WHOOPS, THERE IT IS! by writer@ime.net
"Whoops Apocalypse" (LWT 1982) the TV show, and "Whoops Apocalypse" (1986) the movie, last seen on Comedy Central, both try their darndest to satirize all the moronic excesses that have come to be known as the go-go 80's.
In their respective times both were probably deliciously dark comedies. But today they both, especially the movie version, weirdly resonate with a dark foreboding that its creators might admire but could never have imagined.
That's the problem with satire, no matter how outrageous you try to be, reality has an irritating habit of out doing your invention. Trenchant comedy that once seem to be on the fringe is surpassed by reality becoming, with time, quite tame and even naive.
The first attempt aired on London Weekend Television in the early 80's, when Ronald Reagan, neutron bombs (remember those!) a never too deceased Leonoid Breshznev and the idea of a Labour Government were the funniest things around.
The movie version aims its invective at petty Conservative Prime Ministers, air head Royals, pointless wars in the South Atlantic and the endless machinations of world governments who ought to know better.
When "Whoops Apocalypse" does work, it pays off rather well.
For example in the movie version:
"Amazing how they pile up," says Peter Cook as a gimlet-eyed British Prime Minister. He is referring to his solution to high unemployment, simply gather up members of the over populated work force and throw them off a cliff.
All this is presented as a warm fuzzy photo op. for the press. "This the sort of thing you want?" Cook fawns to the camera as he rocks an out of work engineer back and forth by the shoulders, one last smile, then wheeeee, down goes the surplus labor force onto the rocks below and up shoots the psycho PM's popularity in the polls.
The plot of the movie version of "Whoops Apocalypse" revolves around Cook, a kidnapped princess, Russian missiles in the Caribbean, and Loretta Switt as the American President trying to keep a British War in South America from escalating into a nuclear holocaust.
In the Television Version:
"Well boys and girls, I've got something really important to announce."
Labour Prime Minister Kev is about to tell his inner circle that he is indeed the "Man of Steel." So there's no need to worry about all this NATO jazz, because as Super Man, he'll just pull the entire island of Great Britain out of harms way should nuclear war come.
In the TV version Labour elects to join the Warsaw Pact, the Ayatollah is co-opted as a Soviet puppet, literally, and the Shah's younger brother (??) is stuck in the men's loo on a cross channel ferry, as all countries try to use him for their own purposes.
Both the movie and the TV show have a recurring G. Gordon Liddy type, hired by the American President to assassinate the British PM before he starts WW III.
I believe in both versions the Assassin tries to impress everyone by holding his manhood over a candle flame, "It's not that it doesn't hurt, it's that I don't mind the pain," he warbles.
In the movie he fills the PM's bath with acid but Cook gets off with his life, trading in his right hand for a steel hook.
If the satire lacks the fizz and bite that it surely had when all of this was au-corrent, then at least you can bask in the manic glow of either Michael Richards (the movie) or John Cleese (the TV series) who both have great fun chewing up the scenery as they portray an evil genius and man of a thousand site gags, I mean faces; the nefarious Lacrobate.
Cleese's set piece is a "demo" tape extolling his great gifts as a world terrorist and assassin. The "demo" tape cpntains an 80's version of a politically incorrect gallery of thugs who supposedly hired Lacrobate to do their dirty work. Funny thing is they all look just like Cleese who renders one of the finest Afrikaner accents I've ever heard.
Richard's incarnation of Lacrobate shuffles Wendy, the Princess Royal, around in a gorilla suit and calls her Princess as he tries to smuggle her into a hotel.
Yes it might be fatuous and puerile but I'd watch it two or three times just to make sure.
"Don't worry," Richards assures the hotel clerk, as the royal gorilla rattles in its cage, "one Valium suppository and Princess will sleep like a baby." Double take by gorilla.
In spite of the jokes that have no shelf life, the movie version of "Whoops Apocalypse" starts to become very creepy, as we realize that the 90's have rendered the greed and rapaciousness of the 80's rather mute.
Watching the movie version in the 90's you can't avoid the fact that it's the press who threw the Princess off the cliff, and the Cold War may be over, but who can outdo Claus Von Bulow, the Menendez brothers and OJ Simpson for cold blooded idiocy.
No, I guess things were better back in the 80's before the Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War ended. At least way back then we had a shred of belief that we could change things for the better.
Satire may grow old with the passing years, but the evil that men (and women) do, seems to grow more hideous as time passes.
Watching either version of "Whoops Apocalypse" you realize that the unthinkable nature of the thermonuclear threat has been replaced by the extremely likely and all too casual horrors of today.
The unintended message of "Whoops Apocalypse" seems to be that though the nuclear demon's threat of global destruction has decreased it has been replaced by a world wide homogenization of evil that guarantees each of us a personalized dose of terror rather than a world wide global catastrophe. -- Peace, Conversion, Fasting, Penance, Prayer. http://www.medjugorje.org/ http://www.nd.edu/~mary/Emmanuel.html
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