It Came From Hollywood

It Came from Hollywood (1982)

Runtime: 80 minutes

Directed by: Malcolm Leo/Andrew Solt

Starring: Dan Aykroyd, John Candy, Cheech & Chong, Gilda Radner

From: Paramount

MST3K did not do it first.

I understand that many people saw this in the 80's when it was in heavy rotation on HBO; from the brief time I had the HBO channels in the late 90's, I can confirm they still showed this, as this is how I saw the movie back over 20 years ago. It will likely never receive an official release due to all the different film clips they showed but it is rather easy to track down online.

Dan Aykroyd, John Candy, Cheech & Chong, & Gilda Radner not only appear in wraparound sketches but they make occasional pithy comments over trailers and footage from bad movies (although it does have clips from The Fly, The War of the Worlds, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Blob and even The Day the Earth Stood Still for some damn reason), and it's divided into various sections, including animal movies, anti-drug pictures, aliens, rebel teen flicks and a tribute to Ed Wood. The humor was hit or miss to me and it's not as funny as a typical episode of MST3K-Lord knows this goes for broad and obvious humor rather than the esoteric and eccentric of Joel or Mike and the bots- but there were enough laughs and it was nice seeing clips from a bunch of films I had never seen before.

To Hollywood's credit, it never cruelly mocks as it pokes fun at these low-budget extravaganzas, treated Wood fairly and Candy at one point makes the important point that most of what is in here hardly had any budget, explaining the low-fi moments. It was a gas seeing Aykroyd and Candy spoof Glen or Glenda, and Radner sharing a brief scene with Cheech & Chong. Incidentally, I saw on one site that apparently the reason why Wood is focused on was that the books by Harry and Michael Medved were popular... and for some reason, Paramount bought the rights to Glen or Glenda and were going to show it for at least a short run theatrically at a famous theatre in NYC before backing out at the last minute. Really.