TV was never quite like this!

One Sunday morning in late 1987, as I was just waking up, Dad was raving about this movie that had been on at 3 in the morning, and he had gotten up in order to tape it. I guess he didn't know the concept of setting the timer in order for the VCR to do that for him. Oh well...what could this be???

After a curious prologue that spoofed 2001 (which I hadn't seen yet), it opened up with a hippie guy hoisting his thumb out on the freeway, only to be picked up by a nice-looking hippie chick. They go a few miles, but she comes on to him, pulls the car over, gets out and starts running...and the clothes begin to come off. He runs after her, pulling off his own clothes while running (and trying not to fall over), getting terribly excited, running out onto a road completely naked, and...I can't give the ending away, but let's say I hadn't laughed that hard in years!

Although that segment really didn't have much to do with the rest of the movie, I was intrigued by this one, despite the really low budget it was produced under. I saw a young Chevy Chase in a few segments, including one one of just his fingers, lampooning a Yellow Pages commercial. Then a lengthy segment with a couple of guys smuggling a huge amount of pot home in order to sell it, only to end up dumping some of it down the toilet, eating it, and getting the rest stolen from their place. Kind of a poor man's Cheech & Chong, but it was actually pretty funny.

I had seen the "Ramon & Sonja" segment from this on Night Flight, but didn't get to see the movie that it came from until the 10th grade, when we found the videotape at Tower Records in the "bargain" section. We got it home, put it in, and although it looked like it had been shot on video and transferred to film, with a budget of around $40 (and even that's being generous!), I liked a lot of what I was seeing.

The film's plot is set in 1985 (ten years in the future), and centers around a senatorial hearing, in which the Tunnel Vision channel's contents are being reviewed in order to see if it's obscene or not. Looking at it now, it's funny how they predict the viewing audience losing interest in their jobs, vegetating in front of their TV's, and watching this one channel the whole day.

There are many take-offs of TV commercials, newscasts, trailers for upcoming TV movies and programs. Some of them are pretty dumb, but the whole thing is just "so bad" that you can't help but just go along with it. And although it's supposed to be set ten years ahead of its time, there's a plethora of Nixon and Polish jokes throughout it, especially during one newscast, where Nixon is tracked down to be living in a crackhouse somewhere in Compton.

The selling point on VHS 9and later DVD) editions were appearances by Chevy Chase, John Candy, Laraine Newman, and Howard Hesseman, among others, but John Candy is only in it for a few frames! Literally! And not even a speaking role!

One of Dad's friends brought this one over, in a pile of other videotapes that he brought over and left here. I had never heard of this one, but since they were making comparisons to The Groove Tube on the cover, I had to see what it was.

This one is almost a direct sequel to Tunnel Vision, as it is directed by Bradley Swirnoff, one of its co-directors. This one has another flimsy plotline, where members of the President's cabinet are alerted by the contents of one particular TV station that is broadcasting offensive material. They then alert the President himself, who has no idea what's going on. Meanwhile, the viewing audience is getting more and more concerned and outraged by what they're seeing on their TV screens; indeed, some of the shows spark off fistfights and riots in the street!

There are some interesting moments on this one, which contains one of the strangest take-offs of Charlie's Angels that you'll ever see (starring three plus-sized ladies), and Kinky Friedman tooting up coke and hosting a kids' TV show, singing about picking boogers (the song "Ol' Ben Lucas" is guaranteed to get stuck in your head for weeks!). Lots of short clips for upcoming TV shows and movies, infomercials, vacation spots, and TV commercials aplenty. Some of them go by a little too fast to fully digest, but are well worth revisiting.

Finally, the President can no longer stand it, and presses The Big Button at the end, annihilating the US in the process. Problem solved!

I found this one down at Buzzard Video in the summer of 2004. Somehow, I knew this was connected to the other movies, and--sure enough--it was: Ira Miller directed this one, and he had been one of the writers on Tunnel Vision, as well as starring as Ramon in "Ramon & Sonja".

This one seemed to be lampooning movie-theater trailers and ads...just a long, never-ending string of them, one after the other, with no narrative.

There were some good ones to behold. The Ma & Pa Kettle take-off was pretty damned funny, even if I wasn't familiar with the real thing, and their foul-mouthed pig is an absolute laugh-riot. There's one of Billy Jack finding himself on his way to Oz (by way of getting bit by a rattlesnake), and the devastating closer, "Dark Town After Dark", a Cab Calloway soft-shoe number that has its roots from racial remarks made by a US senator, which cost him his job, but left us with this song to remember him by. I can't give away the chorus, as it's too funny, and--again--will be in your head for many weeks to come!

Bill Murray is the selling point of this one, being one of his first film roles, as a condemned prisoner, but is wearing some very heavy facial makeup, perhaps to hide his acne-pitted complexion. It looks as if an undertaker did the makeup job.