Years before the tumultuous and checkered filmmaking career of John Landis really took shape with National Lampoon’s Animal House, The Blues Brothers, and An American Werewolf in London, he was a kid bombing around Hollywood as an extra or occasional stuntman taking any odd job being offered. Tiring of the menial grunt work, Landis decided it was time to stake out his own territory and at the age of twenty-one he wrote, directed and prominently starred in his first feature: a micro-budget screwball comedy/homage to 50s sci-fi horror films called Schlock.
Financed
through family and friends and shot within twelve days on a mere $60,000
budget, Schlock tells the simple
story of a small town besieged by murders with banana peels turning up at every
crime scene, leading authorities to the terrible prehistoric ape-man Schlock (Landis in an ape costume). The rest of it is largely a string of loosely
connected sight gags involving our wordless simian causing a ruckus in a public
setting with references to monster movies including but not limited to Trog and 2001: A Space Odyssey alongside early precursors to jokes found in National Lampoon’s Animal House and An American Werewolf in London.
Uniting
the then fledgling director for the first time with makeup artist Rick Baker,
who later won the Academy Award for Best Makeup on Landis’ An American Werewolf in London, Landis as the titular Schlock displays early on an innate
talent for physical comedy. While
cloaked beneath an ape costume with only his eyes visible, fans of Animal House will recognize distinctive
sight gags such as the ape turning his head back to break the fourth wall and
wink at the audience ala John Belushi.
Also cropping up is the fake movie-within-a-movie See You Next Wednesday, a loose reference to Frank Poole’s birthday
message in 2001: A Space Odyssey. After hearing that recurring phrase show up
in the Landis-directed Michael Jackson’s
Thriller, it’s satisfying to finally learn the source of what has since
become one of Landis’ director-trademarks.
Originally
released by The Blob distributor Jack
H. Harris, Schlock quietly came and
went before briefly resurfacing years later amid Landis’ newfound success in
Hollywood with the new title Banana
Monster. Though Landis himself
doesn’t look back fondly on his sophomore starting point, having followed the
writer-director’s career for years including far more unwanted chapters later
on such as the infamous Twilight Zone:
The Movie (I’ll spare you the gory details) I found Schlock to be an imperfect yet frequently amusing comic romp.
Not all of the jokes work, such as a goof on
the legendary bone tossing shot in 2001:
A Space Odyssey cut to Also Sprach
Zarathustra. But when you have
scenes like Schlock entering a packed
movie theater to watch The Blob while
trying to get a lady with a wig from blocking his view, it’s hard to not enjoy
the apeman’s silent yet charming company for the remainder of the film’s short
running time.
- Andrew Kotwicki