UHF (film)

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We got it all on UHF!

UHF is a 1989 movie starring "Weird Al" Yankovic, written by Al and his manager Jay Levey (who directed). Al plays George Newman, a young man with an all-too-fertile imagination adrift in life. After getting fired from yet another job due to excessive daydreaming, he is appointed by his uncle Harvey as manager of Channel U62, a local UHF television station that Harvey won in a Poker game.

George and his friend Bob soon discover that U62 is a near-abandoned station with a staff of three, almost no reception to speak of, and nothing but stale reruns for programming. With optimistic enthusiasm, George tries to revitalize the station's schedule, but quickly realizes that the channel will soon go bankrupt; the local airwaves are dominated by Channel 8, a network affiliate VHF station whose owners are card carrying villains with good publicity. i Things change when a depressed George carelessly puts station janitor Stanley Spadowski in charge of the channel's early-morning kids' show; to everyone's surprise, Stanley's Cloudcuckoolander antics become an instant hit across all demographics. Emboldened, George unleashes the full force of his creativity with a line of unique, oddball shows to fill out the rest of the schedule, with Stanley as their flagship superstar. These moves quickly catapult U62's ratings to #1 in town—which prompts Channel 8 head honcho R.J. Fletcher to take them down by any means necessary...

Like Weird Al's music, the film focuses its comedy on oddball humor and satire, parody, and pastiche of pop culture. Released in 1989, at the height of Weird Al's popularity, the film was expected to be a summer blockbuster, but barely broke even at the box office (opening against the 1989 Batman movie, after all) and instead became a Cult Classic.

Then again, maybe a feature making fun of independent local TV does fit best on the small screen?

Tropes used in UHF (film) include:
  • Abusive Parents: R.J. Fletcher portrays this well, when he's first seen and heard abusing his son R.J Fletcher Jr. for not acting intelligent enough.

R.J: You idiot! Can't you do anything I tell you to do? Does this look like a Number 2 pencil?
Richard: Well... I-I just thought --
R.J: You thought?! I don't pay you to think!
Richard: But Dad --
R.J: Shut up!

  • Affectionate Parody: The entire movie is strewn with them, especially the opening sequence.
    • Conceptually, the movie as a whole is an Affectionate Parody of cheaply run UHF stations from the 70s and 80s.
  • A-Team Firing: Taken to a ludicrous extreme in the Rambo sequence.
  • All or Nothing: At the end of the "Wheel of Fish" scene, the prize box turns out to be empty.
  • Almighty Janitor: Broken into two roles. Stanley lives for being a humble janitor even after becoming famous as a show host (and God help you if you try to take his mop from him). Philo's the somewhat spacey engineer of this run-down station who proves to be a damn sneaky bastard when needed, possibly a Mad Scientist, and definitely an alien.
  • And Starring: "and Victoria Jackson as Teri". She gets the extra mention because she's the last name listed on the opening credits. This may seem strange, but having been a prominent player on Saturday Night Live, she may have been the most famous person cast in the movie, other than Al himself.
    • Apparently, Al and Victoria were dating at the time, which couldn't have hurt.
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: The human version...during the "Town Talk" promo, a bunch of weird guests are on the panel. They are, in order, A Neo-Nazi, A Dominatrix, A Klansman...A little girl with blond pigtails...and Jason Voorhees (or a Captain Ersatz therof). Subverted in that the little girl is implied as an Enfant Terrible with a perpetual Slasher Smile.
  • Attention Deficit Ooh Shiny: George is this in spades, especially in the film's early scenes.
  • Author Existence Failure: Trinidad Silva, who played Raul, died in an auto accident before shooting all his scenes. The film is dedicated to him. The movie also had to abort his subplot, where the poodles got revenge.
  • Axe Crazy: The "Killer Thug" is implied to be this.
  • Berserk Button: Just try to take Stanley's mop away. I dare you.
  • Big Win Sirens: Used in "Stanley Spadowski's Funhouse" when the kid finds a marble in a sandbox full of oatmeal. His prize? Getting blasted in the face with a fire hose.
  • Bloodless Carnage: Spoofed in George's Rambo fantasy sequence, where he sweeps an automatic rifle along a line of Mooks on a hillside. A moment later, they bloodlessly collapse simultaneously.
  • Burger Fool: George and Bob work at "Big Edna's Burger World" before they are fired for George insulting Big Edna while, unbeknownst to George, she's right behind him, which leads to her literally throwing George and Bob out of the restaurant.
  • But Now I Must Go: Philo makes his grand exit at the end of the film this way.

Philo: You're welcome. Well, it appears that my work on this planet is finished, so I must now return to my home planet of Zarquon.
George: [dubious] Oh...okay. Have fun!

Bob: I dunno about this, George.. I don't know the first thing about what goes on in a television station.
George Don't worry, Bob! It's just like working in a fish market, except you don't have to clean or gut fish all day.

R.J. Fletcher: This town means about as much to me as a festering bowl of dog snot! You think I care about the pea-brained yokels of this town?! If you took their collective IQ, and multiplied it by 1,000, you might just have enough intelligence to tie your shoe, if you didn't drool all over yourself first! I can't stand those sniveling maggots! They make me want to puke! But, there is one good thing about broadcasting to a town full of mindless sheep: I always know I have them exactly where I want them! (maniacal laugh)"

  • Evil Old Folks: R.J. Fletcher, who else?
  • Excited Kids' Show Host: Stanley Spadowski proves to act like this all the time. Putting him in front of the camera was just lucky. Subverted beforehand in that George tried to fill this role and failed miserably.
  • Fingore: The clumsy shop teacher, with a table saw, during George's interview with him.
  • The Fool: George Newman.
  • Free Prize At the Bottom: Stanley Spadowski, while hosting his show, goes through the process of digging a cheap plastic toy out from the bottom of a box of cereal.

Stanley: Don't let your parents know that you do this.

  • The Gambling Addict: Uncle Harvey, who regularly plays the horses and poker - the latter got him the station, and the former nearly resulted in him selling it to R.J. Fletcher.
  • George Jetson Job Security: The janitor, Stanley Spadowski got fired from Channel 8 by R.J. Fletcher who accused him of throwing away some very important files. They were later discovered right where Fletcher had left them, but Stanley wasn't un-fired.
    • There's even a slight implication that R.J. Fletcher did this deliberately to rid of Stanley.
  • Gilligan Cut: From Uncle Harvey saying "no way" about George becoming the manager of a TV station, to George and Teri on their way to the station for the first time.
    • A package meant for Channel 8 (Fletcher's station and lair of doom) arrives at Channel 62 (George's UHF station) by accident. George offers to deliver it personally to Fletcher. Pamela warns "...he's not the nicest guy in the world." After George scoffs and says "You just have to know how to talk to those guys..." CUT TO Fletcher berating his son about a pencil (see Abusive Parents example above).
  • Grumpy Old Man: R.J. Fletcher himself.
  • Harpo Does Something Funny: Aside from one action sequence, Michael Richards' part is entirely ad libbed because "it was funnier than anything we could write."
  • Historical Badass Upgrade: Gandhi II.
  • Humiliation Conga: R.J. Fletcher goes down HARD.
    • HARD doesn't even begin to describe it! First his true beliefs about the community are revealed, making him the most hated man in the city; then he loses his contract because a random homeless person purchased enough stock to save U-62; gets his license revoked; gets kicked in the nuts by an old lady; learns the one coin he gave the already mentioned homeless person was what caused his downfall; and the homeless man was able to get the same watch Fletcher wanted.
      • Weird Al states in the commentary that he put this in because he doesn't like it when a movie has a Karma Houdini.
        • And yet, he doesn't get arrested for kidnapping! Then again, by the time the homeless man reveals his role in Fletcher's downfall, Al must've decided that there was only so much hell he could inflict on Fletcher without making him into a Jerkass Woobie.
  • I Ate What?: George accidentally feeds dog biscuits to Bob during filming of a Product Placement segment during the kids' show. As Bob is in character as "Bobbo the Clown", he has to fake a smile even as he's grossed out by the taste of the "cookies" he's eating.

"That's right, Yappy's Dog Treats! Your dog will love that real liver and tuna taste...
*Cue sound of Bob being violently ill*
...With just a hint of cheese!"

  • I'm Your Worst Nightmare: George says this during his Rambo-parodying fantasy.
  • Incredibly Lame Pun: Sort of. During the dreaded phone call between Uncle Harvey and Mr. Big, Mr. Big detaches his hand, replaces it with a meat cleaver appendage and violently chops a big loaf of lunchmeat (since it's Weird Al, probably balogna), signifying he means business. Harvey staggers in the pool (where he's lounging when the call takes place) and says, "I'm dead meat!".
  • Indy Escape: Parodied in a dream sequence with a dauntless boulder. Averted since the dream was interrupted, killing the character in said dream.
  • I Need a Freaking Drink: Invoked by George, but Bob calls him on it, saying he doesn't drink; George says he's been meaning to start.
  • Japanese Ranguage: "Supplies!"
  • Jingle: Spatula City.
  • Kitschy Local Commercial: There are a few of these, including the Spatula City ad ("we sell spatulas, and that's all!") and the ad for Crazy Eddie's Used Cars.
  • Large Ham: Kevin McCarthy's performance is so hammy that some major religions forbid eating watching it.
  • Laugh with Me: When R.J. Fletcher starts laughing, the two managers under him realize, after a short pause, that they'd better start forcing themselves to laugh along with him.
  • Like Reality Unless Noted: The town. It's a normal city with normal people watching their normal Channel 8... but when you see the odd content being aired on Channel 62 and realize all these people and things must have been out there already before they got TV shows, it makes you wonder what anyone found weird or odd about George at the beginning of the movie.
  • Loan Shark: Uncle Harvey owes $75,000 to an unseen shark who has a detachable cleaver for a hand.
    • Who may or may not be Merv Griffin, according to the commentary.
  • Man Child: Stanley, so very much.
  • Market-Based Title: Since the concept of UHF stations differs overseas (as some countries, like the UK, moved everything to UHF years ago), they asked Al for an alternate title. He suggested "The Vidiot".
    • In a prime example of Executive Meddling, the film was released in some countries, much to Al's chagrin, as "The Vidiot From UHF". This succeeded in transforming an incomprehensible title to a terrible one.
    • The Latin-American Spanish dub is known as "Los Telelocos".
    • The concept of the small independent UHF station running Anime cartoons into the wee hours does exist in Japan.
    • The United Kingdom, on the other hand? Most stations are regional, not local, and the majors (BBC1, BBC2, ITV, 4) are routinely transmitted on adjacent sets of channels from the same (BBC-owned) sites.
    • Of course, modern televisions don't differentiate between UHF and other frequencies, and haven't for years, so it's not much better in the US anymore.
  • Media Watchdog: The FCC appeared in the end of UHF.
  • Metaphorgotten: George delivers many of these.

Come on, Bob. You gotta grab life by the lips, and just yank as hard as you can.

    • Stanley squeezes in a couple as well.

And now they're throwing me out like a bag of moldy...tangerines.

  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: In Brick Joke form.
  • Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: as a parody of Geraldo and other 80's talk shows that lead the way for Jerry Springer, a bruised George tells us about what could be described as the ultimate controversial matter: "Lesbian Nazi hookers, abducted by UFOs and forced into weight-loss programs... all this week onTown Talk."
  • No Budget: While this limited who could be hired and where shooting takes place, this shows up most with the props. They couldn't afford to have any lead time on, leading to such things as a helicopter helmet with a Channel 8 logo made out of tape.
    • Used In-Universe, too, as U62 had a shoestring budget until "Uncle Nutsy's Clubhouse" got turned into "Stanley Spudowski's Clubhouse".
    • In the commentary Al jokes that they blew half the budget on the scene with the kid spitting in George's face on CG spit from Industrial Light and Magic.
  • Old Shame: Apparently, if you bring this film up to Michael Richards, he will not react well, though he did appear in the cast commentary.
    • For a couple of minutes... at a time. Of course after his infamous outburst in late 2006 he hopefully will recall this movie as a happier time.
    • Well, given his role...
  • The One Thing I Don't Hate About You: R. J. Fletcher's Engineered Public Confession ends with "But, there is one good thing about broadcasting to a town full of mindless sheep: I always know I have them exactly where I want them!"
  • Parody Commercial: Contains a number of commercials for various U62 shows, including "Gandhi II", "Conan the Librarian", and "Wheel of Fish", as well as a few fake companies, such as "Spatula City" and "Crazy Ernie's Used Cars". The audio for some of these commercials was included on Weird Al's UHF CD.
  • Periphery Demographic: In-universe, this is what turns around U62's fortunes.
  • Prop Recycling: The producers struck a deal with KOED to build a news set in their studio. The Tulsa network used the set for their own broadcasts for a couple years afterward.
  • Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: "A U! H! F! Station!"
  • Real Trailer, Fake Movie
  • Red Right Hand: Although he's technically not the main villan, Mr. Big is a spooky unseen loanshark/crime boss with a detachable meat-cleaver hand. Also, Evil Sounds Deep applies to him as well.
  • Sassy Secretary: Pamela Finklestein.
  • Scary Librarian: CONAN: THE LIBRARIAN

Conan: Don't you know dah dew-ay dec-ihm-ahl sys-tahm?

  • Science Marches On: An interesting tidbit in the very beginning at Big Edna's. You can see a sign in the background saying that they cook all of their meat "medium with a pink center unless otherwise specified". This was in 1989 and not a joke, as it was before the 1993 Jack-in-the-Box E coli disaster in which four children died and hundreds of others became sick in the Seattle area as well as California, Idaho and Nevada, after eating undercooked and contaminated meat from Jack in the Box. These days all meat is cooked well done unless specified, and menus have warnings against eating undercooked meats.
    • Though to be fair, pink beef can still be hot enough to kill bacteria. It's red beef that's trouble.
  • Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!: R.J. Fletcher
  • Severely Specialized Store: Spatula City.
  • Shouting Shooter: In the Rambo parody.
  • Smug Snake: RJ Fletcher.
  • Styrofoam Rocks: Parodied. In the opening sequence, a rock bounces right off George Newman's head mid-fantasy and does nothing to him.
  • Technology Marches On: The UHF band in general. There's a long history which (at least in the US) goes back to The Fifties - although the history in other countries (like the UK) will differ:
    • US TV was originally VHF only; the loss of Channel 1 to land-mobile by 1948 (and of everything above channel 13 to military use) left only a dozen channels, causing interference between the hundred pioneering stations then on-air. The Federal Communications Commission stopped licencing new stations until an additional seventy channels (UHF 14-83) could be opened on an experimental basis in 1952. They didn't require TV makers include tuners for these frequencies until 1964, so eighty of the initial 100 UHF stations were out of business in their first year. By The Sixties, UHF was seeing some use for educational TV (NET, and its successor PBS) or specialised uses such as Spanish-language broadcasting. Top-of-the-line rooftop antennas were routinely rated "100 miles VHF, 60 miles UHF". The further up the dial, the worse things became. With so few available VHF channels, there was only room for three mainstream commercial networks (CBS, NBC, ABC) at best. Fourth-ranked DuMont was bankrupt by 1956.
    • Cable TV (and, later, satellite TV) served as an "equaliser" to some degree, allowing FOX to launch as a fourth network in 1986, taking many of the former UHF independents as affiliates. TV receivers were also improving; instead of two mechanical dials (set one to 'U' for UHF, clunk through up to seventy empty channels on the other to find the individual UHF station) one remotely-controlled electronic tuner could cover all channels. In 1989? "Weird Al" already knew the trope was becoming dated in the cable TV era, and wanted "The Vidiot" as a title, but fell victim to Executive Meddling.
    • The need for more than three major stations in each market meant that the system had to expand onto UHF. By 1994, CBS had lost the NFL deal to FOX, which took advantage to poach existing affiliate stations. A dozen stations owned by "New World Communications" in multiple markets dumped CBS for FOX. In the worst example, this forced CBS to buy a "U-62" station in Detroit outright for $24 million in sheer desperation.
    • The final straw which made "UHF as low-budget independent" a Discredited Trope was the digital television transition. Over-the-air TV had been losing valuable UHF spectrum to mobile telephone companies for years; UHF 14-83 becomes UHF 14-69 (in 1983) becomes UHF 14-51 (in 2009-2011) becomes UHF 14-36 (by 2021). US stations were forced to convert to DTV so that more TV could be squeezed into less space using digital compression. The new system had "forward error correction", which transmits a few spare bits so that receivers can recover from the white noise that made analogue stations "snowy", and could get more signal out with less power. Great for UHF, but the system performs poorly in the presence of "impulse noise" from motors and appliances which briefly, repeatedly wipe out the entire channel – with the once-valuable low-VHF channels hit worst.
    • Suddenly, broadcasters who'd been on VHF for more than half a century (mostly CBS and NBC affiliates, as the strongest networks of the 1950s) were abandoning these channels, leaving VHF 2-6 a wasteland, to stay on UHF digitally. The worst spot on the dial is no longer analogue "U-62" (which no longer exists, as of 2009-2011), it's "digital VHF 2". While VHF 7-13 are still in use digitally, in some markets the feds have paid broadcasters to move to now-unwanted low-VHF frequencies so UHF spectrum can be profitably sold. And Now You Know.
  • Temporary Substitute: Anthony Geary wasn't originally planned to play Philo; one of Al's favorite comics, Joel Hodgson, was. But he couldn't accept the role. Before you go "aw, man!" keep in mind that Joel had turned it down due to being burned out in Los Angeles and returning to Minneapolis, where he ended up starting his own little show on its own UHF station KTMA.
  • They Just Didn't Care: Parodied with Gandhi II, which deliberately misses the entire point of the original movie (and, for that matter, Mahatma Gandhi's way of life).

"No more Mr. Passive Resistance... he's out to kick some butt!"

  1. ↑ Hinduism considers practice of the consumption of beef taboo.
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