Academia de locos

I went through a whole lot of effort to finally see "Crimewave" (it's incredibly hard to find), but I can't help feeling a little bit unsatisfied with the result. Maybe it's only natural that it doesn't live up to high expectations, since Sam Raime had to deliver a follow-up to his downright brilliant "The Evil Dead" and that's much easier said than done. The screenplay, written by the gifted Coen brothers who just finished their dazzling debut "Blood Simple" the previous year, is overly hectic and far too absurd to summarize. I'm not even sure if this can be called a movie, as it feel more like a series of slapstick gags and insane sketches linked together by the ultra-thin premise of two professional exterminators gone berserk. Crush and Coddish are a couple of criminally insane lunies who wipe out more than just rodents, but eventually meet their equal in the nerdy bell-boy of a building complex. Some of the grotesque comedy sequences are hysterical (the slamming doors, the dance contest...) while others completely miss the mark (the whole car chase finale). The acting is tremendously over the top – what else did you expect in a light-headed project such as this? - and it looks like the entire B-cast never had this much fun in their whole lives. They're happy...we're happy, I guess.

"Crimewave" is especially worth a peek in case you're a member of the Bruce Campbell fan-club. Evil Dead's Ash steals the show as slick and obnoxious womanizer Renaldo.

"Crimewave" is a bizarre film, written by the Coen Brothers and directed by Sam Raimi. The plot is just strange... two criminals kill the owners of an alarm company and then begin killing the witnesses to the crime. Done in slapstick comedy style...

This film has Sam Raimi written all over it. His crazy zoom camera shots, the inclusion of Bruce Campbell as "the heel"... and the very over-the-top silliness. The only other time the Coens really tread this path was with "The Hudsucker Proxy" (which is, in all fairness, the better film)... and that, too, had Raimi's involvement.

I suggest this film is worth seeing. While not the Coens' best, not Raimi's best, it's an interesting little film, bizarre, and a good showcase of early work from those involved.

When I first saw this film, I neither knew nor cared who the Coen Brothers or Sam Raimi were.

Probably a good thing, really. I now identify the goofy, cartoonish elements with 'Raising Arizona' and the violence with 'Bottom' or 'Itchy & Scratchy', but I do remember laughing like a drain at this strangely unhinged melodrama.

The rodent-like Brion James and the brutish Paul L.Smith are excellent slapstick hoods, Louise Lasser has a brittle classic glamour and Reed Birney (who I've never seen in anything else) is the wide-eyed, hopelessly romantic loser who would be totally out of his depth in a puddle, let alone the troubles that come to him in this story.

Being a Sam Raimi film, Bruce Campbell is present, in a splendidly oily performance as a total heel. According to one of Bruce's books, making the film was a tough job for various reasons, but the result, while not a classic, is definitely worth your time.

I hadn't heard anything good about this film, and its obscurity didn't lend much credence to the theory that it was any good, but it seemed impossible to me that coming from Joel & Ethan Coen, Sam Raimi, Rob Tapert, and Bruce Campbell, that it could be totally lacking in quality.

And indeed it isn't. I'm surprised this film isn't more popular in the cult world. There's plenty of trademark Coen Bros. dialogue, Sam Raimi crazy camera moves (indeed, in this sense this film is more entertaining than his recent sedate mainstream work), and Bruce Campbell charming cheesiness. I wish someone would release this out-of-print film on DVD so more genre fans would have the opportunity to check it out.

I guess one problem people might have with the film is that they're trying to watch it as a straight comedy. From this perspective, I guess the film is at best uneven. But the film's purpose is as much to pay tribute to vanished 30s and 40s movie conventions as it is to make you laugh. This is fun, because while the Coen Bros. keep returning to that time period in their movies, this is the only time they really play with the *film* style of that period -- their other views on the past are filmed through a modern lens (figuratively and literally). Likewise for Raimi, who hasn't had much other opportunity for this beyond some "Three Stooges" schtick in the "Evil Dead" series. The only other film I've seen that pulls off this kind of tribute is Richard Elfman's brilliantly quirky "Forbidden Zone" (which admittedly does it better). Both films, for instance, feature the classic wipe consisting of a black circle that closes in on the shot, ceasing contraction for a moment to frame an actor's face as they do a final take, and then contracting the rest of the way to a black screen.

I guess one thing that might have lifted this movie to greater heights would have been if Bruce Campbell had been allowed to play leading man Vic as was originally intended (but disallowed by the studio, per Bruce's excellent autobiography "If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor"). While Reed Birney competently plays the fumbling pipsqueak (and actually brings a more poindexterish quality to the role than Bruce physically would have been able to), he just doesn't have the charisma to really pull you in. Oh well -- Renaldo "The Heel" is a classic Campbell character, so there's some consolation there.

A parting note is that Arlon Ober, a primary composer of the brilliant score to the "Robotech" series, provides a wonderful score here as well, one of only 11 he's done, per IMDb. Almost worth seeking this out just for his great, fun score (the ending credits song is especially smile-inducing).

An actress loaded on cocaine, demanding to do her own makeup, and doing a terrible job of it. An actor distracted by battling spectres of his ex-wife. An actor dubbed over. Soon to be Hall of Fame directors/writers battling the studio at every turn. B-list hero Mr. Chin forced into a background role. All of this combined to make a ridiculous movie, and yet, all that behind-the-scenes chaos added to the movie's Live Action Looney Tunes charm.

Bruce was supposed to have the lead role, but the movie would have had a very different feel and maybe less enjoyable. His scenes in a supporting role are a blast, but I would actually have liked to see him as the main baddie. That would have added some more oomph and brought in flavor from the more wacky parts of Evil Dead.

The plot is, who cares, they didn't. Watch for the silly violence, some enjoyable cinematography (the hallway of doors scene was like ASMR for the eyeballs), and some solid one-liners.

It did take me a bit to warm up to this film as I went into it not knowing anything about it, but once I accepted that it wasn't going for any one genre, and just being ridiculous wacky fun, I settled in and enjoyed the ride. It is also a pleasure to watch Chuck Norris's TV wife adding some gravitas when Bruce was absent.