The Groove Tube 1974

director: Ken Shapiro  


Genre

Country

United States

Cast

Other Releases

Formats

Available on VHSAvailable on BetamaxAvailable on V2000

Average User Rating: 1 Vote(s)
 
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
Average User Rating
Coverscan of The Groove Tube
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Distributor Media
Catalogue Number M101
Release Series
Release Date
Duration: 70m 38s
Printed Classification
Notes
User Reviews:
by Lee James Turnock
Largely shot in 1971, Ken Shapiro's saucy upstart of a film paved the way for the good ([i]Kentucky Fried Movie[/i]), the bad ([i]Tunnel Vision[/i]) and the ugly (the less said about [i]Outtakes[/i], the better) with a very loosely connected series of spoofs of television news, advertising, programming and presentation, along with other bits of silliness that are here for no apparent reason - a psychedelic animated sequence, for example, and the closing sketch, a memorable (like it or not) bit of hidden camera malarkey in which Shapiro's pastel-suited song and dance man hoofs and croons his way through a lounge number to the amusement or bewilderment of several passers-by in a busy city street. Elsewhere, it's a healthy mixture of the subversive (a children's television presenter who orders the grown-ups out of the room before reading pornographic literature to the viewers), the outrageous ('Safety Sam', a public information film mascot who turns out to be a none-too-subtly disguised set of male genitals), the sublimely stupid and the downright baffling, along with some misfires that probably only made sense if you lived in America in the early seventies - the emphasis being on the 'probably', there. It's no classic, but it's good-natured knockabout fun that will more than likely provide you with a few chuckles on a dull evening, so if naughty sketch comedy is your bag, track it down.