Summary
The film stands as a simultaneous celebration and campy tweaking of mid-20th century Americana, culling liberally from the B-movie cinema of Dante and Davison's youth (including brief clips from The Phantom Planet and Teenagers from Outer Space ), early TV commercials, newsreel footage of early A-bomb tests, cartoons, westerns, sci-fi, bloopers and war movies as well as clips from children's TV shows its college-age audiences had forgotten they had seen. [5] Perhaps most memorable among these is the excerpted moment from Andy's Gang of a puppeteer-controlled cat and mouse performing “Jesus Loves Me". [6] [1]
Elements of several features are revisited throughout the movie as recurrent, serialized comic motifs. Among these serialized movies in the longer-form version were College Confidential , Speed Crazy , Earth vs. the Flying Saucers , I Was a Teenage Werewolf , Attack of the 50 Foot Woman , Beginning of the End , The Giant Gila Monster and The Amazing Colossal Man that were rotated in and out. Bizarre non-sequitur elements are featured in between the recurrent narrative vignettes, including strange advertisements (including one for Carter's Little Liver Pills) and educational films. The film was designed to be a free-flowing, communal audience experience. Interactivity (e.g. sing-alongs to showcased television show theme songs) was encouraged.
Among the numerous celebrities featured were Rod Serling, Alfred Hitchcock, the Beatles, W.C. Fields, Groucho Marx, Ann-Margret, Ngo Dinh Diem, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, President Richard M. Nixon, The Animals, Dean Martin, and Abbott and Costello. [1] [7]
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