Tunnel Vision

I watched a movie called Tunnel Vision, directed by Neal Israel, released in 1976. It is a comedy anthology movie, with vignettes that aren’t really related, other than the theme of being a television network in the future that is being scrutinized because it is a channel that is free of censorship. It is being investigated by a Senator, played by Howard Hessman, for the negative effects the channel is having on the United States. It is very tongue in cheek about its portrayal of 1970’s network television. It does have a fair amount of profanity and some nudity but pretty much what you’d expect from a small budget 1970’s movie. It is nonlinear in terms of plot like I had said before and has a great number of cameos in it as well, though a majority of the cast is unknown. It reminds me a lot of a Roger Corman produced movie and of anthology comedy films such as Kentucky Fried Movie (the Zucker Brothers, Jim Abrahams comedy film released in 1977) or Amazon Women on the Moon (a multi-directoral anthology comedy released in 1987) because of its style. Sadly, it is very of its time and some of the jokes fall flat because of the relative obscurity of the then hot topics. Some might recognize the names of certain politicians or references to world events (the real ones at least) but most of it has been buried with a lot of the 1970s. It wasn’t a hard movie to watch though, it had some funny moments but overall the pacing was a bit off, I thought. The ending is very odd as well. Again, I came across this one by accident and thought I’d give it a try. I wasn’t disappointed because I had no real expectation for anything since I had no idea what it was about. Sometimes I find that works in favour of a lot of films I watch but most of the time it is hard to avoid hype and anticipation.

Overall, it is a good film though a bit clunky in parts. It is very of its time, somewhat dark in tone despite being a comedy. If you can find it, give it a try, though I wouldn’t blame you if you couldn’t make it through to the end.