What "Saturday Night Live" and "SCTV" became famous for, THE GROOVE TUBE did first. Independently distributed by Ken Shapiro, who also did just about everything else in the film except play a few naked girls, this counter-cultural comedy presents a vision of television made by and for
potheads, hippies, and others who weren't being represented by the media at the time. Some of it is certainly dated, but it's an integral element in any 1970s time capsule.
THE GROOVE TUBE was an outgrowth of "Channel One," a comedy troupe formed in 1967 by Shapiro, Lane Sarasohn, and Chevy Chase. Instead of performing live, they videotaped parodies of TV and showed them in a ratty theater in Greenwich Village. (Chase left early on and was replaced by Richard Belzer.) After touring a collection of Channel One's best bits to colleges, Shapiro transferred them to film and assembled this movie. THE GROOVE TUBE doesn't offer much in the way of satire or political humor; indeed, a lot of it is crude and sophomoric. And that's probably why so much of it is
still pretty funny. leave a comment
