Greetings, Borrowers!

Most of you are familiar with Sam Raimi – if not by name, then by his body of work: the Evil Dead series, the Spider-Man movies, or the recently released, instant horror classic Drag Me to Hell.  In between those well-known films, Raimi has managed to build himself a decent portfolio of film work, including Darkman and The Quick and the Dead.

But there’s one film on his resume that most people may not be familiar with.  Even Sam Raimi himself has tried to pretend he isn’t familiar with it.  The film in question was his second studio film after Evil Dead.  Called Crimewave (The XYZ Murders if you’re overseas), this little turd burger of a cult classic is a perfect example of how a movie studio can take all the hard work you’ve done to create what has the potential to be a classic film and punch it repeatedly in the face.

Let’s start with the perfect ingredients, shall we?  First, you have a decent script that combines slapstick, film noir, and black comedy co-written by Sam Raimi and the Coen Brothers (you know, those guys who have made some classic films of their own like Fargo, Oh Brother Where Art Thou?, and No Country For Old Men).  Next, you put Raimi himself in the director’s chair.  Then, you cast everyone’s favorite Old Spice spokesman Bruce Campbell as the leading man.

Sounds like a recipe for a great flick, right?

Unfortunately, Embassy Pictures had different ideas.  Cutting portions of the script, recasting Campbell’s part with an unknown, and slapping the crew with “excruciatingly specific and alternately vague demands” under a small budget made filming conditions a literal hell.  By the time filming had completed, the movie had gone way over budget and schedule, and Embassy continued to butt heads with Raimi over things like producing credits and scoring.

After all of the dust settled and the smoke cleared, Crimewave hit theaters with a resounding thud.  Raimi quickly and quietly disassociated himself with the film, going on to make other films that looked much better on his resume.

Meanwhile, Crimewave found its way to pay-TV and VHS in the mid- to late 80s where it slowly picked up steam to become a cult classic.  In fact, it’s so cult, the cult itself doesn’t even realize that it likes the movie.  But, over the past couple of decades VHS copies have become highly sought after, especially since it’s been the only way anyone could see the film.

Until now, that is.  A couple of weeks ago I had the displeasure of catching it on one of the Encore channels.  Having not seen it since I was a kid, I decided to record it on TiVo and gave it a look-see this past weekend.

You’re welcome.

After watching it I have one thing to say – the film is a mess.  But, it’s a completely insane, madcap kind of mess.  This easily falls into that category of “so bad it’s good” kind of films.  The plot (what there is of one) is kind of simple – two guys share a partnership of a security company.  One guy decides to secretly sell the business out from under the other partner’s nose.  The other partner finds out and hires two crazy exterminators (“We Kill All Sizes”) to off the traitor.  Soft, sweet, and clumsy milquetoast guy who works for the company gets caught in the middle while trying to woo the girl of his dreams.  Crazy exterminators decide to kill practically everyone they come across.

This manages to carry itself out for just under an hour and a half.  The film really just boils down to a series of Three Stooges-style gags (a Raimi trademark) married to a darkly comedic take on mass murder, all of which lead up to the predictable happy ending.  Wanna know the weird thing?  I still enjoyed the hell out of it.  The movie is hopelessly flawed, with horrible editing and the camp level turned up to “11”, but darn it if I didn’t laugh quite frequently throughout.  I mean, this movie is so out there that you find yourself laughing at the most inane things no matter how lame they are.  I really had fun watching this movie.  It’s just a shame that we couldn’t have gotten the movie Sam Raimi had intended.

All that said, I think that this is one of those movies that could go great with a small group of friends, some delicious snacks, maybe a beer or two, and some witty banter.  In fact, I’m really surprised that MST3K never tried to acquire the rights to take a crack at this film.  Maybe the Riff Trax crew could tackle it, if the movie ever comes out on DVD.

Until then, I think I’ll keep it on my TiVo for awhile.

The Don used a Shemp to write this.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 6:15 am and is filed under Comedy, Donnie Sturges, Fandom, Television, WTF?, movies, politics. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.