National Lampoon's Movie Madness

I watched 1982's NATIONAL LAMPOON'S MOVIE MADNESS with a certain admiration.  This is certainly one of the worst movies I've ever seen, and it just kept topping itself.  It was almost as if the cast and crew slickly calculated a Bad Movie Formula.  But on second thought, this goes far beyond how bad movies usually play.  MOVIE MADNESS, comprised of three separate episodes spoofing genre pics, seems to have born out of the very worst ideas of comedic improvisation, as if the actors were allowed to just do anything they wanted.   Anything, and hoped something would elicit a chuckle.  Doesn't this approach to comedy usually work out better? There are several screenwriters here whose work reveals they have little understanding of how to write a screenplay. 

One of those actors is Fred Willard, who is a genius at this sort of thing.  Just watch some of Christopher Guest's films.  Here, he looks uncomfortable and embarrassed.  The only such time I can recall this with him.   He's most certainly not the only one.

The first episode, "Growing Yourself", directed by music video maven Bob Giraldi, features a neurotic (ANIMAL HOUSE alum Peter Riegert) who encourages his wife to leave him so they can find themselves.  Grow.  Discover who they were meant to be, etc.  The parody targets mid-life crisis movies like A CHANGE OF SEASONS and MIDDLE AGE CRAZY.  I'm not sure what happened here.   Nothing comes close to being funny, or even amusing.  Jokes about missing children and jungles of houseplants? At least Teresa Ganzel removes her top to reveal her impressive, ample, and natural bosom.  But what follows is one of the oddest takes on simultaneous orgasms I've seen.  Cringeworthy.

Next is Giraldi's "Success Wanters", featuring an attractive young woman named Dominique (Ann Dusenberry, best known for JAWS 2) who goes from poor college grad to margarine company CEO to mistress of the President of the U.S. (Willard).  All precipitated by a revenge plot after a group of corporate pigs rape her with sticks of butter.  Hardee har har.  "Success Wanters" has some of MOVIE MADNESS' darkest humor, but it's all just excruciatingly dumb.   When you're taking potshots at something as obscure as THE GREEK TYCOON, well...For the record, Ms. Dusenberry also goes topless, several times. 

The worst is saved for last.  "Municipalians" spoofs cop dramas, with Robby Benson as a naively positive rookie and Richard Widmark as his cynical, alcoholic partner.  The plot involves the hunt for a serial killer (Christopher Lloyd, easily delivering the best performance in the movie) who leaves a copy of his driver's license at each crime scene.  More dark humor, none too swift  When POLICE ACADEMY and even THE CHOIRBOYS (Lord help me) are more clever in their satire you really know you're in trouble.  Benson especially is just painful to watch.  How indie director Henry Jaglom came to be involved with this is a real mystery.

A fourth episode, also directed by Jaglom, took aim at terrorist/disaster movies and was deleted from the film.  A higher up at United Artists explained - "...it was of an awfulness that made the whole picture --too short with merely three sections-- look unreleaseable." That certainly got me curious.  It must've approached an epic level of crapdom that is beyond my comprehension. 

I'd heard for several years how bad this film was.  It didn't disappoint.  MOVIE MADNESS is, after you get past the pain, downright fascinating in its awfulness.  I've rarely seen anything like it.  A group of fifth graders on the monkey bars making fart sounds with their hands tucked into their armpits would be more erudite than anything in this movie.  It is easily in the Top Ten Worst I've seen.  This will encourage some readers to see it, as the bad reviews I read encouraged me.  But be warned, invisible audience, this is something quite extraordinary.