200 Motels

Cult Films and Midnight Movies "From High Art to Low Trash" Vol 1 By Tom Baker

How in the hell do you review such a film? It's nonsense, a psychedelic, surrealistic mess that unfolds in sleazy video ugliness before the outraged viewer. Is it good? Yes. It's quite entertaining.

Ringo Starr, a.k.a "Larry the Dwarf" comes down from the ceiling on a wire, and Theodore Bikel (here "Rance Muhammitz") gives him a magic potion and wonders why he's dressed as Frank Zappa. Already, you know you're in for something that is teetering on the verge of being mentally incapacitated. Soon, any doubt about that is removed.

200 Motels was made in 1971, an era when the Revolution was Coming, and the siren signal of Timothy "Tune In, Turn On, and Drop Out" Leary could still be heard ringing in many a young ear. Vietnam raged across the sea, hippies and Yippies and Heads were burning their draft cards, and riots and protests and Black Power and Groovy and Baby were all still blooming fresh out of the increasing weed-choked garden of the flower children and the Summer of Love. (A bloke named Charlie and his coven of wild witches helped put an end to the delusional spell of Peace on Earth proceeding from these hordes of youthful vagabonds--but, somewhere in there, the dream was still alive.)

To that end, 200 Motels, which is part music video, part concert film, part hallucinogenic experience, is a bowel-churning dip into the unclassifiably bizarre, a historical curiosity featuring Keith Moon, Ringo, Frank Zappa, his band, horny groupies, animated "dental hygiene films," and bad, primitive video effects. Also, a human being dressed as a giant vacuum cleaner named "Chunga."

People are wearing what I take to be lizard heads trying to bust through a gate, and then things switch again and the film goes into double and triple exposure, and scenes and movements are run forward and backward. Colors are washed out, in negative, and cheap video psychedelics are layered on top of nonsense. In between, we have a full orchestra, a caterwauling backdrop of singing and chanting, and an occasional break for vocalizations that make it seem as if this is some old piece of musical theater--but the audience will be lost in the plotlessness of it.

Musical films are often indescribable. We have concert clips from Zappa's band, Mothers of Invention, and their music is funky, groovy, blues-infused hippie acid rock from the era. But mixed in there are Frank's special touches: synthesizer blasts, orchestral music, and his raucous, irreverent, vulgar, and often puzzling sense of surrealistic satire.

To that end, two groupies running some sort of ...I think it was supposed to be a boutique, dancing around naked, tweaking their nipples and oogling two Mothers, commenting upon the obesity of one (Mark Volman) and the desperate, hang-dog looks of the other. A dummy with a cardboard Frank Zappa face is an interesting prop seen in the background at one point. There's some sort of magic elixir. Am I still writing about this?

I first saw this film when I was eleven, okay? This movie, which features the quite prominent schnoz of "Lonesome Cowboy Burt" (Jimmy Carl Black), intoning, "Come to this place, I'll give you a taste, come sit on my face, WHERE'S MY WAITRESS?" (whatever the HELL that means) was in a huge, oversized VHS box right beside the far superior Pink Floyd movie. I saw BOTH of them that year, and they both changed my life in different ways. I was the only eleven-year-old, for the record, who wanted to be Andre Breton when I grew up.

So surrealism, dream-like images, the subconscious--these things all held a special power and sway for me as a youngster. Hence, the film, while I knew it was not "good" in any conventional sense, had a certain power and appeal. At least, it brings back a whole set of associations and memories from that period, including the musty smell and down-at-the-heels interior of the video cassette shop where I rented it.

But, it's nonsense, obviously.