With dumb host patter supplied by Ozzie & Harriet supporting player Skip Young, TV Turkeys: The World’s Worst Television Shows is an hour-long compilation of moments from purportedly the pits of programming, although many of the segments are not so much “the worst” as they are just dull.
Hank McCune was a big-eared comedian who sounded like Elmer Fudd (because he once was). Or maybe he’s the straight man of the piece. Either way, it’s slapstick at its suckiest. The Buckskin Kid is an all-kid Western, starring children with glued-on facial hair playing with guns and knives, and having their voices dubbed by overacting adults. The ambush scene is great, with Indians “riding” on stick horses. The Motor Sports magazine show interviews amateur road racers, but the only thing fast and furious about it will be you reaching for the FF button.
Penny to a Million is a game show in which all the questions were related to sponsor Raleigh Cigarettes. Up on Cloud Nine follows the daffy misadventures of two stewardesses who humiliate each and every passenger and wrongly inform the cabin that the plane is going to crash. Equally as inappropriate today is The Arnold Stang Show, which relies on footage of a man hitting his wife to the ground for laughs. But that cruelty pales next to The Meanest Man in the World, who pushes down the handicapped, steals clothes from the elderly, knocks glasses of milk from the hands of a little girl and severs a patient’s IV!
The “best” bit among the Turkeys is Suicide Theatre, in which Mr. Lembeck (DeForest Kelley, pre-Dr. Bones on TV’s Star Trek) can’t pay his rent or find a job, so he decides to gas himself to death with the oven. But then he gets a notice in the mail that his gas has been turned off due to nonpayment. He finds this O. Henry turn of events hilarious, laughing to the camera, “Whaddya know? I can’t even afford to die!” At a time when TV couldn’t show a married couple sharing a bed, this was okay?
Most enjoyable are the advertisements, including a disturbingly catchy spot for Belly Bongo, a terribly racist mattress ad and the most suggestive Dole banana commercial I’ve ever seen: “If you feel it, peel it!” —Rod Lott