Ahh yes, Bonkers! I'm being instantly transported back to the late 70s... it's Saturday night, I've already watched SNL and SC-TV, and here are Bill, Mark and Brett, the Hudson Brothers in all their insane glory! This was one whacked variety show! Let's see... the show usually opened with the "burning house" sketch, featuring the Bros, host Bob Monkhouse and "Miss Bonkers" (the ditzy blonde with the booming male voice), who announced "And now our guest star, in the order of his/her appearance..." The guest star introduced themselves and always seemed to say that they would rather be elsewhere than on the show. A few of the guests I remember include Juliet Prowse, Georgia Engel and Connie Stevens. There would be a comical musical number (with some slapstick improv by the Hudsons going on in the background), then the dressing room sketch with non-stop one-liners (with accompanying rimshots from the old man on the snare drum), which would always end in a "storm" of some sort. One of the Hudsons would warn Bob about an impending storm (popcorn, for example) hitting the dressing room and then he would get dumped on after they exited. Other regular features included the soap-opera "Bonker Hill" (where Bill-Boy, Mark-Boy, Oh-Boy and their man-hungry sister Any-Boy lived in a sloping mountain cabin), a goofy "silent-movie" sketch (with the Hudsons doing slapstick accompanied by 70s clavinet music, a-la the instrumental break in the Andy Kim hit "Rock Me Gently"), and a sketch where the guest star would sing a song with the Hudsons in drag doing backup vocals. The show would close out with the Hudson Brothers "in concert" (performing one of their typical 70s rock numbers). This was one of the goofiest half-hours to ever appear on television, and it was a blast! Let's have a DVD set!
