Every Which Way but Loose

Every Which Way but Loose (1978)

Runtime: 114 minutes

Directed by: James Fargo

Starring: Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke, Geoffrey Lewis, Beverly D’Angelo, Ruth Gordon

From: Warner Bros.

Note that I posted this review on Letterboxd about a half hour after I saw the movie on Turner Classic Movies.
 

I’ll wish Clint Eastwood a happy 95th birthday… even if he has some viewpoints you’d expect someone in his 90’s to have and the rumors of why his then-girl Sondra Locke didn’t have a Hollywood career once they broke up. That is awkward for this film as it’s one of those where she was the lead woman. This just played on Turner Classic Movies; it’s rare that I view a movie then immediately review it on Letterboxd but Loose is one I knew some things about via cultural osmosis so might as well, right?

I knew from the premise and an orangutan named Clyde having a large role that this was for the general public that rates Smokey and the Bandit as their all-time favorite film rather than sophisticated cinephiles like some of us on Letterboxd. This was silly nonsense-not to mention, extremely weird-where Eastwood portrays PHILO BEDDOE (what a name) a truck driver who participates in underground boxing matches, romances Locke, and randomly has a pet orangutan. Private ownership of primates of course looks bad by modern standards; so does its owner giving the monkey beer, taking it to an X-rated joint and teaching it to give people the middle finger! But, he freed it from a private zoo in the desert so perhaps Beddoe’s ownership was preferable… 

As lowbrow as Every Which Way but Loose was (“aimless” is another term) I was still entertained. It was easy to root for Philo-some questionable motivations aside-Sondra’s character Lynn, Philo’s buddy Orville, Orville’s crude mother (what a role for Ruth Gordon) and yes, Clyde’s portrayal by Manis. Those blue-collar folks were for certain preferable than the villain bikers… who were also Neo-Nazi A-holes! Then again, those bikers were portrayed as even bigger buffoons than the Neo-Nazi A-holes who were in The Blues Brothers and you could never guess what genre of music their theme song is.

Not everyone will enjoy the crude humor but I can rate the film as fine. It takes awhile before Beverly D’Angelo appears-her role was also amusing. The “country and western” music was nice & is far better than what passes for country music for probably the last 20 or so years. I’ll close this review by mentioning a tale that needs to be told for those that may have heard that Manis the primate was abused on set. That was claimed in a book… problem was, they were actually referring to allegations made about one of the two orangutans used in this film’s sequel! Whoops. Those allegations apparently were rather shaky so who knows if they were true—I hope they weren’t.