Tunnelvision

Sitting through the sixty-seven minute anthology sketch comedy film TUNNELVISION from 1976 was quite a chore.  With each painfully unfunny skit I became more irritated, feeling as if life was passing me by in some fashion.   The premise: in the unimaginable future of 1985, a Senate hearing targets the president of the TunnelVision television network, which broadcasts content free of the old network Standards and Practices due to a new Bill of Rights.  When asked how he selects such often off color, crude programming, the CEO jokingly replies, "If it makes my ass twitch, I know I have a winner."

That's pretty much how I felt watching this farrago.  Few, if any, skits were winners.  TUNNELVISION is one of several '70s stabs at the freewheeling blackout comedy genre that have (usually) unrelated bits to pad a chronologically short (but usually interminable nonetheless) running time.  Films like THE BOOB TUBE, JOKES MY FOLKS NEVER TOLD ME, PRIME TIME, and many others.  There were a few good ones like THE GROOVE TUBE and KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE.  1980's LOOSE SHOES had some great moments.  TUNNELVISION has an impressive roster of then-unknown comedic stars like John Candy, Joe Flaherty,  and Betty Thomas.  Chevy Chase appears as himself.  Former U.S. Senator for Minnesota Al Franken appears with his old partner in comedy Al Davis.  Firesign Theater member Phil Proctor plays the CEO.

Most everyone who appears in TUNNELVISION went on to some degree of fame, and likely are embarrassed whenever this horror is brought up.  As they should be.  Co-director/writer/star Neal Israel, who would go on to create many pea brained comedies in the '80s, bears most of the blame for the movie, which features a sampling of a typical day of TunnelVision's programming for the attendees of the hearing to view and ultimately use to decide the fate of the network.  There are newscasts in which the female co-anchor barely (or never) gets to speak.  Game shows in which contestants have ghastly things revealed about them before a climactic farting contest.  Commercials for vitamin enriched dildos and classic novels that can be ingested as tablets. Pitiful parodies of All in the Family and Candid Camera.  And so on.

The skits are expectedly racist, sexist, and mean-spirited.  Dark humor that's just cruel.  Monty Python did this sort of thing far better.   I don't think I managed even the slightest bit of an upturn on either side of my mouth during TUNNELVISION.  While there are a few astute, prescient seeming gags (a gas company called Axxon brags about killing fish with an oil spill; two political candidates laundry list each others' corruptions), most are just dead in the water.  The movie had the potential to be in the "more interesting funny than ha ha funny" genre, much like the SCTV series, in which some of this movie's actors starred.  But it's just lame and foolish.  Catchy theme song, though.

Besides playing spot-the-future-star, what makes TUNNELVISION somewhat bearable are nifty evocations of '70s life and a few groovy animated promos, as well as the frequent use of voice over artist Ernie Anderson, whose brogue will be familiar to anyone who watched the ABC television network in the late '70s and '80s.

Otherwise, you've been warned, invisible audience.