TH|S tS SPrNAl.

TAP
Directed by'Rob Reiner. with M ichael McKean, Ch ristopher Guest, Harry Shearer, Rob Reiner. Embassy cassette. Beta & VHS Hi-Fi stereo.
82 min..$69.95

fHE SHMENGEST rHE LAST POLKA lt9E4l

Directed by John Blanchard. With John Candy, Eugene Levy. Vestron casseffe. Beta & VHS mono. 54 min.
$59.95

inally: The Splna/ tape. The funniest rock movie everand one of the most on-target satires, regardless of subject- Ihis is Spinal lap was one of those projects no one quite knew what to do

! I

ln Spinal lap, director Reiner's mockumentary tracing of a secondrate heavy metal band knows to let up now and then. When it's called for, Reiner switches from a documentary style to a fiction style-very subtly, of course. "Polka" plays it straight throughout but, ironically, is far less realistic. We never know if we're to take the Shmenges as seriously as the mock interviewees do or as the Oktoberfest pageantries suggest, or if they're jerks throughout. Compounding "Polka"'s faults is its music. Granted, Spinal Tap the band is wretched; but it's supposed to be, and the lyrics add to the fun. The Shmenges' polka instrumentals are done straight, and unless you're actually into polkas, you can only watch the duo go on and on and on, helplessly, then wonder when the punch line's coming. lt never does. "Polka"'s origins in television isn't the culprit; the Beatles-mockumentary "The Rutles", also done for TV and using TV comics, pandered not a bit to the supposed morons who make up the "average American TV audience." And Candy and Levy, certainly, are talented comedians. But given a choice, I'd rather lap dance then "Polka" any day.

Anything, Midnight Oil, Mondo Rock, Moving Pictures, No Fixed Address, Split Enz. Media cassette. Approx.60 min. $29.95 ock tapes shouldn't be put together by tourism boards. Or, as in the case of "Australia Now", look that way. Though the subject of Aussie rock was promising, this compilation suffers from being more about Australia than about rock. The sum of these clips and snippets from a dozen-plus bands thus becomes, ironically, a lesson in disillusionment. Starting about five or six years ago, when the Australian movies of Bruce Beresford (Breaker Morantl, Peter Weir (Picnic at Hanging Rockl and others first turned our cultural eyes to that continent, Australia seemed like it might also become the next great rock frontier. Aussie musicians like the Little River Band and Olivia Newton-John certainly had hit big here before, yet they didn't carcy a particularly Australian orientation. The first of the new wave-among them Men at Work, Mental as Anything and New Zealand's Split Enz-did; they were a little zany, a little off-kilter, and characterized by distinctive, slightly accented vocals. The lyrics smiled while they knifed you. Clever, catchy stuff. But as "Australia Now" demonstratds, that first wave was the best wave. The clips here fall into two categories, both low-budget: straight performance (or fake performance) and landscapes. These are intercut by lots of nationalistic pep talks by clean-cut rockers, most of whose music sounds like the Beach Boys shipwrecked in Liverpool c. 1963, or Gerry & the Pacemakers doing surfrock, take your pick. A harde rocking handful is disappointingly tame, and the much-hyped Midnight Oil far less semi-legendary than you might expect. Moving Pictures turns in a nice ballad, but even lt is derivitive, sounding like a duet by Elton John and Meat Loaf. lronically, the most affecting bit here is also the most Australian-a few seconds of synthrock-like chanting from the aboriginal Bamyili tribe. lmmediately following is a snippet, from the quasi-documentary Wrong Side of the Road, of the urbanaboriginal reggae band No Fixed Address. Their lyrical defiance of last century's slaughter of and this cen-

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with. Embassy Home Entertainment actually advertised it as a made-forvideo release a year before Embassy Pictures decided it should play movie theaters. "The Last Polka", however, was planned as a TV special from the start; logically enough, since John Candy and Eugene Levy originated polka-kings Stan and Yosh Shmenge on the "Second CitY TV" series. But while Spinal Tap al82 minutes is if anything too short, "The Last Polka" at 54 minutes is 54 min' utes too long. Maybe even 55. Now dissecting comedy is, so they say, like dissecting a frog. You can do it, but the patient dies in the process. I can't presume to tell you why I found Spinal Iap extremely funnY and "The Last Polka" not; I can tell you that rock video directors Kevin Godley and Lol Creme were a few rows ahead of me when I saw IaP in the theater, and they were laughing
even louder than I was. The funnY business aside, though, Iap is superior because its satirical jabs have a-targei. "Last Polka", on the other hand, is more disjointed than a contortionist.
60 FACES

AUSTRAI'A NOW
Directed by Peter Clifton. With Angel City, Australian Crawl, the Bamyili tribe, Cold Chisel, Eurogliders, Goanna, lcehouse, INXS, The Little Heroes, Men at Work, Mental as
VHS Hi-Fi VCR courtesy GE

tury's bigotry against native Australians is, like the best reggae, charged with the spirit of rock'n'roll. One final point for rock scholars: The program, from 1983, includes a couple of now-defunct bands. Most
of the others' fortunes have changed so quickly, in fact, that this 1985 release might just as easily be labeled "Australia Then".

filled with abysmal albeit attentiongrabbing amateurisms,',personal Property" is, for the most part, a series of glossy, moving paintings, sort of a video lightbox. "Video a Go Go" (uh, wonderful title, guys) is a bit more conventional and also a bit more mainstream, with Kool & the Gang and Bananarama to ',personal Property"'s Boytronic and psychodrama. The Sony tape's more cultish appeal works well in an idiomdance-oriented rock, as the trade press labels it-in which the new and the weird still hold an edge over the familiar and the top-40. And, thankfully, Sony's seemed to learn that cultish DOR bands don't have to have artsy, as opposed to
artful, visuals. The artfulness in "Personal Property" comes out of what Manhattanites like to call a "downtown" sensibility. (Love all these labels: They make writing easy, and thinking impbssible.)To try and define the term, downtown Manhattan is the

ground, for looking at out of the corner of your eye in-between snort- ' ing and hustling.

"nightclub" home to the bored-anddecad'ent clique that follows in Andy Warhol's wake, and "home" home to both the broke and the rich artist/
musicians of TriBeca, Loisaida and, though it's changing fast, the East Village. Either way, you're talking about a curious mixture of sophistication and naivete that's reflected in and almost defined by these clips. To an extent, at least, in Psychodrama's clever "l'm Not Your Doormat" clip, the lead singer gets the puppy out of the microwave before the dog explodes. And Malibu's "Goin' Cruisin"' clip-a bouncy bit of summer-color chromakeying with a cute twist ending-requires a different kind of eye than a jaded one. Somehow, though, this downtown sensibility avoids director Amos Poe in his clip for Animotion's "Obsession" (on "Video a Go Go"); independent filmmaker Poe is about as downtown as they get, the Hollywood-glossy Alphabet City notwithstanding. ln fact, except for Nick Morris easy-target goofing on 1950's straights, in the clip for the Vels' "Look My Way", no one else on the tape tries to exactly rocket to the razor's edge. The music's solid, at any rate, even Bananarama's, and "Video a Go Go" is, to its credit, the most color-blind rock video I've seen. MTV should have a mix this good. Until (ha!) it does, these clips are the best around for party back-

ADULT 45, VOL. I

Vari o u s pseudono ny m o u s d i rectors. Dreamland cassefte. With an

anonymous rock band. Beta & VHS Hi-Fi stereo. Approx. 60 min. et's talk First Amendment. That's the one, in case you've forgotten,

PENSONAL PROPERrY
With Boytronic (dir. by Ken Jacobs), The Flirts (dir. by Joe Lodado), George Kranz (dir. by Jurgen Neu), Malibu (dir. by Bobby Ortando), Psychodrama (dir. by Brian Sabawski), Tarracco (dir. by Eddie Pasternak). Sony cassette. Beta & VHS Hi-Fi stereo.20 min. approx. $r9.95

that g uarantees f reedom-of -speech. [his isn't to be confused, of course, with the Fourth Amendment-the
one about illegal search and seizure -that the Supreme Court just ruled doesn't apply to students; you'll find out about fhat firsthand when some teacher decides to frisk you or rummage through your locker whenever he wants to and you can't do anything about it.) Anyway, there are

vrDEo A

co eo

With Animotion (dir. by Amos Poe), Bananarama (dir. by Brian Simmons), The Bar-Kays (dir. by Marius Penczner), Kool & the Gang (dir. by David Mallet), Stephanie Mills (dir. by Jonathan Seay), The Vels (dir. by N ick Monis). RCA/Col umbla cassetfe.
30 min. approx. $19.95

limitations to freedom-of-speech. You can't get away with the proverbial yelling "fire" in a crowded theater
(though you certainly have the right

to yell "theater" in a crowded

f

irehouse).

know a lot of people put on TV in I I general and MTV in particular

as

background sight and sound. These two tapes, however, seem the first compilation videos actually designed for that. Sony's tried this before, of course, with its "Danspak" and "Danspak ll" compilations. Yet while those were '

All this leads us to sex videos, such as what is being billed as "the first adult rock video." Our younger readers generally won't be able to get hold of "Adult 45, Vol. l";the layys of here and there say you're not allowed. You do, of course, have the right to read about it and to see if you're missing any great, hidden rock'n'roll band.
You're not.

FACES 61