Schlock Attack

Schlock

by Damon Houx, www.cinemonkey.com

s a film fan will tell you, there are some films that are nearly impossible to find and achieve a reputation solely based on their unavailability. From Max Ophuls's The Reckless Moment (which has never been officially released on tape) to Nicholas Ray's They Live by Night (which was released in the mid '80s and is just as hard to find) there are almost too many films that have never seen the light of video, or can only be found through specialty video shops, Ebay, or late night cable. Like most film geeks, I have my own personal list, which includes Ray's Bigger than Life, Robert Altman's California Split, among many others, and for a long time on that list was John Landis' first film Schlock.

Make no mistake, I was not expecting Schlock to be anything like a lost classic. I was just curious because I had seen most of Landis's films already and knew it was available on tape. But 10 years ago things like the internet had not yet become so resourceful, and finding such films at Blockbuster or Hollywood could be a wild goose chase (even big chain stores have odd videotapes that seem out of step with their 200 hundred copies of the big blockbuster, and can sometimes be purchased from snot nosed managers who don't know any better). But in my limited searches I had not yet had the luck to lead me to this film, as I had with other curios, like Joe Dante's first film Hollywood Boulevard. It was with some luck that I discovered a store that was well stocked in obscura (of which later I became an employee, and helped stock said store with similar obscura) that I ran across the film under one of it's many different titles, The Banana Monster. Having recovered from the joy of discovery I promptly rented the title, and though not exactly overwhelmed by the experience, it was an interesting artifact of John Landis's career and decidedly endemic of his work to come.

he film is about a killer ape, considered the lost link, and named the Schlockthropus (played by the director himself). After a funny opening, the film settles into a lazy groove in which most of the jokes are based on one's awareness of other movies (specifically King Kong), and bad slapstick (which admittedly produced a couple chuckles from me). But, unlike a lot of the tighter efforts done by first time directors who were working with other peoples money (or their own), Schlock doesn't hustle as it tries to figure out a way to stretch a 10 minute gag into a 80 minute running time. Much like John Landis's later work, the film is poorly framed, has uninspired direction, and is only interested in characters for as long as it takes to set up a gag. Unlike Dante, perhaps the director most analogous to Landis, Landis seems satisfied to make reference to something without improving or expanding on it, where Dante makes sure that there is something going on in the movie besides a couple of quick in jokes.

It seems even more dubious that now, a couple of years later, I can hold the Schlock DVD in my hands. Video and DVD releasing has always favored the strange and marketable, and Schlock now comes with not only an anamorphic widescreen transfer, but an audio commentary by Landis and Oscar winning make up artist Rick Baker (who did all the special effects and makeup for the film), and also trailers, TV spots, radio spots, and behind the scenes photos, making one think that Schlock—the movie—was a missing link as well. Watching the film again, I see that it still has the same problems, though it has a couple of funny gags (that come mostly in the first 10 minutes), but unlike Landis's later efforts, it does have a youthful energy, and one can almost sense that the people in it and making it are having fun. In the audio commentary Landis fluctuates between liking the film and apologizing for it, while he and Baker riff on each other, as for both of them this was the film that started their career.

I guess the question that Schlock poses is: Why? Why is this film available on DVD? It's not that bad, and no worse than most new releases, but it seems a mixed blessing that such a film as this could have so many extras and such a nice presentation. But the world has changed so much in the last 10 years that titles one had to search for (and sometimes keep a mental list to check each new video shop you went had any of them) are now made readily available—or at least the more marketable ones are. Now that a film like this readily available it no longer is interesting, because part of it's charm was that it was hard to see. I'd hate to say I miss this era of video store hunts, but on some level I do, just because of this. It's not as much fun finding the titles that you had to get a friend to borrow from his friend that he taped off a 4 am TNT airing. Now you could probably get the tape on Ebay, and avenues for gray market merchandise is heavily populated by people willing to sell said goodies. Witness how easily it is to get Battle Royale in this country, versus how hard it was to find El Topo 10 years ago, a film in which you had to find someone who either had the Japanese laserdisc, or had a copy of the Japanese laserdisc. As time passes perhaps we will some of the vaulted films materialize (oh, how I long for a box set of the 20th Century fox Sam Fuller films), but it's strange watching the practices of a sub culture wither because they've become outmoded. Though there will always be bootlegs, and hard to find titles, films like Schlock will mean less when they become readily available.

9/01

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