Record City is no High Fidelity, Empire Records, or even FM. Not even Trax in Pretty In Pink. Nope, Record City is a huge story filled with way too many people that all meander around with no story whatsoever, but if you're interested in film as time capsule of an era, this is certainly one worth opening and looking inside.

DJ Gordon Kong (Rick Dees, the creator of "Disco Duck," which along with "Dr. Disco" appear in Saturday Night Fever; Dees also wrote the theme for Meatballs, plus hosted Solid Gold and the late night show Into the Night Starring Rick Dees) has a fake gorilla arm and is hosting a talent show in the parking lot while we watch the records get sold inside.

This is an American-International Picture, believe it or not, but it comes at the end of a great run. Get ready for 1978's best - or worst depending on your point of view - cast, replete with pop culture bit players, the kind we love most around here. There's Jeff Altman, two years away from The Pink Lady and Jeff (the kind of culture clash that we really would write about if we covered television series, as an engineer. Altman's in a ton of stuff that I love, like American Hot Wax and Easy Money, as well as some stuff I downright hate like Wacko and Highlander II: The Quickening. Familiar faces include Ed Begley Jr., Sorrell "Boss Hogg, but he's also in Devil Times Five" Booke, Ruth Buzzi, Pittsburgh native Frank Gorshin, Ted "Isaac the Bartender" Lange, Gallagher, Harold "Oddjob" Sakata, Larry Storch, Tim Thomerson and Wendy Schall (who is in everything from Innerspace to Creature, Munchies, The 'Burbs and Small Soldiers; you'll also recognize her voice as Francine on American Dad).

But the film excels at presenting those on the fringes of relevance, even in 1978. Like Dean Martin's dancing uncle Leonard Barr. Sylvia Anderson, who was in She Devils In Chains, Angels' Brigade and Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway. John Halsey, who was Barry Wom in The Ruttles. PSA star Joe Higgins. Russell Howard, a skateboarder who also ends up in two Andy Sidaris movies, Hard Ticket to Hawaii and Seven. Nadejda Dobrev from Ed Wood's Orgy of the Dead. Alan Oppenheimer, the voice of Skeletor, Man-At-Arms, Beastman, Cringer, Inch High Private Eye, Vanity Smurf and more. Alice Ghostley (Bernice from Designing Women and Mrs. Murdock in Grease). Tony Giorgio, Satan in Night Train to Terror! March 1974 Playboy Playmate of the Month Pamela Zinszer. And weirdest of all, one-time leader "The Texas Jewboys," writer Kinky Friedman.

I can't stop you from checking this out for yourself. I can only tell that this is a total mess. But sometimes, those are the movies we love best, right?

This is another obscure movie I stumbled into on Amazon Prime Video. It's so obscure that when it was originally released, it didn't appear in any theatre in my Baton Rouge residence! The movie has lots of familiar TV character actors like Alice Ghostley, Ruth Buzzi, and Larry Storch. Before "The Love Boat" made him familiar, Ted Lange was in this, likewise, Ed Begley Jr. before "St. Elsewhere". Oh, and disc jockey Rick Dees appears here as DJ "The Gorilla" singing a song similar to his "Dis-Gorilla" and hosting a talent contest in which Gallagher and Kinky Friedman appear. None of the songs were familiar Top 40 hits though they could have been judging by the sound and flavor. In summary, Record City was stupid and politically incorrect and sloppy but it was also funny perhaps despite and because of that.

Coming across like a low-rent "Car Wash" set in a record store on a single frantic day, this dopey comedy may not be good in a traditional sense, but it's so bound and determined in its relentless aim to amuse and entertain in the most clunky and pandering way possible that it actually succeeds almost in spite of itself.

Director Dennis Steinmetz keeps the eventful and enjoyably inane narrative zipping along at a constant snappy pace, maintains an amiable breezy tone throughout, and gets lots of laughs from the cheerfully dippy sense of giddy lowbrow humor. Ron Friedman's blithely crass script features jokes about gays, bums, hookers, sexual harassment, and fat and disabled folks that would never, ever fly today, but were still perfectly acceptable in the free'n'easy 1970's.

Moreover, it's acted with zest by an enthusiastic cast: Ruth Buzzi as hopeless frump cleaning lady Olga, Michael Callan as smarmy womanizing heel manager Eddie, Ted Lange as funky clerk The Wiz, Jack Carter as desperate manager Manny, Deborah White as irate (and irritating) feminist Vivian, Tim Thomerson as the laid-back Marty, Frank Gorshin as wily and evasive master criminal the Chameleon, Joe Higgins as inept gluttonous guard Doyle, Sorrell Booke as bumbling cop Coznowski, Harold Sakata as menacing thug Gucci, who turns out to be a homosexual (!); Alice Ghostley as a naggy old biddy, Rick Dees as madcap disc jockey Gordon Kong with Jeff Altman as his Nazi jerk engineer, Larry Storch as a deaf guy, Ed Begley Jr. and Elliott Street as a couple of antsy'n'incompetent wannabe thieves, Stuart Goetz as the nerdy Rupert, and the one and only Kinky Friedman and the equally singular Gallagher as their own zany selves. A silly hoot.