My review was written in June 1983 after a screening at Bombay Cinema in Midtown Manhattan.
"Luggage of the Gods" is a mild indie comedy filmed in New York last year by tyro filmmakers that recalls Carl Gottlieb's 1980 "Caveman". Producer Jeff Folmsbee and helmer David Kendall have gotten technical value from a tiny budget, but the wryly-titled opus lacks the punch of invention needed to escape the "specialized U. S. indie" ghetto and find more commercial markets.
Story premise recalls Ismail Merchant-James Ivory's 1972 "Savages" and Jamie Uys's recent international hit "The Gods Must Be Crazy" in limning the impact of modern civilization and its products upon an untouched tribe of primitives. Yuk (Mark Stolzenberg) is a cave painting artis exiled from his tribe (living unchanged from prehistoric time somewhere in North America) for violating a taboo by looking up at the jet planes that periodically fly overhead.
With his sidekick Tull (Gabriel Barre), Yuk rummages through and puts to use a treasure trove of luggage jettisoned from a plane. A lame subplot has two crooks looking for a crate of rare paintings (dropped from the plane) and fighting with the tribe until defeated by Yuk and Tull.
Slowly-paced picture lags between gags, most of which are repetitive variations of the basic feeling-superior reaction of watching a savage misuse or ingeniously invent a new use for a familiar modern object. Writer-director Kendall fails to develop his material beyond the level of an elongated blackout sketch. One missed opportunity occurs when Yuk finds a one-hand miniature 8mm film projector. Instead of developing the cultural shock (commonly observed among primitives who have never seen a movie before) of the incident, Kendall has Yuk immediately assimilate the artificial image of a silent G-rated (not stag) film and introduce "the kiss" to his tribe.
Funniest motif, when the tribe takes the 1960s pop song "Build Me Up, Buttercup" (heard on a radio found in the luggage) as its chant, is little more than a variation on the discovery of polyrhythms around the campfire that was the highpoint of "Caveman". Without the money to compete with major productions, tyro filmmakers should concentrate on creating a novel alternative to mainstream fare, rather than a small-scale version of it.
Leads Stolzenberg, Barre and heroine Gwen Ellison are physically expressive in roles utilizing a made-up, simple language; some extraneous English narration is voiced-over to bookend the film. Cengiz Yaltkaya's marimba playing and his background musical score are the dominant contrast during much of the heroes' uneventful trek through New York parks.
