by Charlie Brigden, Staff Writer

Get ready to get weird. If you've never heard of "Weird" Al Yankovic before, you're about to get a crash course on the pop parodist with the release of Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, which is premiering on The Roku Channel on November 4. But this isn't the curly-haired genius' first brush with features; it's time to look at the legend of UHF.

The brainchild of Yankovic and his then-manager Jay Levey, 1989's UHF saw Al step into the shoes of George Newman; a perennial loser picked to run Channel 62, a remote TV station by his uncle who won the station in a poker game. Of course, 62 became a big hit, but unfortunately, UHF didn't, sinking in a summer surrounded by blockbusters like Batman and Licence to Kill. But how did the film come to fruition, and how does its zany Airplane!-style humor hold up now? 

In the mid-1980s, Yankovic was riding high. 1984 saw the release of his second record, "Weird” Al Yankovic in 3-D, and the breakout hit 'Eat It,' which parodied Michael Jackson's 'Beat It' from his trillion-selling 1982 album Thriller. The following year saw the arrival of a mockumentary about his life thus far, The Compleat Al. Yankovic and Levey saw movies as a natural progression for the singer, and while ideas were flowing were approached by New Line Cinema. Nothing came of it, but they eventually signed with Orion Pictures, who had produced projects like Platoon (1986) and RoboCop (1987), setting the budget at five million dollars. 

Written by Yankovic and Levey and directed by the latter, UHF is essentially an excuse to string together a bunch of random sketches and parodies, much like 1977's The Kentucky Fried Movie. However, while that picture was just skits aside from the lengthy parody of Enter The Dragon, Yankovic and Levey connected them through the story of Channel 62. The narrative is your average David and Goliath story, with the great Kevin McCarthy as the evil owner of a network affiliate that wants to crush its tiny rival, with the parodies appearing as snatches of shows on the station.

Appearing alongside Yankovic and McCarthy was a host of comedians and character actors, including Saturday Night Live's Victoria Jackson as Teri, George's girlfriend. Added to the cast was Michael Richards (aka Seinfeld's Kramer), Fran Drescher, Gedde Watanabe, and Billy Barty, who, at three feet nine inches tall, was used to playing dwarves and wizards in films like Legend (1985) and Masters of the Universe (1987). Character actor David Bowe played George's best friend and sidekick, Bob, and there were cameos by Dr. Demento and Emo Phillips. An interesting appearance was that of actor David Proval as McCarthy's main goon; Proval had previously had a prominent role in Martin Scorsese's seminal crime picture Mean Streets (1973) and would later play Richie Aprile in The Sopranos.

Yankovic and Levey characterized George as someone with too much imagination for the real world, which initially gets him into trouble and fired from his fast food job but then helps when it comes to thinking up shows for Channel 62. He's also a daydreamer; UHF opens with a lengthy, near shot-by-shot parody of Raiders of the Lost Ark with George as Indiana Jones. Other fantasy moments see him as the infamous John Rambo (Rambo III had just come out the previous year) and in a skit based on a Dire Straits music video (for Yankovic's song 'Money For Nothing/Beverly Hillbillies'). 

George's skits include the hysterical "Wheel of Fish" fronted by Watanabe's martial arts instructor-turned-game show host, and it's as you'd imagine; it's Wheel of Fortune, only instead of money on the wheel, it's fish. Actual fish. Then there's Conan the Librarian, where a gigantic Schwarzeneggar-esque hero slices a teenager in half for returning a book late, and Wild Kingdom, about a man who lives with dozens of animals like Jim Carrey's Ace Ventura: Pet Detective would years later. Coincidentally, another moment from UHF also ended up in Carrey's film, where Yankovic's Rambo catches a bullet between his teeth. Sadly, Trinidad Silva, the actor who played Wild Kingdom's host and who also had a recurring role in Hill Street Blues, was killed in a car accident during production. 

Watching UHF back now, it's clear that there's one thing going for it - its heart. George is less the hero of the picture than Richards' Stanley Spadowski - a janitor fired from McCarthy's affiliate who ends up hosting the children's show on 62, sending them to the top of the ratings. Stanley has great energy and childlike wonder, which Richards plays beautifully to turn him into the film's high point, complete with a rousing speech when they're raising money to save the station. The acting is excellent across the board. Jackson is adorable even if she has little to do, and McCarthy plays the straight role with his usual zeal, coming after his career resurgence in Joe Dante's movies.

The parodies are mostly funny, although the opening Indiana Jones skit comes off as very dry. It's almost too like the original, mimicking the credit typefaces and the score. It never gets going until the rolling boulder is unleashed and chases George through multiple countries and landscapes. The Rambo sequence is much funnier, as is a talk show parody that makes The Jerry Springer Show look like a college debate. These are fascinating moments, especially as UHF preceded Springer's show by several years, and Wheel of Fish is almost something that would be a meme now, although it would probably be drawn out to a show by a network trying to be hip.

If anything is missing from the film, it's some better music. The score by John Du Prez is excellent, even though they seemed to have asked him to mimic styles and even notes, but the zest and sheer madness of Yankovic's songs are missing. The Dire Straits parody is not one of his best cuts, and at a time when he had been writing classics such as “Like A Surgeon” and “Addicted to Spuds,” it would have been ideal to include more songs, especially as MTV had also taken a foothold in pop culture at that time. Several of Yankovic's tracks had also already appeared in movies, and he had written “This Is Your Life” as the theme for the 1984 Michael Keaton comedy Johnny Dangerously. Following that, his Devo-style parody “Dare To Be Stupid” from his 1985 LP of the same name appeared in the animated feature Transformers: The Movie, which came out the following year.

Sadly, UHF was seen as a critical and commercial failure, making just over $6m despite high test scores and being savaged by people like Roger Ebert. Of course, it didn't help that the summer of 1989 featured some of the biggest blockbusters ever, including the culture-shifting Batman and highly-anticipated sequels such as Ghostbusters II, Lethal Weapon 2, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. But the film has steadily built an audience through home video as all good cult movies do. Like many of those, it seems ahead of its time, with a trashy sophistication missing from several other '80s films considered classics.

It may have been too weird back then, but it's almost normal as the world stands now. Don't change the channel, don't touch that dial. They've still got it all on UHF.