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There is a style of com­edy from the 1970’s that schlock fiends like Your Humble Reviewer remem­ber with a cer­tain, deranged fond­ness.  There’s no offi­cial name for this sub­genre but this kind of film is made up of short skits that act out the plot­lines of smutty story jokes.  Sometimes there is a frame­work for the skits, some­times not, but the end result always plays out like a vol­ume of Totally Tasteless Jokes brought to life.  These films are rarely funny in a lit­eral, laugh-out-loud way but they hold a cer­tain fas­ci­na­tion if you’re the right age to remem­ber sneak­ing a glimpse at them on cable t.v.

Up Yours — A Rockin’ Comedy fits squarely into this phan­tom sub­genre.  Despite the in-your-face assertive­ness of the title, it’s a hum­ble, old-fashioned sort of affair.  The film begins with a build­ing in down­town area of Los Angeles intro­duc­ing itself to the audi­ence via the voice and body of “Elaine” (Cindy Morgan, future star of Caddyshack and Tron).  She pops up peri­od­i­cally through the run­ning time, super­im­posed onto rail­ings or win­dows via kid­die show-style opti­cals to set up a string of gags as old as the burlesque-show com­edy rou­tines they were prob­a­bly pil­fered from.

The end result isn’t what you’d call funny but cult movie types might find it charm­ing in an odd way for a few rea­sons.  The first is its sweet, eager-to-please atti­tude.  The jokes might not be wor­thy of Sid Caesar but they roll at a steady clip and rarely over­stay their wel­come.  The punch­lines are often vis­i­ble from a mile away but the film­mak­ers work around this by heav­ily invest­ing in the setups of these gags.  The per­fect exam­ple is a lengthy where a psy­chi­a­trist brings his patients to a restau­rant for a din­ing expe­ri­ence.  You know from the first few sec­onds that the “psy­chi­a­trist” will reveal him­self to be a loon when the bill arrives but it’s inter­est­ing to watch the work all the actors put into their wacky din­ing behav­ior dur­ing the meal.

Those into their exploita­tion cin­ema will also enjoy Up Yours because of all the famil­iar faces that turn up dur­ing its run­ning time.  For instance, Joe Dante reg­u­lar Belinda Balaski turns up a vic­tim of obscene phone calls and Buck Flower has a fun bit as a beg­gar who offers an endear­ingly dirty retort to a Shakespeare-quoting busi­ness­man who turns him down.  Familiar t.v. come­dian Chuck McCann pops up in a few dif­fer­ent gags and eagle-eyed types will be inter­ested to see cameos from Nurse Sherri star Jill Jacobsen and 1970’s skin-flick reg­u­lars Tallie Cochrane and Patrick Wright.  There are even walk-on bits from Ilsa series direc­tor Don Edmonds and future action-flick king­pin Walter Hill!

However, the best sell­ing point of Up Yours for fans of b-movie emphe­mera is how weird it gets in its sec­ond half.  There’s a bizarre, lengthy gag involv­ing Chuck McCann as a hus­band who starts eat­ing dog food to spite his wife for for­get­ting to stock the pantry, only to become addicted to it.  It’s a lengthy, weird stretch of the film that serves as the set up for a groaner of a punch­line that will have you howl­ing with dis­be­lief.  There’s also a bizarre gag involv­ing a ten­ant who gets aroused by danc­ing falling for an impres­sion­able nymphet who spe­cial­izes in tap-dancing.  This joke’s plot­line involves an unfor­get­tably bizarre scene where the girl dances a naked fla­menco dance of seduc­tion (!) for her also-nude suitor.  At this point, Up Yours goes from quaintly eccen­tric to flat-out peculiar.

Thus, Up Yours — A Rockin’ Comedy doesn’t suc­ceed by objec­tive comedic stan­dards but it’s weird enough to hold the inter­est of those view­ers with the right mind­set and the proper love for juvenile-level bur­lesque humor.  We all know who we are, right?

(Note: this is one of four films in VCI’s Drive-In Grindhouse set — the other three are Summer School, Psychedelic Fever and The Farmer’s Other Daughter.  All four will be reviewed at Schlockmania)