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Illustration : Marc |
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DVD Availability
: Amazon.com
| Amazon.co.uk |
Ejection |
Chuck Vincent | USA | 1976 |
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Embracing the short-lived comedy-sketch anthology film
(which started with 1974's The
Groove Tube, further complemented two years later with Tunnel Vision, American Raspberry and the classic The Kentucky Fried Movie) and
adding several interlinking animated vignettes à la Monty Python, American Tickler (re-titled here as Ejection) had marked the second
excursion into softer R-rated material from all-rounder Chuck Vincent (born Charles Vincent Dingley), a man perhaps better known
for his X-rated output. Vincent’s film presents a comedy style that was strictly from the loud and raucous school, replete with prat-falls, bad taste and the lowest common denominator of humour. Starting (badly, so-to-speak) as it meant to go on, with a sketch about four disparate groups, each chasing after an ornate chest — a quest periodically revisited throughout the film's running time — the film continues with a parade of skits so woeful, it’s hard to imagine any of them raising a titter even in the mid-1970s. The viewer, watching by some misguided notion that it can only get better or worse, won't fail to notice just how bland and undefined the film is; the best part being the short animated sequences, which breathe the occasional flicker of amusement e.g. ‘Winner of the Marquis De Sade Academy Award for the Most Sadistic Game Show’ and the (then) topical ‘Squeaky Fromme Academy Award for Sports Coverage — Olympic Sniping Finals’. The final scenes from the film show patrons leaving the auditorium having just sat through the film. One woman remarks to her partner rather despairingly “I’ll never go to another Vincent film again”, and after this clumsy attempt, it’s not hard to see why.
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David Grant’s Oppidian (UK) Ltd. cinema distribution company scored the film for theatrical release (renaming it Draws), which was passed uncut by the BBFC for the Summer of 1977. Two years later and not unsurprisingly, Grant put the film out on his newly formed Video Warehouse label, re-using the superb Tom Chantrell cinema poster art (a spoof on Jaws) to adorn its packaging. Fast-forward to 1987, and Krypton
Force, issuing the film
on their Filmview label
— one of several Krypton
offshoot brands which appeared around this time, had retitled Vincent's picture as Ejection, packaged with some wildly
fascinating cover art ("Winner of Ten Academy Snide Awards"), depicting
a sweating death row prisoner, strapped to an electric chair
playing Buzz Wire!! aka : Draws; American Tickler
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