Customer Reviews

Dynamite Chicken [VHS]

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This film was recommended to me and I quickly found out it was out of print so I checked out Amazon. The reviews listed at the time were wretched, all one star and yuck. The film was available for 5 bucks so I bought it. Well this film is wonderful. It's a look at the culture of the late 60's from a youth perspective with humor and music of the time. It's something like the first music video with a humanist, historic bent. I think all the reviews panning this film are comming from a political viewpoint that doesn't care for anything different or critical of the status quo.

After renting this movie I went straight to Amazon to order a copy, and I'm still reeling over all the poor reviews on this page! First, note that this is NOT a Richard Pryor comedy film, this is comedy in the field of the Monkees' "Head" or "200 Motels", very acidic, very spontaneous and creative in the way you'd expect from 60's; pissed off and confrontational with flickers of blissed-out chaos. The film is loosely narrated through sequences of Richard Pryor walking down the street with a basketball in his hand, talking and cracking jokes to the cameraman. The film tackles the usual issues of USA as police state and the protest of Vietnam, feminism, drugs, etc with Monty Python-like abandon of convention and the use of psychedelic free association. Its not linear at all, and I think that's the turn off for most Amazon folks who turned in the poor reviews, but haven't we watched too many films with the usual beginning, middle and end? If you're one of the few who get kicks out of quasi-psychedelic documentation from a pissed off and enraged generation, you'll love this film. Enjoy.

It's now billed as a Richard Pryor film. In truth, Pryor makes a short, mildly funny, very dated cameo. The cast is unusual and varied. Besides Pryor the film features (are you ready?) The Ace Trucking Company; John Lennon; Yoko Ono; Fred Willard; Ron Carey; Michael O'Donoghue; Andy Warhol; Peter Max; Al Goldstein; BB King; Joan Baez and Sha Na Na! Worth seeing (maybe) once just to see what a mess it is! Unbelievable.

This is an oddly assembled and poorly edited patchwork quilt of film clips of people and music representing the "counterculture" of the late 60s-early 70s era. Basically, the nude scenes, profanity, etc. seem to be more for shock value than for making any statement, and nothing seems to make any particular point. Not even good for historical purposes, it's unlikely that you would want to see this more than once, or even all the way through upon the first viewing. The Richard Pryor scenes are only mildly interesting. I recall in the reviews for Frankie Avalon's "Back To The Beach," a reviewer said, "It stinks. It smells like poo poo. " The same is true for this film

Stinks. The only film I ever saw in a theater (re-released in the early 80's) where virtually everyone left before the film ended. Richard Pryor wasn't very funny, the pre-Saturday Night Live skits were very boring. The only benefit that video has is that you can fast forward the entire film.