Judging from the fact that I’ve received it from a couple of different sources already, I expect many of you have already seen this totally awesome video since it made it’s appearance a few days back:

If not, give it a look, I’ll wait.

Done? Excellent.

This is so dead-on, that were it not for a bit of dodgy CGI (and the changed appearance of the Hoff’s now over-Botoxed phiz), I’d have happily believed that it was a lost gem of cheesy 80s promotional video fodder. For those of you too young to remember the days when MTV actually showed, you know, videos, tie-ins like this promoted every movie of the summer season. More so than the trailers, these were how 80s teens decided what to spend our hard-earned babysitting money to go see on a Saturday afternoon (seriously, Terminator 2 will forever be indelibly linked in my mind with the sound of Axl Rose wailing away on You Should be Mine).

With this video, the folks at Laser Unicorns show that they understand that parody works best when no-one involved seems to know they are making one. Basically, they parodied 80s promotional videos by just sitting down and making one (rather like the makers of Black Dynamite produced a dead-on parody of 70s Blacksploitation flicks by just making one, more or less straight though exaggerated).  And it is a real promotional video, for the upcoming crowdfunded short feature Kung Fury.

Unfortunately, the trailer below doesn’t raise my hopes that the feature will have the same sense of parody-by-playing-straight. For example, in addition to some terrible non-80s CGI, the dubbing is so ridiculously over the top that it is quickly annoying (I’m not sure if this is intentional or a secondary effect of the fact that the filmmaker is Swedish and the dubbing may have been overseen by someone who didn’t realize how odd it sounds). I’m not much for the intentionally crappy movie subgenre (think Sharknado, or any Syfy original starring either Tiffany or Debbie Gibson), and the trailer looks more like that than a true parody of  80s action movies. However, the trailer was made before the Kickstarter that raised the money to complete filming, so I am hopeful that the 30 minute real thing will both look and sound better than the trailer suggests.

As the plan is to make Kung Fury available for free online sometime late next month, I will definitely give it a shot (and review it here if worthy of your attention).

Speaking of folks who truly understood that parody works best when everyone involves plays their roles completely straight, here’s a fabulous (and very thorough, give yourself some actual downtime to read it) new oral history of the original Airplane! put together by the fine folks at A.V. Club:

Surely you can’t be serious: An oral history of Airplane!

Have a good week all!