Dynamite Chicken (1971)

Equal parts self-congratulatory and self-destructive, this noisy comedy/literature/music anthology was undoubtedly envisioned by its creators as a bracing attack on mainstream sensibilities. Luminaries including Leonard Cohen, John Lennon, Richard Pryor, and Andy Warhol contributed sequences, with Pryor appearing onscreen the most frequently. In lieu of a proper overriding aesthetic, producer-director Ernest Pintoff merely assembles unrelated pieces into a sloppy collage. Long sequences of Dynamite Chicken comprise jump-cut montages of images, news headlines, performances, and photographs, accompanied by lofty allusions to censorship and freedom and rebellion—as well as leering shots of naked women. It says a lot about Dynamite Chicken that one of the participants is Screw magazine publisher Al Goldstein, one of history’s sleaziest pornographers; Goldstein’s inclusion proves that many important progressives of the ’60s and ’70s blurred the lines between fighting Establishment inhibitions and inflicting lowbrow tastes onto an unsuspecting public. Furthermore, it’s impossible to imagine that Dynamite Chicken changed any minds during its original release—the piece is so abrasive that it simply represents true believers preaching to other true believers. After all, the film’s many laments about censorship ring hollow considering the presence of myriad full-frontal shots, since it’s not as if Dynamite Chicken was impacted by censorship. Anyway, Pryor delivers a few sharp lines, even though most of his material is skewed toward shock value (“I think the American flag would make a great douche bag cover”), and it’s interesting-ish to note contributions by future comedy notables Michael O’Donoghue and Fred Willard. Yet the non-appeal of Dynamite Chicken is summed up by a quick shot featuring a sound tech generating atonal feedback—this one’s all about sound and fury, signifying nothing. That is, unless a close-up of Lennon picking his toes is your idea of entertainment.

Dynamite Chicken: SQUARE

Cracking Up (1977)

          The explosive success of Saturday Night Live opened the floodgates for comedy troupes whose material addressed hip themes, so presumably that’s why a second-rate outfit called the Ace Trucking Company got to make a feature-length anthology of gags loosely arranged around the premise of a massive earthquake devastating Southern California. (Because, of course, what’s funnier than a catastrophe that kills millions of people?) The running gag in this painfully unfunny movie involves news coverage of how people have responded to the disaster, so skits involve addled victims, loopy scientists, and opportunistic entrepreneurs, among others. Yet at least half the picture comprises scenes unrelated to the earthquake theme—it’s as if the Ace Trucking Company cleared out its warehouse of sketches, whether they suited the framework of the movie or not. Several comedians who’ve done better work elsewhere appear in Cracking Up, notably Edie McClurg, Harry Shearer, Fred Willard, and the duo of Michael McKean and David L. Lander—aka “Lenny and Squiggy” on TV’s Laverne & Shirley. (FYI, Lander, McKean, and Shearer were the late-’70s lineup of comedy troupe The Credibility Gap, so Cracking Up represents a convergence of two minor ensembles.)

          Since there’s no story to critique, all that’s needed to give a sense of Cracking Up are descriptions of a few gags. In one bit, Lander plays a moron delivering a PSA lamenting discrimination against Polish-Americans; riffing on Smokey the Bear’s famous line, he says, “Only you can prevent Polish people from catching on fire.” In another bit, a man standing at a urinal drops a dime into a slot marked “Build Your Ego,” and a window opens so McClurg (inexplicably dressed in a cowgirl outfit and flailing six-guns) can compliment the size of the man’s penis. “How’s that hammer hanging, baby?” Elsewhere, flamboyant funnyman Stephen Stucker (later to play a super-gay air traffic controller in 1980’s Airplane!), does a queeny credit-card ad for “GayAmericard.” And at one point, Shearer imitates Dan Akyroyd’s famous Saturday Night Live riff on’70s talk-show host Tom Snyder. Yawn. While Cracking Up has minor historical value as a showcase for emerging talents, the flick registers 0.0 on the comedic Richter scale.

Cracking Up: LAME

Flatbed Annie & Sweetiepie: Lady Truckers (1979)

To avoid any confusion later, it must be stated up front that the TV movie Flatbed Annie & Sweetiepie: Lady Truckers is exactly as awful as its title suggests, though not in the expected way—instead of being lurid or sleazy, the picture is merely dull and insipid. So why note its existence? Well, a number of notable people worked on the project, and in the case of supporting actor Harry Dean Stanton, there’s a minor connection between Flatbed Annie and a famous project that came later. Plus, Flatbed Annie features the one and only acting performance by Billy Carter (pictured), U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s beer-swilling brother. Based on the scant evidence of his one scene, Billy Carter did not miss his calling. To get the synopsis out of the way, Sweetiepie (Kim Darby) is the wife of long-haul trucker Jack (Fred Willard), who gets laid up after an accident and falls behind on truck payments. Sweetiepie decides she needs to deliver a load in Jack’s rig so she can earn money to keep the truck out of hock. In order to achieve this goal, she enlists the aid of Flatbed Annie (Annie Potts), a tough-talking driver. Meanwhile, conniving entrepreneur C.W. Douglas (Stanton) buys Jack’s loan and then tries every angle he can to repossess Jack’s truck so he can sell the rig for cash. That’s the Stanton connection, such as it is—the actor plays a repo man just a few years before portraying another character with the same job in the cult favorite Repo Man (1983). Stanton is the best thing in this terrible movie, whether he’s giving deadpan line deliveries or, in one scene, singing. It’s also (somewhat) interesting to note that Flatbed Annie was directed by Robert Greenwald, whose other accomplishments in fiction films range from the impressive (the 1984 TV movie The Burning Bed) to the mortifying (the 1980 musical flop Xanadu); today, Greenwald is known for his low-budget liberal-fringe documentaries, such as Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price (2005) and Koch Brothers Exposed (2012). As for the leading actors, neither Darby nor Potts benefits from her encounter with this material. Both are abysmal. Darby seems distracted and incompetent, while Potts’ weird performance would only make sense if it were revealed that her character was a drug casualty. Summing up, Flatbed Annie is to be avoided at all costs—except by the morbidly curious.

Flatbed Annie & Sweetiepie: Lady Truckers: LAME

Americathon (1979)

          The basic premise of this hyperkinetic comedy is a winner, but the execution is so deprived of inspiration that Americathon ends up feeling like a Saturday Night Live sketch overstaying its welcome. Set in 1998, which was 20 years into the future when the movie was made, Americathon imagines what happens when the U.S. finally runs out of money and risks defaulting on debts. (Sound familiar, circa 2011?) The government hires a PR man (Peter Riegert), who suggests a month-long telethon in which Americans will be invited to help the government pay off a $400 billion loan. That’s a great start, but the filmmakers behind Americathon bludgeon this rich concept with one lame joke after another, filling the movie with so many misdirected satirical potshots that the movie becomes unrelentingly stupid.

          The country’s main creditor is a rich Native American (Chief Dan George), who makes his money selling running shoes and track suits; the President (John Ritter) is a narcissistic horndog preaching ’70s-style philosophy while operating out of the “Western White House,” a sublet condo in Southern California; and the country’s main enemy is a new nation called the United Hebrab Republic, formed when Arabs and Israelis solved their differences to become a greedy world power. But wait, there’s more! The telethon host is a drugged-out sitcom star named Monty Rushmore (Harvey Korman); the President gets infatuated with a screeching Vietnamese singer (Zane Busby), who performs something called “puke rock”; and the President’s insidious chief of staff (Fred Willard) wants to sabotage the telethon (by overstuffing the talent list with ventriloquists) in order to sell the country to the Hebrabs. There’s also room for rocker Meat Loaf as a stuntman, baseball manager Tommy Lasorda as a sports commentator, Jay Leno as a shlub who enters a boxing match with his aging mother, and random moments like a performance by Elvis Costello.

         Directed by Neil Israel, who later co-created the Police Academy franchise, this picture opts for a shallow mile-a-minute style that only works when the jokes are so funny that viewers can’t catch their breath in between laughs—and the jokes in Americathon simply aren’t funny. One can’t help but feel for the actors, since they’re clearly trying to elevate this dreck into something worthwhile, but even the indefatigable Korman is left gasping for air by the dopey script. In fact, virtually the only unassailable element of the movie is George Carlin’s sardonic narration (he voices a track ostensibly spoken by Reigert’s character); though the jokes in the narration aren’t any better than those onscreen, Carlin’s delivery is so perfect that his work hints at the satirical free-for-all Americathon could have been. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

Americathon: LAME