40 years ago
Robert Shapiro did a series of shows at the Channel One theater in New York. No, I didn’t see them, and I imagine few people who saw them were straight enough to remember them now, but a lot of pieces of those shows ended up in a movie called the Groove Tube, which was shown as a late night double feature with the Kentucky Fried Movie. The Groove Tube features Richard Belzer and Chevy Chase as foetuses. The scene where Belzer is a dope dealer who eats a huge bag of weed because he thinks he’s being busted came four years before Cheech and Chong did Up in Smoke.
Anyway, the very best part of the movie, for me, and the one that sticks with me years later, and which still makes me laugh, is Safety Sam. I remember sitting in the theater while people all around me said “What the hell is that thing?”.
I knew. You probably will too. Nobody wants to take credit for being the- erm, actor, and you will be able to see why
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YES!!! I recall that little guy, laffed my ass off too about those that could not see or understand.
Hey, he’s a grower, not a shower.
lol.
Well, not sure i’ll own up to remembering that. Course there was period of time I did not watch tv.
To the best of my knowledge Sam ain’t never been on TV … at least not like this. There have been (greatly) edited versions of this movie, including one that was paired with an also greatly cut “Kentucky Fried Movie.” Total time of both movies was probably about 20 minutes.
I was asked to take my little brother to the movies on a Saturday night … and this was the movie we wound up seeing at the local college movie theater. I remember the sinking feeling I had as this movie unspooled … I knew there was no way my 9 year old brother was not going to talk about this and the fact that my mother picked the movie was not going to help one little bit.
He didn’t and it didn’t. And it was quite a while before I saw my little brother again.
Jenny
Indeed, it was a late night double feature at theaters, not wishing to allow it to be shown at “normal” times.
This was on a Saturday evening not so late, but it was the Emory Theater, a few steps from Emory University, a hotbed of hippiedom in the 1970, so anything was possible.
My mother might not have picked the movie after all; she might have thought we were seeing something more suitable for a 9 year old boy.
I took him to another movie when he was a little older and it turned out to be one of those films where everybody lights up a joint so they can be really stoned at some important point further in … oh yeah, now I remember. I took my little brother to see it because we were both Frank Zappa fans. “200 Motels.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/200_Motels
I truly did not know we’d wind up stoned (from the contact high) and weirded out, I thought Frank was more of a avant-garde Stockhausen kind of guy. (Being a music major makes you an idiot sometimes.) Which Frank was, but he was also a maniac, as 200 Motels will surely tell you. My brother … well, he could sing the St. Alfonso’s Pancake Breakfast song — “don’t go where the Huskies go” and that’s what he knew about Frank.
It was an eye-opening experience for the two of us. I’m still a Frank Zappa fan today, god rest him, but you know I got another bad report when we got back to the house. :)
They demolished the Emory Theater building a few years back. My mother may well have had something to do with it.
Jenny
Funny you mention this. For some reason Groovetube popped into my head a couple weeks ago. I remember seeing it with friends in some back alley hippie “performing arts” joint about 1970, played on Betamax and 21 inch TVs, and the only things I remember about it is that Chevy Chase was in it and, of course, Safety Sam.
I saw Groove Tube as a double-feature with another gem called Spaced Out (alien space ship shaped like a joint arrives, from a planet where men are unknown. With predictable results). Classic of the filmographic arts.
I had a high-school friend who wanted me to go to the midnight show of Rocky Horror Picture Show on Halloween. I passed.
I went with my girlfriend who had already seen it. When that particular bit came on she started laughing and I could not quite figure out why. Then as the camera zoomed in I fugured it out.
And who can forget Brown 25. A product of the Uranus corporation.
“And who can forget Brown 25. A product of the Uranus corporation.”
There’s something great coming out of….Uranus.
…With the nutrition of Beef Stew.