Mort sur le grill

Finally seeing Crimewave now means that I have seen (and enjoyed, mostly) all of Sam Raimi's feature films. I'd been searching for this flick for a while, and was therefore delighted when it happened to come on TV! I'm glad it did, too, because if it hadn't, I'd have bought it (probably quite expensively), and I wouldn't say that this film is one that I'd be happy with purchasing. I see Crimewave as an enjoyable experimental film for the talented Evil Dead director and star. Sam Raimi implements several of his clever camera angles into the proceedings, and this bodes well with the over the top comic style of the rest of the film. Similarly, Bruce Campbell does what he does best; in a role that is an interesting prelude to his way over the top turn in The Evil Dead's sequel. The plot is all over the place, and starts off with a man on death row, protesting his innocence. His story is then told through flashbacks, and we find out that he really is in the innocent party in a story that features a couple of maniac rat catchers, a beautiful woman, a suave 'heel' and seemingly no end of madcap events.

The screenplay was written by two of modern cult cinema's biggest icons; Ethan and Joel Coen. Hot off their success with Blood Simple (which, incidentally, I didn't like much); this was the second film to feature the brothers' as writers. Despite them having the writing credit, this really doesn't feel like a Coen Brothers film; and that is testament to Sam Raimi's direction. Raimi perhaps goes a little bit too over the top at times, and the film does almost feel like a series of slapstick sketches threaded together by a thin plot. We get treated to some of his early directorial skill, with several really well implemented scenes; my favourite being the one where we see one of the rat catchers kicking a door in from both the inside view and on a TV screen showing the security camera. The unknown cast is decent enough, but it's only really Bruce Campbell that stands out, and that's more because of his later performances than because of prowess here. Still, it's always fun to see Bruce in a movie, and that remains true here. On the whole, this is a good film; but I'd only really recommend it to Raimi/Campbell fans, and people that will appreciate that it's more of a prelude to greater things to come than a great cult flick.

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).

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.

This is a cartoon with real people instead of animations. At first, I didn't know what to make of this movie. Then, I realized that it was an excellent one-of-a-kind genre. The too-cute, trite story of a lowly security guard, Victor Ajax (Reed Birney), trying to impress a pretty, hard-to-get girl, Nancy (Sheree J. Wilson), isn't really as important as the craftsmanship that goes into the making of this cartoon movie whose main characters are Louise Lasser (Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman) and the two cartoonish 'exterminators' who will kill any size pest. Some may call this movie "campy." I call it great!!!

The colors and settings are vivid, like a cartoon. And, the characters are just as unpredictable and indestructible as they would be in your typical cartoon: getting hit in the head with a row of bowling balls, only to be just dazed and not dead; falling out of tall building windows, only to get up and continue on with the action of the sequence; falling down a chute and into a box to be sent off to South America, etc.

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.