzenberg has popped up as both an actor and a clown in many films and plays over the years, and has written great books on clowning, Mime, and comedy. This is purely a cute film about a group of prehistoric cavemen and women living in modern day America, who never knew that society advanced. It's a great lesson on silent film acting.

GIVE IT A CHANCE

The writer/director of "Luggage of the Gods", David Kendall invented a caveman language that we the viewers learn as we watch the movie. It is a very clever use of language or nonlanguage and cinema as a visual medium. Adolfas Mekas shows this film in his courses at Bard College regularly.