Night Patrol

Jackie Kong followed up her low-budget drive-in horror film The Being with this lowest-of-the-low-brow frat-party staple, originally produced as The Unkown Comic movie, co-written and starring The Unknown Comic himself, Murray Langston. Essecnailly a series of bad borscht belt jokes strung together with a few attempts at Kentucky Fried Theater-style sight gags that all land with a deafening thud, Night Patrol stars Langston as Officer Melvin White, a numbing LAPD cop who moonlights as an anonymous stand-up comic with a bag over his head. Pat Paulsen, an older comic best known for sending up professional politicians by running a fake presidential campaign in 1968, plays Melvin's partner. Billy Barty plays the irascible police captain, and Linda Blaire plays the spunky dispatch officer who has a crush on Melvin. The level of comedy on display in this movie can be summed up by Kong's decision to dub fart noises onto every scene with Billy Barty so that the dwarf police caption farts whenever he walks. Barty was so upset when he saw the film he tried to sue the producers.

Langston became famous on Chuck Barris's absurdist competition show, The Gong Show, on which Langston first appeared reluctantly when he was short of money. Rather than go on as himself, he asked the director if he could just put a paper bag over his head with holes for his eyes and mouth a recite some old jokes. The Unknown Comic became a huge hit on the show and developed a cult following, appearing on many other TV shows and in nightclubs. Barris made a Gong Show movie in 1980, co-written by Robert Downey Sr., in which Langston appeared, which was a huge bomb. Langston unmasked himself on the magazine show Real People but wrote this script as another way to capitalize on the persona. Many Gong Show regulars, like Jaye P. Morgan, and old-school comics, like Pat Morita, appear in Night Patrol. Much of the "plot" revolves around unmasking The Unknown Comic, who many suspect may also be responsible for a series of robberies being committed by a guy with a paper bag on his head.

Linda Blaire scored a Razzie for her performance in this movie—one can see why she felt so proud of the exploitation pictures she made at this time, specifically Savage Streets, when crap like this was what she was being offered. According to Blaire, Jackie Kong became obsessed with Langston, and her erratic and inappropriate behavior on set caused him to leave the project completely. This apparently accounts for the scenes in which The Unknown Comic's voice is dubbed by someone else. With a movie like this, made at this time, it's hard to imagine what the "inappropriate behavior" would have been. Regardless, this picture is a slog that only works if watched on a tiny TV in a crowded dorm room full of drunken yahoos who aren't really paying attention.