SLAPSTICK OF ANOTHER KIND (1984)

Jerry Lewis in one of dual roles in SLAPSTICK OF ANOTHER KIND (1984)

I don’t know where it all went so very wrong. But let's start at the beginning…

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. is one of my favorite writers (and possibly people?) ever. The first time I ever read his work, I didn’t even know it was by him; we read his “Harrison Bergeron” short story in eighth grade. And while I found the point a bit excessive (yeah, I was that kid in eighth grade), I liked the combination of weird, media, rebellion, sadness, and more. Its tragic ending delivered by folks in goofy masks hit me perfectly at that angsty time. The first time I actively sought to read a book by Vonnegut was Slaughterhouse-Five. I loved it wholly and completely. I’ve since devoured most of his work, leaving just a few short stories and essays for the dwindling of my days.

Vonnegut was able to take grandiose sci-fi ideas and marry them to very honest human emotions to produce a ramshackle philosophy. Experiences from childhood, in WW2, installing windows on Cape Cod, in academia, and more all pooled together into a life of a common, blue collar straight white American male who actively chose to look to the future and to ponder humanity’s proclivity for destruction. Plus he was really funny.

Based upon his writing and speeches he gave, I believe Vonnegut held gestalt philosophical views similar to mine. I consider myself a misanthropic humanist—I think people tend to choose the selfish, shortsighted, easiest path for themselves; but I also believe humanity is capable of greatness unequaled by most forces in the universe. Basically, the species is sitting on a golden ticket but too busy be a prick to notice.

That tension is what fueled Vonnegut’s work, Slapstick (Or Lonesome No More). Written as he was reeling from the death of his sister, the book features beautiful portraits of love and unity, bizarre pieces of absurd comedy, oddly prescient views on global economics, and the overarching sensation that we’re all pretty much fucked. Allegedly Vonnegut was not a fan of this book and it’s not hard to see why: trying to cathartically deal with how community can produce the best of people while mocking the innate ugliness of a society, juxtaposed against an imminent (and entirely self-inflicted) apocalypse. That’s a lot to juggle without even getting into the miniaturized Chinese people, the invention of a government-mandated extended family, or the powerful telepathy unleashed through incest between two physically grotesque siblings.

A muddled book that strives to address the need to overcome the inherent loneliness of each person that also involves science-fiction elements like shared consciousness, shrinking people, interplanetary travel, and a dystopian cityscape may be a lot to juggle for a movie. And it is. Well, it certainly was when Steven Paul wrote and directed his adaptation, titled SLAPSTICK OF ANOTHER KIND. As you can see by the title at the start of this post, SLAPSTICK came out in 1984…but it actually was supposed to be released in 1982 (and it was in 1982 because Jerry Lewis). Letting it sit for two years did not help it age well, though it’s unlikely any time would have been a good time to release it.

The broadest of strokes of Vonnegut’s novel are there, particularly the two genius twins who pretend to be stupid because they believe that society prefers the idiotic to the intellectual. When they are together, especially touching each other, they are able to come up with incredible concepts that far outstretch anything mankind has previously devised. But first it starts with their birth, where a nervous Caleb Swain (Jerry Lewis) waits in the hospital to see his baby. The media swarms Caleb as he and his wife, Lutetia (Madeline Kahn), are called “the beautiful people” who are rich and held up as celebrity icons for the entire country. It turns out that the Swains had twins and they are hideous. This leads to Caleb pratfalling out the window into a giant tub of paint to kick off the title sequence. The film doesn’t really get better from there.

The family physician, Dr. Frankenstein (John Abbott), doesn’t think these two beautiful people should be burdened by such freaks, who he believes will be dead within a matter of months anyways due to their deformities. Fifteen years later and the twins are still kicking—now giant, wearing infantilized pajamas, with buck teeth, odd speech impediments, and protruding foreheads like the Metaluna scientists from THIS ISLAND EARTH. Wilbur (Lewis, again) and Eliza (Kahn, again) pretend to be dimwitted while working on solving the world’s problems in secret.

Meanwhile, China has isolated itself from the rest of Earth. Most of the citizens have been shrunk down—in efforts to limit consumption and increase space, I guess—and they are trying to enact plans by extraterrestrials that involve the twins saving the world. There is a lot of bizarre racism against the Chinese that may have been intended as satire or something, but it’s awful especially when paired with how many Japanese cultural elements are essentially thrown in to create a generic Asian “other”.

The Chinese ambassador (Pat Morita, who, it should be noted, is not Chinese) arrives in a tiny spaceship, shaped like a fortune cookie, and persuades the Swains to finally meet their long ignored progeny. And honestly…there’s just too much to type. SLAPSTICK is off the rails in a way that is baffling but rarely fun. It’s the type of film that thinks it’s saying something underneath its goofiness, but it’s just goofy all the way down. Here’s the dinner scene as the twins eat their meal before finally meeting their parents the next day.

That is one of the most revered comedic geniuses of the 20th century alongside one of the greatest comedic performers of that time period acting like crazed infants. All while Marty Feldman watches on as some sort of corrupt butler who has a Peter Lorre accent for no reason whatsoever. The whole thing is a goddamn mess. Jim Backus is the President of the United States and turns to the twins (who, again, the tiny Chinese ambassador in a fortune cookie spaceship told him would save the world) to help bring America back to the premier world power. There’s also recurring social commentary with gasoline being too expensive so everyone converts to using chickenshit for fuel.

The film meanders around with the twins acting bizarrely, and then making people uncomfortable with how close they are (as in, yes, incestuously), so they are split up, only to come together and eventually are dressed like Unarians and go back with their alien creators in a ship that is almost a carbon copy of the one from CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND but this time voiced by Orson Welles (clearly prepping for his role as Unicron in TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE).

And acclaimed director of WHITE DOG (and star of RETURN TO SALEM’S LOT) Samuel Fuller shows up in essentially the Sterling Hayden role from DR. STRANGELOVE to chomp cigars and yell about America and masculinity. To be fair and highlight the positives, SLAPSTICK OF ANOTHER KIND does end on this bop of a song by Randy Bishop and Bonnie Paul that is pretty on the nose:

Reception to SLAPSTICK was not kind. It’s fallen into relative obscurity for most people due to limited releases on home media. Also, it’s not the fun type of bad like most massive film failures. PLAN 9, THE ROOM, and BIRDEMIC are fairly lunkheaded in terms of plot, dialogue and character, but they are also pretty inept technically. Furthermore, these “so bad it’s good” movies are usually based on well known tropes/genres (dramas, horror, etc.). SLAPSTICK OF ANOTHER KIND is far too polished to make its failures charming, and the grotesque presentation isn’t bizarrely mesmerizing so much as awkwardly fumbled, and its structure isn’t a familiar romance/sci-fi/comedy.

Writer/director Steven Paul started as a talent manager. And this talent bomb of so many high profile names in a celluloid calamity would have ended most careers—but not Paul! Of course, that comes with a bit of qualifications. He produced (future installments) NEVER TOO YOUNG TO DIE, the BABY GENIUSES films, THE DOUBLE 0 KID—but also more “respectable” (or at least, less rancid) entries like Neil Marshall’s DOOMSDAY, GHOST RIDER, and the live-action adaptions of TEKKEN and GHOST IN THE SHELL. And a future project? THE EXPENDABLES 4. One can only hope there’s a scene where Dolph Lundgren and Jason Statham save the day by rubbing their heads together while wearing footy pajamas.

It’s mildly surprising that SLAPSTICK OF ANOTHER KIND hasn’t been rehabilitated yet. There are attempts at social and political commentary (with some prescience about world affairs). Paul’s scripts buries most of Vonnegut’s themes about community and need for connection, but they’re still quietly included. Combine that with the trainwreck aspect of the cartoonish acting and pretty big names involved, and it seems primed for some sort of retrospective. The only other film I can think of that’s similar is Otto Preminger’s 1968 movie SKIDOO, which also tried to make sense of the world, used older comedy headliners, and had lots of nonsensical parts to grotesque effect. Actually, SOUTHLAND TALES falls into this category as well. But that movie is a baffling conundrum of batshit fun.

SLAPSTICK OF ANOTHER KIND has notoriety amongst film nerds and Vonnegut lovers, but it will probably never break through into widespread infamy. Instead it will exist in a liminal space where it’s not good enough as a curiosity nor bad enough to be entertaining. As Hunter S. Thompson once wrote:

There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.