Finally got around to watching this one, as it didn't look too great from the previews. And it's not---Herschell Gordon Lewis steals SOV gore director Tim Ritter's former leading man, Joel D. Wynkoop, and let's him chew up the scenery like William Shatner on Steroids. If you like cult actor Wynkoop in his screaming, yelling, overacting mode, then you'll enjoy his performance, but the movie doesn't have much else to offer. Story follows a "reality TV game show" that (drum roll please!) MIGHT really be killing their guests---a concept that was kind of overdone many decades before (RUNNING MAN, anyone?) The reality game show scenes get long and boring pretty fast, with guests that answer a question wrong getting their arms, legs, or heads chopped off with a buzz saw or an axe. By now, we've seen effects like this a million times over and in the context of the movie, Lewis fails immensely by delivering some of the most BORING gore scenes ever committed to video. The contestants laugh at the pain, there's zero believability in any of the proceedings. What a cardinal sin for the Godfather Of Gore! Delivering gore that is patently uninteresting! Unbelievably, and without explanation, none of the characters in this movie actually "die" after being killed---even if their heads are lopped off. Somehow they just...survive...and keep talking . with zero explanation and mortal wounds intact. Maybe Lewis thought he was directing a Warner Bros. cartoon or something? Who knows, but it's this tone that keeps even the gore scenes from being interesting at all, unless you still appreciate juvenile overdone splatstick Troma gore style hijinks... (Speaking of Troma, Lloyd Kaufman himself does an extended cameo sequence, playing a silly pimp.) The story is a mishmash of confusion, involving dim-witted reporters attempting to expose the UH-OH reality game show as being "real" and two other subplots that make little sense. One has Wynkoop trying to start his own TV show, based on another failed Lewis project called HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS' GRIM FAIRY TALES (and we see many poorly executed setpieces from this show) and another bit where H.G. himself reads gory fairy tales to a group of kids, including Wynkoop, who retains his current age of 50 plus...which, again, makes NO SENSE at all. Sadly, THE UH-OH SHOW is forgettable splatstick on a dustpan budget with little to offer other than silly gore scenes, which are a dime a dozen these days in the indie horror video scene. The movie as a whole feels flat and uninspired, and I was VERY disappointed with it. For Wynkoop and Splatstick completists only, all others...avoid like the plague.
Finally got around to watching this one, as it didn't look too great from the previews. And it's not---Herschell Gordon Lewis steals SOV gore director Tim Ritter's former leading man, Joel D. Wynkoop, and let's him chew up the scenery like William Shatner on Steroids. If you like cult actor Wynkoop in his screaming, yelling, overacting mode, then you'll enjoy his performance, but the movie doesn't have much else to offer. Story follows a "reality TV game show" that (drum roll please!) MIGHT really be killing their guests---a concept that was kind of overdone many decades before (RUNNING MAN, anyone?) The reality game show scenes get long and boring pretty fast, with guests that answer a question wrong getting their arms, legs, or heads chopped off with a buzz saw or an axe. By now, we've seen effects like this a million times over and in the context of the movie, Lewis fails immensely by delivering some of the most BORING gore scenes ever committed to video. The contestants laugh at the pain, there's zero believability in any of the proceedings. What a cardinal sin for the Godfather Of Gore! Delivering gore that is patently uninteresting! Unbelievably, and without explanation, none of the characters in this movie actually "die" after being killed---even if their heads are lopped off. Somehow they just...survive...and keep talking . with zero explanation and mortal wounds intact. Maybe Lewis thought he was directing a Warner Bros. cartoon or something? Who knows, but it's this tone that keeps even the gore scenes from being interesting at all, unless you still appreciate juvenile overdone splatstick Troma gore style hijinks... (Speaking of Troma, Lloyd Kaufman himself does an extended cameo sequence, playing a silly pimp.) The story is a mishmash of confusion, involving dim-witted reporters attempting to expose the UH-OH reality game show as being "real" and two other subplots that make little sense. One has Wynkoop trying to start his own TV show, based on another failed Lewis project called HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS' GRIM FAIRY TALES (and we see many poorly executed setpieces from this show) and another bit where H.G. himself reads gory fairy tales to a group of kids, including Wynkoop, who retains his current age of 50 plus...which, again, makes NO SENSE at all. Sadly, THE UH-OH SHOW is forgettable splatstick on a dustpan budget with little to offer other than silly gore scenes, which are a dime a dozen these days in the indie horror video scene. The movie as a whole feels flat and uninspired, and I was VERY disappointed with it. For Wynkoop and Splatstick completists only, all others...avoid like the plague.
