Director Report Card: John Landis (1973)

Okay, yeah, I know. To say John Landis is a controversial filmmaker is putting it mildly. Aside from unleashing Max Landis on the world, it's not many directors that have the dubious distinction of being responsible for the deaths of two children and a beloved character actor. I've already unpacked my feelings about that particular catastrophe in my review of “Twilight Zone: The Movie.” Yet, to be totally honest, I was always going to have to grapple with this one. Landis has directed three or four of my favorite movies. The dude was the biggest name in Hollywood comedy for a while in the eighties and has his name on multiple classics. Sometimes you just have to acknowledge that someone you admire is a bad person and learn to appreciate their art aside from their actions. I guess I'll be doing a lot of that as I watch my way through Landis' thirty-plus year career in show business.

1. Schlock

In the early 1970s, John Landis worked odd jobs around various film productions. He was a mail boy, go-fer, a camera operator, a stunt double, and eventually rose to the status of assistant director. Following his stint on the film “Kelly's Heroes,” he decide he wanted to make a porno movie. When he realized that would involve funding from the mob, he decided to pursue a low budget monster movie instead. A young Rick Baker, who was still living with his parents at the time, was drafted to create the creature suit. Landis would end up playing the titular monster himself. With most of the budget comprised of Landis' personal savings, “Schlock” would show the filmmaker's early interest in combining horror and comedy elements.

A small town in Southern California has suddenly had most of its residents brutally killed off by an unseen assailant. The only clue left behind, around the countless dead bodies, are multiple banana peels. This earns the murderer the moniker of the Banana Killer. It's soon discovered that no man is responsible for this. A relic example of the Schlockthropus, the ancient missing link between ape and man, has survived thousands of years in the caverns underneath the town. Schlock proceeds to wreck mayhem around the town, piling up his already considerable body count. When not doing that, Schlock becomes enamored of Mindy, a chesty and recently cured blind girl.

“Schlock” is obviously intended to be an extended homage and parody of classic monster movies. It's premise recalls flicks like “Monster on the Campus,” “The Neanderthal Man,” and any number of gorillas-on-the-loose pictures. There are explicit shout-outs to “Frankenstein,” “King Kong,” and “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Clips from “The Blob” and “Dinosaurus!” actually appear on-screen. Common tropes, like the monster abducting a girl, a scientist determined to study the creature, and an unpromising sequel hook are trotted out. Yet “Schlock” rarely seems to be commenting on these particular cliches or themes. Instead, Landis simply uses these familiar ideas as a way to link together a number of goofy gags.

The funniest thing about “Schlock” is the absurd, cartoonish world it inhabits. In this motion picture, grisly mayhem and the utterly mundane easily co-exist. After panning over a fair ground riddled with corpses, a news anchor nonchalantly announces a contest, talks about the movie that'll air on the network later in the night, or gives a light-hearted interview with a local. While attempting to get a description out of a witness, the investigating cop launches into a game of charades. Sometimes, the cartoony elements of the film are even more literal. “Schlock” features reenactments of the old “Looney Tunes” gags, like a cigar exploding in someone's face or an attempt to capture something by dressing as a female version.

Most surprising of all, the murderous ape monster is not responsible for most of the comedy that ensues. In fact, Schlock becomes the unlikely straight man-beast. The townsfolk's reaction to the monster varies from shocked horror to total indifference. More than once, Schlock is treated as if he's just another person, by the staff of a movie theater or a unimpressed reporter. Often, the movie cuts to close-ups of the monster's face, as he stares dumbfounded at the camera. Though sometimes people flee in terror, “Schlock” usually treats its monster as if he's not an especially interesting or unusual sight. And that kind of pisses the ape-man off.

If there's a main satirical thread running through “Schlock's” extreme goofiness, it's the local authority figures' complete inability to handle the emergency. The cops' incompetence is set up early on. In the first scene, they listlessly read books about asparagus at the crime scene. They stand around, dumbfounded, at the chaos around them. More than once, the cop cars careen around town, pulled between multiple emergency reports. The chief inspector in charge of the case, named Sgt. Wino, has no calming words for the public. Mostly, the cops exist to be fodder for the monster's rampage, failing to protect absolutely anyone. Even once they've got Schlock cornered, they'd still rather complain about hippies than actually do anything.

The cops being depicted as utterly incompetent seems to center “Schlock” as a comedy of its time, speaking to youthful distrust of authority. Yet “Schlock” doesn't seem to have a very high opinion of young people either. The teenage protagonists are seemingly patterned after the dopey characters of fifties B-movies. (And not just because they are all played by actors clearly in their thirties.) A quartet of youths, their names all beginning with B, banter in a circular fashion after discovering the monster's lair. Mindy, rather cluelessly, treats Schlock as just another dog, despite the way he paws at her huge boobs. Her long-haired boyfriend can't do much to protect her from the monster. So “Schlock's” satire ends up largely ineffectual, everyone being uncertain targets for its unsteady parody.

Plot is not super important to comedy but “Schlock” is an especially egregious example of a gag comedy without much in the way of story. The Schlockthropus' fascination with Mindy only occupies a few scenes. The police investigation into the monster isn't exactly the movie's main focus either. Instead, much of the film is devoted to scenes of the monster simply messing around the town. Like eating cake, destroying a car, or playing piano in a bar. “Schlock” is clearly a movie in search of a plot, filling its breath run time simply with a bunch of incidents in hopes of eventually getting things to feature length.

In fact, apparently the movie was even shorter originally. When the film was acquired for distribution, the producers insisted about ten minutes of new scenes be inserted. This resulted in two long, laugh-free stretches being added to the film. The first has Schlock going to a double feature at a movie theater. While there are moments here that could conceivably be classified as jokes – the monster taking a little kid to the bathroom, a woman with big hair sitting in front of him – the execution is utterly listless and laugh free. The other additional sequence, of Schlock murdering a necking couple in a car, doesn't even seem to be humorous at all. Both of these long moments really drag down the movie's pacing, which is trouble for what should be a fleet-footed, goofball parody.

As previously mentioned, “Schlock” was one of the first jobs for future make-up legend Rick Baker. By this point, Baker was already an expert at making gorilla suits. The monster costume in “Schlock” is so good, it's makes the film look about ten times more expensive than it actually was. The eyes are expressive. The face clearly shows the annoyance, frustration, and impatience essential to making the comedy work. It operates as a real character while looking like what you'd expect a humanoid ape monster to look. While John Landis could hardly be called a great actor, he does a good job adopting a simian posture and getting his feelings across through the heavy make-up.

Honestly, the director probably gives one of the better performances in “Schlock.” Perhaps it's unsurprising to hear that most of the acting in this movie is pretty unimpressive. Saul Kahan, as Sgt. Wino, adopts a deadpan delivery for most of his dialogue. While this occasionally adds to the comedy, Kahan's performance is mostly just extremely stiff. “Stiff,” honestly, describes most of the acting on display here. Eliza Roberts, many years before she married Eric, is a good sport as Mindy but her acting is mostly flat and inexpressive. Carl Villier is similarly in-emotive as Carl, her boyfriend. It should, perhaps, be unsurprising to learn that most of “Schlock's” cast did little acting afterwards..

For what it's worth, I found “Schlock” to be pretty funny in its early scenes. Reoccurring gags about a contest to guess the number of dead bodies or an especially untalented deputy got me to laugh. A scene involving the token scientist seemingly predicts the “And don't call em Shirley” joke that would be more famously used in “Airplane!” (The movie also ended up predicting the “King Kong” mania that would run wild later in the seventies, in the lead-up to the big budget remake.) While there's a number of good-natured gags throughout the film, “Schlock's” energy peters out long before its 78 minute run time comes to an end. Not even the inexplicably funky guitar score can keep that up.

 “Schlock” would sit on shelves for about three years, as John Landis searched for a distributor to release the movie. Ultimately, we have Johnny Carson to thank for getting the movie released. He apparently liked what he saw, brought Landis on his show, and raised enough attention to attract a distributor. While the movie was mildly successful upon release, and attracted a small cult following, Landis himself has been dismissive of it, referring to it as “terrible.” He's not exactly wrong. “Schlock” is a shaggy, half-ass attempt at a first movie. Yet its not totally without chuckles either and seems to show off the developing absurd sense of humor that would direct Landis' later classics. [Grade: C+]