Going Berserk

The geometric resources of comedy have a great exponent in David Steinberg. He adds a deep, sculptural quality to his searching Warhol deadpans, and like Sir Ralph Richardson at the end of Measure for Measure, he tells his cast from the outset, “we’ll show what’s yet behind, that’s meet you all should know.”

Situational comedy (low-level showbiz, male dancers, bikers, etc.) falls into a trap at the aerobics studio and becomes a spoof of The Manchurian Candidate and The Parallax View (the indoctrination film is a parody of Father Knows Best featuring Joe Flaherty as a demented Anderson with a bullwhip, and Elinor Donahue for the ring of truth). The assassination plot just fizzles out very humorously, and there you are.

The advantage to SCTV’s leading lights of having a great comedy director here is that nothing at all is lost. A running gag about an inconsiderate interlocutor is put to good use enlivening the end credits.