Fifty years ago today Ernie Kovacs died in a car accident. He was 43-years-old. A tragic end for a hugely talented artist.

Kovacs elevated television comedy to a fine art. Innovative, subversive and diabolically funny, he created a surreal style of humor employing cutting edge visual techniques and envelope pushing irreverence that influenced a wide range of TV shows from Saturday Night Live and SCTV to Sesame Street and Monty Python.

In this six minute compression of cine-semiology, Kovacs pays homage to film noir classics such as Touch Of Evil (the tracking shots), Psycho, Asphalt Jungle and Night In The City with a hint (as I see it) of Jean Genet and Godard. The soundtrack is Béla Bartók’s “Concerto for Orchestra” and it creates a beautiful sense of dread.

This first aired in 1961 and it still seems fresh today. The highly-stylized sets, feral cat, dead-eyed baby dolls and hallucinatory effects have the eerie dreaminess and sense of camp that David Lynch, the Kuchar brothers and Kenneth Anger would explore years later.

No telling where Kovacs would have taken his art had he lived. Sadly, it came to an end on a dark street in Los Angeles on January 13, 1962 when Kovacs lost control of his car while allegedly attempting to light one of his ubiquitous cigars.