The Groove Tube
| The Groove Tube | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Ken Shapiro |
| Written by | Ken Shapiro Lane Sarasohn Rich Allen |
| Produced by | Ken Shapiro |
| Starring | Ken Shapiro Richard Belzer Chevy Chase |
| Cinematography | Bob Bailin |
| Edited by | Gary Youngman |
| Distributed by | Levitt-Pickman |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 75 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $200,000 |
| Box office | $20,447,000[2] |
The Groove Tube is a 1974 American Independent comedy film written and produced by Ken Shapiro and starring Shapiro, Richard Belzer and Chevy Chase. It features the song "Move On Up" by Curtis Mayfield in its opening scene.
The low-budget movie satirizes television and the counterculture of the early 1970s. The film was originally produced to be shown at the Channel One Theater on East 60th St. in New York, a venue that featured R-rated video recordings shown on three television sets, which was a novelty to the audiences of the time. The news desk satire, including the signature line "Good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow" was later used by Chase for his signature Weekend Update piece on Saturday Night Live, although in the film he does not appear in that segment.
Randa Haines, who later directed Children of a Lesser God, was script supervisor.[3]
Plot
Among the skits are:
- "The Dealers," a lengthy feature about a pair of urban drug dealers (Shapiro and Belzer) introduced by a wildly overdone, hip title segment
- "Koko the Clown," a mock children's television show in which Shapiro, as the show's Bozo-esque host, reads erotica (specifically a page from Fanny Hill, with promises of the Marquis de Sade the next day) on the air during "Make Believe Time"
- a public service announcement warning against venereal disease that covertly (though more and more obviously as the camera zooms in, to humorous and/or shocking effect) used a real human penis as its puppet spokesman, "Safety Sam"
- a parody of sponsored television cooking shows in which Shapiro, as a female baker seen from the shoulders down, mixes and bakes a special 4 of July "Heritage Loaf" while repeatedly using handfuls of the fictitious "Kramp Easy Lube" brand of shortening, a spoof of the "Kraft" name
- Buzzy Linhart appears in the film as an (eventually) naked hitchhiker. He also supervised the film's soundtrack.
Several spoof TV commercials are featured, including a few for the fictional Uranus Corporation (pronounced with the stress on the second and third syllables). One Uranus commercial touts the amazing properties of its space-age polymer product "Brown 25" (which looks suspiciously like human feces): "It has the strength of steel, the flexibility of rubber, and the nutritional value of beef stew."
Release
The Groove Tube was originally released with an X rating.[4][5]
See also
References
- ^ The Groove Tube Release Info.
- ^ "The Groove Tube, Box Office Information". Retrieved 10 September 2014.
- ^ "The Groove Tube". AFI Catalogue of Feature Films. Retrieved 7 June 2017.
- ^ The Groove Tube (1974) - IMDb
- ^ Thompson, Howard. "The-Groove-Tube - Trailer - Cast - Showtimes - NYTimes.com". Movies.nytimes.com. Retrieved 2013-09-24.