What turns the apes on? What makes a cop dance in the street? What has the night tonic done for her? Who chases her through the woods? What can Butz Beer do for you? Why are they eating grass?

ALL IS REVEALED IN THE GROOVE TUBE

The most hilarious and wildest movie is here!


Channel One was a New York-based comedy group which presented short satirical sketches concerning television. What set this group apart was that they performed in front of genuine TV cameras, while the audience watched on TV monitors strategically placed throughout the theater. Many of the best, and most censurable, Channel One sketches were assembled by the group's mentor Ken Shapiro and released to theaters as the feature-length The Groove Tube. Shapiro himself stars in several of the sketches, most notably as "Koko the Clown," a kiddie-show host whose idea of "Make Believe Land" consists of smoking a joint and reading passages from Fanny Hill. Most of the Channel One players will be unfamiliar to audiences of the 1990s, save for Richard Belzer and Chevy Chase, the latter offering a most unusual rendition of "I'm Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover." The Groove Tube was originally rated X, thanks to such bits as "Safety Sam," wherein the audience is offered cheerful anti-VD advice by a talking penis.


The Groove Tube (1974), written and produced by Ken Shapiro, was a low-budget comedy film. It satirized television and the counterculture of the early 1970s. The film was originally produced to be shown at the Channel One Theater on East 60th St. in New York, a venue that featured R-rated video recordings shown on three television sets, which was a novelty to the audiences of the time. The film starred Richard Belzer and Chevy Chase, and featured "Move On Up" by Curtis Mayfield in the film's opening scene. The news desk satire, including the signature line "Good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow" was later used by Chase for his signature Weekend Update piece on Saturday Night Live, although in the film he does not appear in this segment.
Among the skits were:
"The Dealers", a feature about a pair of urban drug dealers introduced by a wildly overdone, hip title segment
"Koko the Clown" featuring a jaded clown reading erotica (specifically a page from Fanny Hill, with promises of Marquis de Sade the next day) to the kids
a public service announcement for venereal disease that covertly used a real penis
a parody of sponsored television cooking shows (it bakes up an inedible "brick" while repeatedly using the fictitious "Kramp Easy Lube" shortening, a spoof of the "Kraft" name).
Several spoof TV commercials are featured, including a few for the fictional Uranus Corporation (pronounced with the stress on the second and third syllables). One Uranus commercial touts the amazing properties of its space-age polymer product "Brown 25" (which looks suspiciously like human feces): "It has the strength of steel, the flexibility of rubber, and the nutritional value of beef stew."
Buzzy Linhart appears in the film as an (eventually) naked hitchhiker. He also supervised the film's soundtrack.


Release Date: June 23, 1974 @ the Eastside Cinema

Distrib: Levitt/Pickman