User Reviews

Just finished watching The Groove Tube which I first saw about 23 years ago when I was a teenager staying up way past my bedtime watching HBO with my brother and his best friend. We had also watched Animal House just before that so we saw two movies that starred an SNL alumna and had some naked breasts. Good thing our parents were asleep the whole time! Anyway, there were lots of weird and funny things in this movie that were eye-openers like the Brown 25 sequence of the Uranus Industries commercial ("with the taste of beef stew" says the announcer as what is apparently human excrement comes out of a white tube. Ewww!) or the face of the puppet talking about VD (a scrotum with a small penis with eyes glued on). Chevy Chase and Richard Belzer made their feature film debuts here. Chase is hilarious whether doing a Geritan spot with a woman stripping, having his hands have sex in a "Let Fingers Do It" commercial, or singing "Four Leaf Clover" with co-writer/director Ken Shapiro drumming his hands on his head. Belzer teams with Shapiro in "The Dealers" movie, and on "Channel One Evening News" with one wild bit having Belzer as a black prostitute trying tricks on reporter Ken who plays Lionel here. "Lionel, that sounds like a train that I'm going to ride like a Choo-Choo!" Other outrageous bits include "The Koko Show" with Shipiro as a kid clown show host who, after ordering the "people over ten" to leave the room, reads requests of his viewers like passages of "Fanny Hill"! Or how about the Olympics segment with a German couple making love being announced by two men (one of them Spanish) as they get explicit while "Please Stand By" keeps interrupting on the screen! Or the animated segment on "The Dealers" which depicts dancing toilets after Shapiro ingested some marijuana! Not everything's so dirty. Besides the "Four Leaf Clover" skit, at the end there's a highly amusing music segment with Ken lip-syncing his own recording of "Just You, Just Me" while dancing with suit and briefcase around the city with occasionally a cop (co-writer Lane Sarasohn) joining in. So, in summation this is one weirdly, funny movie that seemed to influence other like films (Tunnelvision, Kentucky Fried Movie) and possibly Saturday Night Live (which made Chevy that show's first star) and, despite some dated elements, can still amuse today. P.S. While I liked hearing Curtis Mayfield's "Move On Up" during the gorillas dancing/hitchhiking beginning sequence, I did wonder what the point was with the sequence of the hitchhiker and the woman who picked him up, having them running from the car, stripping on the run, and then having the naked man get caught by the cop who stopped on the road. Guess it's one of those '70s streaking things...

**************Possible spoilers********** There is only one reason why I saw this movie and that was because I have a massive crush on Richard Belzer.(I don't know that much about humor) There were some part that were funny Like the Barbie and Ken Spoof and the dealers and the president skit. Mind you this is sometimes raunchy(Dare, I say crude?) It was at times funny, but it could have been better. Probably if they spent more time in the humor and less time getting women undress, the movie would had been funnier. Some skits just make you want to gag, and cringe, others skits make you laugh and oddly enough think. Sadly this movie is dated. If you have a mad crush on Richard Belzer(So worth it) it's worth checking it out and seeing chevy chase.

I noticed that the release date listed on your web site is 1974. That is strange, because I distinctly remember seeing the film in theaters in 1972. If people are confused, that may be because another multi-style movie came out in 1974 called "Tunnelvision", which was also a satire of TV genres but with a twist; The story was set in 1985 (11 years in the future) in which a Congressional committee was investigating the practices of Tunnlevision, which was a completely uncensored TV network. During a sample viewing of one of the Network's daily showings, the shows, commercials and news broadcasts showed futuristic forecasts of world events and celebrities (of 1974). Of course, this was all comedic speculation, but I found it funny all the same. Anyway, "The Groove Tube" was released in 1972, not 1974 as your web site reports.

Cult Cuts Volume 49 (Return to the Video Store: The Undefined Part Two)

#1/4: The Groove Tube (1974)

(7/10): Well this was an interesting watch that much I can say for sure.

The Groove Tube actually has no overarching narrative and instead opts for a sketch comedy based approach with a series of random comedy shorts that can make it a bit of a hit or miss with people, but it is noteworthy for giving a comedy legend his start in Chevy Chase.

The Movie starts with a hitchhiker skit with a man hitching a ride with an attractive young woman who then seduces him and they run off into the woods taking their clothes off to have sex and then he runs out of the next patch of trees and right into a police officer.

Well actually there's a scene with gorilla primates first and we get one baby gorilla getting breastfed by a big boobed mama gorilla and then they later discover the titular Groove Tube and we get a funky 70s tune to ease us into the film.

Other skits consist of a clown kids show host who has a segment that people over ten must leave the room for and he then begins to read an excerpt a rather sultry novel.

Two dunce like drug dealers who are about to make a deal and then feel like they are about to be arrested so they flush the drugs and then leave, but end up eating a ton of the product thinking they are being followed by the cops only to have the cops eventually pass them and then they trip.

A skit featuring a news crew with incredibly silly names and silly names for the country's that are on the news.

A mock cooking show, and more silly little skits that make it an overall interesting and fun watch.

The film was written, produced, directed and stars Ken Shapiro, he didn't have much outside of this film however it is a pretty solid mockery of TV programs & Advertisments.

The music is solid if a bit familiar but I don't know if this film came first or the original song, both have a very distinctive seventies vibe.

The skits vary in length but overall add to a very unique feel that makes it stand out amongst many other comedies I've seen and makes it interesting enough of a watch to recommend even if it's not going to be for everyone.

This is the type of film that in 1974 an 11 year old like me would have spent the whole time "tee hee'ing" at, a naughty, sexual view of some of the TV tropes of the mid 1970's. You know what is going to happen when a clown kiddie show sends the adults out of the room, and a series of commercials for the "Uranus Corporation" just get increasingly perverted. There's a spoof of the phone company and their "Let Your Fingers do the Walking" advertising, a gay themed version of a Catholic anti-drug short film, and a Wild World of Sports spoof that is basically a round the world sex competition. A commercial that turns human waste into an edible product. Chevy Chase appears in a musical commercial spoof that is perhaps the only tactful moment of the film. In the film's favor, there are some nice vintage shots of 70's New York City where a dancer prances through some highly recognizable midtown business districts.

I have no objection to a little bit of blue humor, and I can understand from the mentality I would have had when this came out how ripe American television was for spoofing. But 75 minutes of it non-stop does get a little tiresome after a while, and the dated elements of it outweigh what stands the test of time. There are funnier scenes in "Kentucky Fried Movie" which at least had the team of Zucker and Abrams writing the sketches. This does have its share of nudity (male and female), and the gay context is not in the least meant to be offensive. You can't expect art in a film like this, but you should get at least some humor which this only has in dribs and drabs.