Runtime: 94 minutes
Directed by: Bob Clark
Starring: Gene Hackman, Dan Aykroyd, Dom DeLuise, Ronny Cox, Nancy Travis
From: TriStar
Here's an infamous movie I actually have a backstory with. I explain it in a short manner below in my Letterboxd review:
This is yet another movie that's due to a messageboard thread. In the past this movie was actually brought up a number of times, and much to my befuddlement I think at least one or two are legit fans of this, but it hasn't been talked about in awhile. It was a podcast recently reviewing this that made me finally want to watch this in full. You see, a few years ago I tried watching this on an Encore channel one night, but it was so awful and so off-putting I stopped watching after a half hour. About the only thing I could say at the time that the film was atrocious but at least the Washington Redskins Starter jacket that Gene Hackman (I have no idea how they roped him into something like this) wore was amusing, as it's quite the 80's artifact and you wouldn't suspect him to wear such a thing, but yet he does for much of the film. As people worldwide read this, I have to explain that the Washington Redskins are an American football team and the team name is an offensive slur and yet because the team owner is a gigantic ogre and manbaby, the name has not been changed despite much protest.
Anyhow, the movie is about loose cannon cop MacArthur Stern (Hackman) who is forced to work a mysterious murder investigation with a detective named Ellis Fielding (Dan Aykroyd) who uses forensic evidence to try and solve the strange case... except that due to a traumatic event Fielding is mentally unwell to the point of often speaking in many different voices & doing weird and sometimes disturbing things... and his psychotic tendencies (said to be “multiple personality disorder”) are treated as a joke, which in 2015 eyes is especially tasteless. Thankfully in this day and age mental health is treated better and someone who has such issues with their brain are not looked at as badly as before.
The main problem with this comedy... it's rarely funny. There are some chuckles but otherwise this lands with a gigantic thud. Besides the fact that someone mentally ill isn't funny on its own, Ellis doing a bunch of goofy voices and running around like a doofus was apparently supposed to be hilarious on its own... there's no jokes connected to those moments, just the fact that he does voices or acts childish is supposed to be funny, only it's not. The movie is definitely rated R due to content, and yet it has those moments that seem best suited to juveniles... talk about misguided.
In terms of the people involved, I feel bad for all of them; director Bob Clark did such films as Porky's, Black Christmas, and A Christmas Story, and somehow ended up doing this and the apparently even worse Baby Geniuses. The cast also includes the likes of Ronny Cox, David Allen Grier, Nancy Travis, Robert Prosky, and Dom DeLuise (as a pornographic dealer! He's the one person who inspires the chuckles) and it may be the worst film for all of them. Again, why an esteemed actor like Gene Hackman did a film where the plot is that there's a HITLER SEX TAPE and it includes Adolf getting it on with several men and one of them is going to soon be the German Chancellor and he is killing everyone who has watched it... just baffling to me. One of the writers is even an esteemed person of the page, television and movies, the late Richard Matheson. How all those people came together to make something so ill-conceived and off-putting, it's amazing.
Point is, this was just a bad idea all around and even with the talent involved, they can't save this. Not even a decent action moment or two or an odd yet fine musical score can save it from Aykroyd embarrassing himself by mugging for the camera incessantly and other inanity. Note that when I talk about the score, I am not including the title song that plays during the end credits. Wow what a strange tune it is, so it's unintentionally really appropriate for the movie. It's sung by Katey Sagal (yes; she's not even in the film either) and Dan Aykroyd. It's at least funny-bad. The video is below.
One last thing: back in 2013 in a landfill someone found discarded footage from this film and it was first thought to be a snuff film; then, it was discovered it was this crap movie but it was something else to see this movie get big attention for a moment a few years ago.
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