Pattuglia di notte

This film does a superior job of balancing its exceptionally crude humor against the setting of occupational narrative of a police officer moonlighting as the Unknown Comic (bag over head), just as the protagonist does a superlative job balancing both careers. While criticized as appealing to a adolescent sense of humor, Night Patrol is entirely worthwhile for all ages, so long as they have a vulgar and adolescent level of maturity. The fact that the humor is very coarse and the laughs cheap does nothing at all to detract from the intensity of that laughter or the sense of fulfillment that it engenders. Night Patrol has been too long out of print and deserves a reissue.

Make no mistake, Night Patrol is a mix of juvenile stupidity and toilet humor.

Maybe that's why I liked it so much.

Comedy of this nature doesn't ask much of your brain. Your age and/or sense of humor fills in the blanks. Even years down the road some pretty funny segments stand up. On a shoestring budget and featuring the likes of The Unknown Comic from the 80's (who? Yeah exactly), Pat Paulsen, Linda Blair and a few other familiar faces.

The whole thing isn't trying to be anything it's not. Sure you could say it was riding the coat tails of the 80's Police Academy screwball cop genre, but it does it way cruder and funnier than anything Guttenberg and Co. Ever did. Night Patrol has it's own camp style.

I was pretty young when I first seen this (no surprise). Now much older it still ranks as one of my favorite comedies. Sure some of it is dated. Some of the material didn't hold up well. There's also some gags I'm sure you couldn't get away with today, but few things are classic shtick. Bodily function jokes, boobs, a The Good, The Bad and The Ugly parody, more boobs, etc. I'm not going to attempt to sell this movie to you. If you like it - you already know why. The humor is raw, crude and funny.

This is a schlock masterpiece, and a truly funny film. It is stupid, tasteless, and perverted, and funny as hell. I like this BETTER than Police Acadamy and many of those 80's cop films like that. Sure, it is raunchy and dumb but it is all in good fun. This also has one of the greatest restaurant jokes I have ever seen...the refill gag. If you don't know what I am talking about see this film. A scene that is also hilarious is a scene when random people on the street suddenly break out and sing. Also, the unknown comic is a real laugh...his jokes are not funny, which is why it makes it so funny! Make any sense? The movie is basically about another unknown comic who is ruining the unknown comic's reputation for an unknown reason! And the worst cops ever are sent to bring justice to this Unknown Comic. These cops make Police Academy look good! See this film if you are a fan of schlock, if not, stayyy awayyy...

Night Patrol (1984)

** (out of 4)

If you thought POLICE ACADEMY was immature then you haven't seen nothing until you watch this clone. The actual story here is pretty light as a dimwitted police officer (Murray Langston) has to work the night patrol while at the same time playing The Unknown Comic and trying to get his act off the ground. That's pretty much the only story here as we're basically just given raunchy and politically incorrect scenes that are sometimes funny but more times than not just downright stupid. I say downright stupid and that's not necessarily a bad thing because it really does seem like the writers of this thing just sat around trying to think of the worst jokes they could tell and put them in the movie. So many of these jokes are just so bad and so lame yet you still laugh simply because of how bad they are. Why is public hair curly? Wait until you hear the punchline. The entire film has humor that you're only going to find in an 80's movie and this includes a lot of jokes towards gay people and there's even a rape victim sequence, which is just downright weird to say the least and especially once you see who the actual victim is. So, is NIGHT PATROL any good? I really wouldn't call it good but I think it's campy enough to where you should be able to enjoy it. Langston is decent in the lead role and we've got Linda Blair in support as well as Pat Paulsen and Billy Barty. Fans of 80's humor will certainly want to watch this at least once but you've low-level of humor will determine how much you actually enjoy it.

The only real test for a comedy is is it funny? I did laugh a bit through this movie at some of the stand up comedy and some just outright outrageous humour you would be hung, drawn and quartered for doing in 2025. Basically nothing is off limits in this movie, Linda Blair is basically the best known actress in it. Where it doesn't work though for me is the amount of slapstick, puns and physical gags it tries to execute, these are rarely funny.

The structure of the film is pretty loose too, it's more a series of sketches with no real strong thread to tie it all together. This movie is more a time capsule now of a certain kind of mad humour which you won't really find in most modern comedies which aim to be more sophisticated now I guess.