Canned Film Festival
Canned Film Festival | |
---|---|
Young & Rubicam | |
Directed by | Jonathan Heap |
Starring | Laraine Newman F. Richards Ford Laura Galusha Patrick Garner Philip Nee Katheryn Rossetter |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
No. of seasons | 1 |
No. of episodes | 13 |
Production | |
Executive producers | Jeff Lawenda Michael Yudin |
Producers | John Gilroy Margot Breier |
Running time | approx. 92 minutes |
Original release | |
Network | Syndicated |
The Canned Film Festival is a
Although similar in style to the successful Mystery Science Theater 3000 series that aired a few years later, the Canned Film Festival differed in that its comedy scenes occurred strictly during the commercial intermissions instead of adding peanut gallery type satire during the actual run of the movies. In addition, the script, although comedic in nature, often reflected upon the serious contextual and cultural subjects contained in the featured movies, sometimes providing historical insight into their production. An example is seen during the episode featuring Project Moonbase, where female spaceship commanders were discussed as an accurate future prediction by the 1950s era movie, as were cordless telephones and big screen televisions. The featured B movies of the series were not full-length, and edited to fit the show's approximately two-hour timeframe per episode.
Plot summary
The series plot was built around the fictional town of Limekirk, Texas, where the local Ritz theater was undergoing economic and cultural decline due to lack of a customer base. The owner and sole usherette, Laraine (Laraine Newman), took extreme measures to attract moviegoers by adding laundry facilities to the lobby and stocking a large collection of unusual
As the story maintains during the opening sequence of each episode, the most successful of Laraine's business ventures to rejuvenate the Ritz was, by far, the screening of strange and unusual films that resulted in the series' namesake. Laraine, together with her mother who ran the projector booth, succeeded in attracting several new customers who became regular characters throughout the rest of the series run.
Cast and characters
The series starred Laraine Newman of Saturday Night Live fame, whose main character, Laraine the usherette, wore an old-fashioned maroon ushers uniform and ran the Ritz with such strict organization as to assign every patron a seat despite the theater's constant near-empty attendance. Laraine ensured that each movie started exactly on time as scheduled, cuing her mother in the production booth via a microphone. Laraine's mother was never actually named nor completely seen during any of the episodes, but sometimes communicated by pounding on the walls or playing musical tunes (presumably with an instrument or a sound device in the booth and transmitted through the theater's sound system).
The supporting characters, five in all, were split roughly along gender lines, with three men and two women. The women included Doris (Kathryn Rossetter), a middle-aged aficionado of romantic drama stories, and Becky (Laura Galusha) a girl in her early twenties who offered a young feminist perspective to the movies. The men included Jack (F. Richards Ford), Fitzy (Patrick Garner), and Chan (Philip Nee). Jack, as well as the being the love interest of Becky, was also Limekirk's newspaper reporter who was required to review the movies. Together with the middle-aged Fitzy, the two manifested the stereotypical male-oriented fascinations for lowbrow action, crude sexual innuendos, and took morbid pleasure in making fun of some of the movies' more macabre themes (such as nuclear warfare in the feature Rocket Attack U.S.A.).
Chan, in addition to being of Asian descent (as opposed to the rest of the cast being Caucasian), was a mute who never spoke except during the episode featuring the movie The Slime People where Laraine dreamt that Chan was possessed. What role Chan's character brought to the series is less clear, although he sometimes provided a childlike response to the episode plots, such as taking a spin in one of the lobby's clothes driers after being inspired by the outer-space setting of the featured movie Project Moonbase. Chan's muteness in the show was only implied, leaving it up to the audience to decide whether or not he could physically speak (although he did laugh on occasion), or if his condition was simply a language barrier written into the script.
Production
Prior to merging with the
Although the fictional setting for the show was in Texas, according to Rick Ford's biography in
Popular culture influences
Overall, the Canned Film Festival can best be described as a curtailed advertising experiment by the Dallas-based Dr Pepper Company to break into the late night television market in 1986, as the anticipated second season never materialized.
Those that remember the Canned Film Festival might recall the numerous Dr. Pepper television
The series may also be remembered as one of the many little-known works of Laraine Newman's acting career.[9][10] While she performed in countless supporting roles throughout Hollywood following her tenure on NBC's Saturday Night Live, her work with the Canned Film Festival is rarely ever credited.[11] The careers of other noteworthy stars also include this show, such as Kathryn Rossetter who played support roles in movies, electronic media (video games), and television shows such as Law & Order, Cosby, Touched by an Angel, L.A. Law, and Kate & Allie.[12] Patrick Garner, in addition to appearing in a myriad of TV commercial ads, also made cameos in television shows such as Monsters, Chappelle's Show, and Law & Order,[13] and more recently in theatre, starred as Mr. Cunningham in the Broadway version of Happy Days The Musical.[14][15] Rick Ford (identified as F. Richards Ford in the series credits) made appearances in episodes of Married... with Children and Mama's Family as well as movies like The Tattoo Chase and the Oscar-nominated 12:01 PM, and is also very active in regional and professional theatre.[16][17] Laura Galusha's acting career seemed to be brief, as she is recorded to have appeared on screen only once in an episode of CBS Schoolbreak Special in 1985,[18] whereas Phil Nee (identified as Philip Nee in the series credits), in addition to working behind the camera as a writer and technical crew, has performed several cameos over the years following the series in both movies and television.[19]
The Canned Film Festival's genre-based similarity to Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K) did not stop with the show format. Following its 1988 debut, MST3K featured many of the same films as the Canned Film Festival did two years earlier in 1986. While this coincidence might suggest that the Canned Film Festival was a source of inspiration for MST3Ks creator, Joel Hodgson, such assertions would be false. In fact, Hodgson states that his vision for MST3K actually came from the 1978 CBS Children's Film Festival instead.[20] Either way, due its 11-season run (as opposed to the single season Canned Film Festival) it is clear that MST3K was much more successful in the B movie satire genre despite the lack of a large sponsor like the Dr Pepper Company. However, it is also possible that its success over the Canned Film Festival was due to it reaching a wider audience through the then-nascent cable TV market, and aired at more suitable hours for its intended audience.[21][22]
Episode list
The following is an episode list for The Canned Film Festival. 13 episodes were produced, and due to the nationally syndicated nature of the program, exact air dates for local television broadcasts are not precisely known. Generally, the program aired on the weekends during the late night time slot on both
# | Title | Original air date | |
---|---|---|---|
01 | "The Terror of Tiny Town" | June 21, 1986[2] | |
02 | "Doctor of Doom" | June 28, 1986 | |
03 | "Ski Fever" | July 5, 1986 | |
04 | "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians" | July 12, 1986 | |
05 | "Robot Monster" | July 19, 1986 | |
Laraine prints movie fliers for the featured film while theater patrons mistakenly expect a film called Dog of Norway. | |||
06 | "The Crawling Hand" | July 26, 1986 | |
07 | "They Saved Hitler's Brain" | August 2, 1986 | |
08 | "Untamed Women" | August 9, 1986 | |
09 | "Bride of the Monster" | August 16, 1986 | |
With Jack absent, Becky re-thinks their relationship while the group collectively dons Tor Johnson masks after getting a rare glimpse of Laraine's mother. | |||
10 | "The Las Vegas Hillbillys" | August 23, 1986 | |
11 | "Project Moonbase" | August 30, 1986 | |
Becky, inspired by the feature film's female lead, spurns Jack's advances while Chan takes a spin in a lobby clothes dryer. | |||
12 | "Rocket Attack U.S.A." | September 6, 1986 | |
Laraine and Doris track down mysteriously missing socks that disappeared during laundry cycles, but Fitzy and the others blame Laraine's mom. | |||
13 | "The Slime People" | September 13, 1986 | |
See also
References
- ^ a b c Pardi, Robert J. (August 23, 1986). "'Canned Festival' spoofs TV's worst". Times-News (Hendersonville, North Carolina). Retrieved December 7, 2010.
- ^ a b Bark, Ed (June 4, 1986). "Dr Pepper has film duds bottled up". The Dallas Morning News. Retrieved December 6, 2010.
- ^ a b c Margulies, Lee (June 10, 1986). "'Canned Film Festival' on TV, Worst of the Big Screen On Its Way". Los Angeles Times. p. 10. Archived from the original on November 4, 2012. Retrieved December 6, 2010.
- ^ Television Obscurities. "Q & A: The Canned Film Festival; Mr. Smith". July 26th, 2010.
- Internet Movie Database. Retrieved on 24 January 2016.
- ^ Durant Daily Democrat. p. 2. Retrieved December 7, 2010.
- Internet Movie Database. Retrieved on 26 January 2016.
- ^ Barbara, Lippert (20 January 1986). "Dr Pepper fights cola wars with Godzilla". St. Petersburg Times. St. Petersburg.
- Internet Movie Database. Retrieved on 17 October 2007.
- ^ Laraine Newman. The New York Times. Retrieved on 17 February 2008.
- ^ "Credits". Laraine Newman. Retrieved 17 December 2016.
- Internet Movie Database. Retrieved on 17 October 2007.
- Internet Movie Database. Retrieved on 24 August 2008.
- ^ Happy Days The Musical. BroadwayWorld.com. Retrieved on 24 August 2008.
- ^ Patrick Garner. BroadwayWorld.com. Retrieved on 24 August 2008.
- ^ www.RickFordActor.com. Retrieved on 7 September 2008.
- Internet Movie Database. Retrieved on 24 August 2008.
- Internet Movie Database. Retrieved on 17 October 2007.
- Internet Movie Database. Retrieved on 24 August 2008.
- ^ "20 Questions Only Joel Hodgson Can Answer about MST3K". Satellite News. Retrieved on 17 October 2007.
- ^ Mystery Science Theater 3000 premiered on KTMA-TV Channel 23 at 6:00 PM on Thanksgiving Day, 24 November 1988.
- WKBD-TV Channel 50 at 3:00 AM on Saturday, 30 August 1986.