And so we come full-circle.
As in the olden days.
When we first started.
Writing about spy spoofs.
And this is a doozy!
Val Kilmer’s first film.
As Nick Rivers.
Very much Elvis, but equally Beach Boys (at least on the opening number “Skeet Surfing”).
I would call this style of filmmaking “kitchen sink”.
It was a particular type of American comedy in the 1980s.
Fast jokes.
Set pieces.
Elaborate puns.
General silliness.
The setting is East Germany.
In the time of Markus Wolf and the Stasi.
Wolf retired in 1986.
The year after this film (1985), Vladimir Putin started his KGB career in East Germany.
But let’s talk about more important stuff…like how beautiful Lucy Gutteridge is!
A girl and a gun, said Godard.
And for a sequel, another girl and another gun…
Said I.
Port Said.
Fuad II.
Yes, Ms. Gutteridge plays the stunning Hillary.
Which roughly translates to “she whose breasts defy gravity”.
That’s a direct paraphrase.
What?
We almost get the Lawrence Welk Orchestra doing “Sister Ray”, but Nick Rivers and “Tutti Frutti” is close enough to alienate the visiting Russian operatic singer and his caricature faux-Nazi patron.
General Streck.
Not to be confused with Colonel Sturm or Sergeant Drang.
Jim Abrahams and the Zucker brothers (David and Jerry) strung us along the whole time.
And they directed a fairly decent film here…the triumvirate.
The Nutcracker turns out to be a ballet of literal protrusions.
The prop room is equally literal.
It’s both Joycean and daft.
But I had some genuine chuckles during this film.
They execute a priest as a demonstration.
And his Latin is a knee-slapping litany.
A greatest hits of that dead language.
Legal. Medical. String it together. Make it flow.
Pig Latin. Cow Latin. Pidgin Latin.
Yes Elvis. Yes Beach Boys. And yes Beatlemania.
Sullivan. Hysteria. Hip sway. Swooning.
Is it a bit of Fritz Lang with the magnifying glass?
Certainly prefigures the backmasking of Twin Peaks.
Swedish as a backwards language.
Like those hidden messages on (back to the) Beatles records.
I want to live in that loft of that Swedish bookstore…
clutching a volume of Strindberg and holding a Ms. Gutteridge.
How could anyone dream of more than two fireplaces at the top of a firehouse pole?
Many references. The Blue Lagoon. When Brooke Shields was just 14.
Like the Podestas, we end up next in the script at a pizza restaurant.
(!)
“Straighten Out the Rug” pulls out all the stops…and all the rugs…like Pejman Nozad on vitamins.
An incredibly detailed mock-up of the prison grounds complete with a toy train.
Bovine infiltration.
Eggs Benedict Arnold.
When instead of hollandaise, they’ve secretly replaced the sauce with Folger’s crystal gravy (on loan from the struggling PepsiCo).
While Trump protestors boycott every snack and cranny of this MNE.
But the dénouement is the underwater saloon brawl.
It is actually artful. Postmodern. High art in spite of itself. Dodoism.
We must not forget the yeoman efforts of the great Omar Sharif in this film.
Sadly, Mr. Sharif passed away just this past year in his home country of Egypt.
At least he did not (presumably) need two hours of surgery to wipe the smile off his face.
“Who do you root for in the Virginia Slims tournament?”
“I always root against the heterosexual.”
“Do you know any good, white basketball players?”
“There are no good, white basketball players.”
All of this from the “Match? Lighter. Better still.” line which Robert Shaw sweated out of someone to fool his way into James Bond’s presence and trust for a short time…before he chose fish with red wine.
One wonders whether the East Berliners had the jelly-faced joy of seeing this arrogant Hollywood slap at the time of its release?
Most importantly, “kitchen sink” was the style of the ZAZ directors mentioned previously: Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker.
Kentucky Fried Movie. Airplane! The Naked Gun films (with the exception of the last).
This really is a cute film.
And while most of it would have pushed the envelope for 1984, it would almost be a G-rated movie by today’s standards.
Still, there are some jawdropping moments…such as The Anal Intruder (with the Cuisinart on the shelf [in the jailhouse now]).
Turns out the Christopher Atkins character (played by Christopher Villiers) had gotten all the joys of the Russian sailors who rescued him…including sodomy, Karl Marx, Lenin, L. Ron Hubbard, and one more bloke.
And so we wonder…couldn’t the Butthole Surfers have made it into this film?
Just barely.
Three years later they would drop the masterpiece Locust Abortion Technician.
Ah, the Reagan era…
-PD
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