Drive-in Classic 4 of 50: PRIME TIME
Still jumping around in the Drive-in Classics 50-movie pack, I selected 1977's Prime Time as my next "classic." It's a sketch film, a subgenre of comedy that inevitably yields mixed results. Kentucky Fried Movie and Amazon Women on the Moon are both full of funny moments, and they take advantage of having a larger budget and more production time than a TV sketch show would have... but they also both have their share of stupid segments. Loose Shoes, on the other hand, doesn't have a single sketch that's amusing enough to justify its existence. I had never heard of Prime Time before I got this DVD set, but I was eager to see if the funny outweighed the stupid. And, well... I don't want to ruin the suspense, but I'll just go ahead and tell you that this movie sucked.
THE MOVIE
As Prime Time begins, a high-ranking military officer named Bill settles down to watch TV somewhere in Washington, D.C. He sees a commercial for "Trans Puerto Rico," an airline boasting air conditioning (a ceiling fan), freshly-cooked meals (brown sludge prepared by an unhygenic slob of a chef), and plenty of baggage room to accommodate the body bag containing your mother. You might be thinking, What does any of that have to do with Puerto Rico? It's just the first of many segments designed to be as offensive as possible to various ethnic groups and nationalities.
That's followed by a televised speech by Congressman Simon, who rants to an empty stadium on the subject of moral decay before getting shot dead. High-ranking military officer Bill frantically alerts a colleague, who tells him that in fact there is no Congressman Simon, and nobody knows where that broadcast came from: "Somebody's messing with the TV waves." They realize that this is a matter for the president of the United States, so they alert him to the situation. And then there's a commercial for a men's product called Stay Down, which prevents unwanted erections but causes flatulence.
And that's the way the whole movie works. It's a bunch of TV show and commercial parodies, interrupted every 10 minutes or so by the president and his advisors trying to figure out what's happening. Segments include:
- A news report on the new law that allows a fetus to be aborted through its fifth year of life
- A telethon for sexual deviation
- A Charlie's Angels spoof called Manny's Nymphs, featuring three overweight women
- An oil company executive announcing that his company has discovered a new cheap energy source: the Negro
IS IT FUNNY?
No. No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no.
No.
SOME OTHER TOPICS THIS MOVIE THINKS ARE FUNNY
- Breasts on areas of the body they don't belong
- Feminine hygiene products
- Slavery
- Killing the elderly
- Charles Whitman, the University of Texas student who killed 14 people and wounded 32 in a shooting spree on campus eleven years before this movie was released. This comes up in a scene featuring two guys climbing a tower with their guns to participate in the "Charles Whitman Invitational," and then we see them shooting pedestrians below, and then we see the victims getting hit and falling down, and then the shooters tie the dead bodies to the roof of their truck, and... that's comedy?
-This movie sucks.
COMMENTS
-Sometimes when I look at the way my own personal comedy standards have evolved, I wonder if my mind has gone too far into the gutter. I will sometimes laugh at inappropriate jokes that would have seemed repulsive to me, say, 15 years ago. But the fact that I hated Prime Time actually makes me feel really good about my own sense of decency.
-So was there anything in the movie that made me laugh? Looking over my notes, I see just one: A commercial that starts very seriously, promoting a sermon by an important minister... who is then revealed to be a poodle. It was all downhill from there.
-I suppose obscene language was still fairly novel in movies at this point. It seems like often the writers are counting on nothing more than the use of the s-word of the f-word to provide the key laugh of a scene.
-In fact, there's a lot of stuff that couldn't be done on TV in 1977, and still couldn't. I'm sure it would have been possible to create a film composed of too-hot-for-network-TV parodies that were actually clever. But this movie's not up to the task.
-One thing I will concede: Many of the commercial parodies must have been inspired by ad campaigns from the 1970s and earlier, which I've never seen. I'm familiar with "How do you spell relief?" but I've never seen an "Open your mouth for milk" commercial in my life. So maybe -- maybe -- I would have had a better appreciation of where the jokes were supposed to be if I had seen this movie upon its release. Speaking of which, the internet tells me that this film is sometimes called American Raspberry. So, there's that.
-One of the women in the "Manny's Nymphs" segment is none other than Suzanne Kent, perhaps best known as Mrs. Renee from Pee-wee's Playhouse. Another sketch featured Harry Shearer as a hapless hitchhiker. And former Texas governor hopeful Kinky Friedman shows up to sing a disgusting song about Ol' Ben Lucas, who had a lot of mucus. Friedman is also credited with providing vocals for a sort-of music video for the song "If I Were a Carpenter," which presents the song as a duet sung by Mary and Joseph on their way to the manger. I suppose the joke is supposed to be that Joseph was, in fact, a carpenter and Mary was a lady, but it seems... oddly sincere. They only undercut it by having the booming voice of God point out that it's going to be His baby.
-There's not much about this movie on the web, but the Unknown Movies site has this review, including some information on its distribution, for those really eager to know.
Letter grade for Prime Time: F
So what should I watch next? Hmm... I'm thinking either Black Hooker from the drive-in classics set, or Sex Madness from the cult classics set. What do you think?
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