Schlock, le tueur à la banane...!

This is a pretty simple review to write, if you like Monty python stuff, you'll like this movie. It's very surreal, but in the best way possible. I thought it was pretty funny, while not all of the jokes stuck, but you could easily say the same thing about Monty python. Give this gorilla film a chance if you like bizarre comedies!

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.

The reviews for this movie here are mainly positive. And it's no surprise. This is a very, Very strong first movie. In fact, it looks almost exactly like the more famous Landis movies down to the lighting and editing. It does have some silly stuff in it, and there are scenes to make the picture longer. But the movie never feels constricted by its low budget, it successfully pokes fun at it. Landis is great as the titular ape and Rick Baker's done a great job on the mask - it even allowed Landis to emote. Eric Roberts' wife plays a blind girl who befriends Schlock thinking he's a dog, but soon she regains her sight and then!... Schlock's really funny, it looks like it's someone's first movie only for the first 15 minutes, and then it becomes big and quite enjoyable.

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 suppose I was a little hard on this film. It entertains, indeed, but it's filled with holes and inconsistencies. I suppose if you ignore the aforementioned "holes and inconsistencies" you could get a kick out of this.

Childish, ridiculous, at times funny... Goofy, filled with rotten acting (and rotten bananas), bad camera-work, bad colours...

It's actually kind of nice to see a pretty well established director's first film and realize it's a total B flick.

I like the king kong reference. And the 2001. And the Beauty and the Beast (Cocteau would be proud... either that or roll over in his grave)