Flash Gordon

BLOGGER'S NOTE: This post is part of The Film Preservation 2015 Blogathon that is being co-hosted by Ferdy on Films, This Island Rod and Wonders in the Dark.

After the phenomenal success of Star Wars (1977) every studio was eager to capitalize on the movie-going public’s renewed interest in feel-good space operas. This resulted in numerous rip-offs and wannabes with arguably the most hyped of them all being Flash Gordon (1980). It was the brainchild of legendary film producer Dino De Laurentiis who, ironically, was responsible for Star Wars when he bought the film rights for Alex Raymond’s comic strip when George Lucas was unable to thereby paving the way for him to create his own science fiction epic.

Alas, Flash Gordon was a debacle from the word go. Early on, De Laurentiis decided that the movie should be filled with humor and hired Lorenzo Semple, Jr. to write the screenplay. Semple had written several episodes for the 1960s Batman television series and proceeded to apply a similar camp aesthetic to the movie. During filming there was some confusion between the cast as to the tone of the movie. The end result is a lavishly mounted production with absolutely stunning production and set design, which is in contrast to the rather silly tone for a fascinatingly jarring effect.

As a result, Flash Gordon barely surpassed its budget at the North American box office but performed well overseas. However, it failed to reach the dizzying heights of Star Wars that De Laurentiis was hoping for and was derided by many critics that felt it was a horrible, cinematic trainwreck. Then, something happened. Over the years, Flash Gordon quietly became a cult classic among science fiction fans, counting director Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead), comic book artist Alex Ross and comedian Seth MacFarlane (Ted) among its admirers who have all paid tribute to this much-maligned movie.

The movie sets its peculiar tone from the opening credits that feature Queen’s bombastic theme song playing over panels of Raymond’s comic strip interspersed with Ming the Merciless (Max von Sydow) wreaking havoc on the Earth’s weather system. “Flash” Gordon (Sam J.Jones), the star quarterback for the New York Jets football team, meets travel agent Dale Arden (Melody Anderson) on a small airplane that struggles with turbulence, which mysteriously turns into a meteor storm coupled with an unscheduled solar eclipse.

The “irrational” Dr. Zarkov (Chaim Topol) is convinced that the storm is an attack and plans to launch a counterattack with his own rocket. After a meteorite hits their plane causing the pilots to mysteriously and suddenly disappear (?!), Flash and Dale manage to crash land right into Zarkov’s laboratory. The clearly mad scientist tricks Flash and Dale into his rocket and the ensuing struggle accidentally manages to launch them into outer space where they pass out from excessive g-forces.

The rocket finds its way into the Imperial Vortex where it is guided by Ming’s forces to the planet Mongo. Our heroes are captured by Ming’s troops, sporting a curious mix of samurai and Star Wars stormtrooper armor. It is only but one of many odd touches that populate Flash Gordon – like the enigmatic Lizard Man, a guy dressed in a poorly-made costume, and who is quickly vaporized by Ming before he can make any kind of meaningful impression.

Flash, Dale and Zarkov are led through a red-saturated hallway that answers the question, what if Dario Argento applied his 1970s era Giallo aesthetic to a space opera? They are brought to Ming’s throne room where they meet a truly odd assortment of characters: Prince Vultan (Brain Blessed) and his Hawkmen clad in skimpy armor and giant wings, and Prince Barin (Timothy Dalton) and his men that come across looking like a futuristic riff on Robin Hood and his Merry Men. Along with Ming, they participate in a bizarre ceremony that is intended to demonstrate their loyalty to the emperor.

Another odd detail includes the fact that the women populating Ming’s throne room are scantily-clad in some of king futuristic bikini outfit, chief among them Princess Aura (Ornella Muti), Ming’s daughter, who becomes mildly aroused when Flash employs some of his gridiron moves to best a few of Ming’s finest troops in a wonderfully cheesy sequence that involves Dale doing her best cheerleader impression and Zarkov employing slapstick comedy to end the struggle. As a result, Dale becomes Ming’s concubine and Flash is imprisoned, scheduled for execution. He must figure out a way to escape and free Dale while convincing Barin and Vultan to unite against their common foe.

The tonal shifts among the cast are illogical and could almost give the viewer whiplash, but they only add to the wonderfully absurdist vibe of Flash Gordon. God bless ‘em, Sam Jones and Melody Anderson play their characters with aw shucks earnestness right out of a 1950s sci-fi movie while Chaim Topol and Brian Blessed ham it up for the cheap seats with the latter looking like he’s having the most fun of anyone in the cast. Max von Sydow and Peter Wyngarde play it absolutely straight almost as if they’re reciting Shakespeare with the former perfectly cast as Ming and making the most of hi s character’s evil plans monologues. Part of the fun of watching this movie is to see these contrasting performances bounce off each other as the cast try to spout the ridiculous dialogue convincingly. It makes for a heady experience that you either submit to or reject – there is no middle ground with Flash Gordon.

At times, the dated special effects, especially the extensive use of rear projection, look pretty bad and yet there is something authentic about it. The old school effects and astounding sets have a tangible quality that is missing from a lot of contemporary SF epics. In particular, the effects for Mongo’s atmosphere are quite breathtakingly beautiful and one has to admire the filmmakers’ audaciousness. The movie also has several exciting action sequences, including a surprisingly bloody gladiatorial battle between Flash and Barin on a platform that is constantly shifting and with spikes emerging and disappearing with unpredictable frequency creating a real sense of danger. Seeing this fight play out at a young, impressionable age scared and thrilled me in equal measure. Along with David Lynch’s Dune (1984), Flash Gordon is one of the most distinctive-looking SF movies to come out of the ‘80s.

Flash Gordon’s weakest aspects are the obvious attempts to ape Star Wars with nods to stormtroopers, a flying droid and General Klytus (Peter Wyngarde), Ming’s second-in-command, serving as a poor man’s Darth Vader. He gets little to do except bark orders and supervise torturing Princess Aura. The movie is at its best when it subverts aspects of Lucas’ film, like taking the earnestness of Luke Skywalker and placing it in a football player’s body or splitting Princess Leia into two characters – the bland eye candy that is Dale Arden and the duplicitous Princess Aura who has a kinky streak (what’s up with her pet dwarf Fellini?) and the hots for Flash.

After writing the screenplay for a remake of King Kong (1976) for legendary Italian movie producer Dino De Laurentiis, Lorenzo Semple Jr. was given a coffee table book of the Italian translation for the Flash Gordon comic strip and told that it would be the basis for his movie. He was told to make it funny: “At the time, I thought that was a possible way to go, but, in hindsight, I realize it was a terrible mistake. We kept fiddling around with the script, trying to decide whether to be funny or realistic.” Semple admitted that he didn’t think the character of Flash in the script was particularly good, but that “there was no pressure to make it any better.”

Initially, Nicolas Roeg was hired by De Laurentiis to direct Flash Gordon. He had just come off another science fiction film, The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) when the producer approached him to direct. He wasn’t sure and took some time to read Raymond’s comic strip. Roeg came to the conclusion that Raymond was a “genius, an absolute genius.” He became really excited at the prospect of making a Flash Gordon movie and went off to write the screenplay. His concept for the movie was Flash as a “metaphysical messiah.” Roeg spent a year writing and showed it to De Laurentiis who didn’t want to make that version. He wanted to make his version and Roeg left the project.

Mike Hodges was approached to direct the sequel and turned down the offer but when Roeg left the project, the former changes his mind because “it was totally different from what I had previously done.” The director admitted that he was not a fan of the science fiction genre and didn’t consider the movie to be part of it but instead wanted to “keep to the comic book version.” According to Hodges, Raymond’s original comic strip became the bible that was referenced while making the movie.

One of De Laurentiis’ family members saw Sam J. Jones on the Dating Game show and from that he received the call to meet the producer. The aspiring actor consulted a few friends that were fans of the old Flash Gordon serials and they brought him up to speed on the character. He was flown into London and interviewed by De Laurentiis. Soon afterwards, he was cast in the movie and almost immediately immersed in rehearsals, costume fittings and daily workouts in order to prepare for the role. In addition, his hair was dyed blonde and he tried on blue contact lenses but they hurt so much that he did not end up using them. Lacking in experience, Jones worked with an acting coach on the set every day. Jones not only did most of his own stuntwork but also helped choreograph all the action sequences.

Melody Anderson was set to appear in a television series when she received a phone call from De Laurentiis who proceeded to convince her to do Flash Gordon instead. She flew all night from New York City to London only to be taken immediately to the studio where she had her blonde hair changed to brown, costume fittings, screen tests and a meeting with Hodges. Twelve days later, she found herself in Scotland with filming starting the next day. “We didn’t have any preparation time at all … It’s such a large special effects picture, the actors really are secondary in it.”

The massive production was spread over six sound stages at Shepperton Studios, the Star Wars facility at Borehamwood, and an aircraft hangar at Brooklands. Principal photography was synchronized with the special effects department because most of the live-action footage would be matched with opticals in post-production. To add to the chaos, the crew was a mix of Italian and English crew members who did not know how to speak to each other.” Anderson said, “The actors were caught in the middle.” Semple blamed the chaos of the production on the “great leeway given to the art director, Danilo Donati,” who had worked with Frederico Fellini, among others, describing him as a “crazed Italian who literally never read the script, but instead went off on his own.” Semple said that an example of the rampant spending on the production was the $1 million Donati spent on the Arboria set, which was only used in one shot!

Jones and the rest of the cast were instructed to play their parts seriously and he said, “When the crew watched the rushes and were laughing hysterically, Dino said, ‘Why are you laughing?’ And they discovered they had a comedy.’” Anderson backs up Jones’ approach to acting in Flash Gordon: “I’m surprised that (people) are laughing, because we weren’t out to make a funny film. In fact, De Laurentiis was very upset when he showed the film and people started to laugh, because he thought they were laughing at it and not with it.” Semple said, “And Dino, especially, had no idea what he wanted. He wanted something Flash Gordon, and I adored Dino, but he didn’t have much idea about the difference between sort of camp and Star Wars.”

For the movie’s score, Hodges persuaded De Laurentiis to take a chance and have the popular rock band Queen compose it. Lead guitarist Brian May said, “As I remember the film’s producer, Dino De Laurentiis, was not convinced that rock music could work as score i.e. as background music for a film that was not about rock music!” The band spent a week creating demos of all the themes for the movie and played them for De Laurentiis. May recalled, “He was pretty stony-faced. At the end, he said something like, ‘I don’t think this music is right for my film,” and left. The band was understandably crest-fallen as a result, but Hodges assured them that it would work out. A couple days later, they heard that their music was approved.

Unfortunately, the experience of making Flash Gordon was a bittersweet one for Jones who was sued by De Laurentiis for breach of contract. He, in turn, counter-sued, claiming that he hadn’t been paid according to the original agreement. This, and the movie’s poor performance at the North American box office, doomed any prospects of a sequel.

Flash Gordon does what a movie of this kind should – transport us to strange new worlds that don’t resemble our own. The movie is pure escapist entertainment. Cinema needs more ambitious oddball movies like it that refuse to play it safe and dare to risk failure. These fascinating trainwrecks are often more memorable than the ones that adhere to the same old tired formulas. In retrospect, the ‘80s was a great time for eccentric genre movies with the likes of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension (1984) and Big Trouble in Little China (1986) managing to navigate their way through the studio system and find their audience thanks to home video where they could be rediscovered and watched repeatedly. Watching this movie again, it really is amazing that something like this exists. Only a European sensibility fused with the desire to ape the success of an American blockbuster could result in something like Flash Gordon and the world is a better place for its existence.

SOURCES

Brender. Alan. “Mike Hodges: Director of the New Flash Gordon.” Starlog. March 1981.

“Flash Gordon and the Storyboards of Mongo.” Prevue. September-October 1980.

Kennedy, Harlan. “Bad Timing.” American Cinema. January-February 1980.

Khoury, George. “Hail Flash Gordon!” SFX. February 2008.

Swires, Steve. “Lorenzo Semple, Jr.: The Screenwriter Fans Love to Hate, Part Two.” Starlog. September 1983.

Willson, Karen E. “Melody Anderson.” Starlog. December 1980.

Willson, Karen E. “Sam J. Jones.” Starlog. December 1980.

Dreamscape

The early 1980s was a great time for science fiction and fantasy films with 1982, in particular, being the highpoint. Coming out two years later, Dreamscape (1984) capitalized on this boom of genre movies as it was part of a mini-wave of motion pictures that dealt with the possibilities of the human mind that included Scanners (1981), The Dead Zone (1983) and Brainstorm (1983). Dreamscape was definitely on the pulpier end of the scale as it dabbled in conspiracies and the power of dreams. It was a film that fascinated a generation of impressionable kids dazzled by its then-cool special effects and memorable dream sequences, in particular, a scene where a character turns into formidable snakeman (an image that continues to haunt me). Dreamscape was one of those fascinating early ‘80s films that still had some residue of 1970s cinema (a distrust of the government) while looking ahead to the SFX blockbusters of the ‘80s.

Alex Gardner (Dennis Quaid) is a young man with extraordinary mental powers that include telekinesis. He escaped from a life of being a lab rat and now uses his abilities to win money betting on horses and having sex with women. This puts him at odds with local crooks who would like a cut of his winnings as an exciting early action sequence demonstrates. These guys are small-time compared to the two government types (Twin Peaks’ Chris Mulkey and John Carpenter regular Peter Jason) who pick up Alex off the street and take him to Thornhill College where he’s reunited with his former mentor Dr. Paul Novotny (Max von Sydow) and his attractive assistant Jane DeVries (Kate Capshaw).

They want Alex to participate in a top secret project that would enable him to psychically project himself into someone else’s dreams and then become an active participant, shaping and altering the outcome. Alex is skeptical, but intrigued by this idea and Novotny’s passion for the project. He soon meets Tommy Ray Glatman (David Patrick Kelly), the first person to successfully enter someone’s dreams. He’s a cocky guy that sees Alex as a threat to his status as top dog in the project and is not afraid to let him know it. Alex becomes a believer when he enters a man’s dream of working construction on a skyscraper and tries in vain to save him from falling off a steel girder.

While Dr. Novotny believes in the project’s positive aspects, like helping people conquer their nightmares, there is Bob Blair (Christopher Plummer) who works for the government and wants to use it for more insidious purposes. Along the way, Alex flirts with Jane, even entering her dreams in a sequence that treads dangerously close to a kind of mental rape, and uncovers a government conspiracy involving this project and the President of the United States (Eddie Albert).

Dennis Quaid plays his typical smartass self, complete with trademark shit eating grin. He’s well-cast as the cocky protagonist who refuses to play by the rules, but is ultimately a decent guy as evident in a scene where Alex goes into a young boy’s dreams and helping him vanquish his nightmare boogeyman. Quaid would favor variations of this kind of role in films like The Right Stuff (1983), Innerspace (1987), and The Big Easy (1987). The actor’s innate likability makes Alex easy to root for, even when he does some questionable things, like the aforementioned scene where Alex enters Jane’s dreams.

Character actor extraordinaire David Patrick Kelly’s first appearance is a memorable one as his character gets Alex out of the shower by making horrible noises with his saxophone. Kelly does a nice job of commanding the scene by pacing around the room, trying on Alex’s jacket, then admiring himself in the mirror, and generally making a pest of himself, which gives us all kinds of insight into Tommy. In this scene, Kelly sets up his character as Alex’s primary antagonist and a formidable one at that.

Max von Sydow provides the requisite gravitas as Alex’s mentor. He has a great voice, which he uses to maximum effect in conveying important exposition dialogue about the dream project. Kate Capshaw is under-utilized as Alex’s potential love interest with little else to do. Finally, Christopher Plummer exudes icy menace as a shady yet very powerful government agent with his own nefarious agenda.

In addition to tapping into unknown areas of the mind that were popular at the time, Dreamscape also touches upon fears of nuclear war that were prevalent in our culture as the President is plagued by increasingly apocalyptic nightmares. Director Joseph Ruben does a nice job juggling the science fiction aspects (the manipulation of dreams) with the conspiracy thriller elements (car chases) as they feed off each other. The screenplay gradually reveals Blair’s plans so that we find out things along with Alex, complete with a Deep Throat-esque figure played by George Wendt. His character encourages Alex to do his own digging and opens his eyes to Blair’s schemes.

Ruben maintains a brisk, engaging pace with rarely a dull moment as Alex heads towards an inevitable confrontation with Tommy in a show-stopping sequence that takes place in the President’s dreams. Dreamscape’s special effects were pretty cool at the time, mixing miniatures, prosthetic makeup, and stop-motion animation, but are quite dated now as evident in several sequences where it is glaringly obvious that actors are in front of a blue screen, which can be a bit distracting at times.

David Loughery sold his screenplay for Dreamscape to 20th Century Fox in 1980 where it sat on the shelf for a year until director Joseph Ruben discovered it and brought it to producer Bruce Cohn-Curtis who loved the concept of being able to enter someone’s dreams. When the project went into turnaround, Curtis bought it for an independent production. He and Ruben, along with screenwriters Loughery and Chuck Russell, reworked the script by developing the characters and adding more dreams so that the audience had, according to Loughery, “more reasons to care for the people and what happened to them.”

The budget was originally set at $1.5 million, but more money was added, increasing the budget to $5.5 million, as name actors like Max von Sydow and Christopher Plummer were added to the cast. To prepare for the film, Ruben and Dennis Quaid visited a dream research center at UCLA and the production hired a psychic as a technical advisor.

There was a snag in the post-production phase when the filmmakers ran into problems with the special effects, which caused delays. Curtis admitted, “We weren’t as prepared as we should have been.” They only allowed two months for special effects preparation, which wasn’t enough time. For the various visual effects, the production hired Craig Reardon (Altered States) and Peter Kuran (The Empire Strikes Back) with the former doing the prosthetic makeup effects and stop-motion animation while the latter supervised the blue screen work on the dream sequences. They worked on Dreamscape for nine months with a third of the time devoted to the snakeman transformation that took place during the exciting climax. Reardon was not happy with all of the SFX created for the film: “I felt that some of the potential which was inherent in the script for Dreamscape was not realized.”

Dreamscape explores some fascinating notions involving the nature of dreams and our desire to be able to control them. It then goes one step further and hypothesizes the idea of being able to enter someone else’s dreams and either saving them or killing them – something that would be explored in two subsequent films, the artsy serial killer thriller The Cell (2000) and on a much bigger scale with Christopher Nolan’s industrial espionage cum heist film Inception (2010). Dreamscape also touches upon the ramifications of abusing this ability, showing its positive and negative aspects in an entertaining and engaging way.

SOURCES

Cleaver, Thomas McKelvey. “David Loughery: The Dreamer of Dreamscape.” Starlog. November 1984.

Lofficier, Randy & Jean-Marc. “Adventures in the Nightmare of Dreamscape.” Starlog. April 1984.

Check out these excellent reviews from fellow bloggers John Kenneth Muir, The Film Connoisseur, and Jeff Allard.

Strange Brew

Anybody who grew up in Canada during the 1980s should be familiar with the McKenzie brothers – Bob (Rick Moranis) and Doug (Dave Thomas) – the missing link that bridges the gap between Cheech and Chong and Bill and Ted. The McKenzie brothers had cultivated a sizable cult following with their memorable and largely improvised skits on SCTV. Eventually, Hollywood beckoned, only Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas decided to the make the film on their own terms, directing it themselves on location in Toronto. The result is Strange Brew (1983), a quest for beer money with allusions to Hamlet.

The film begins much like their skits on SCTV with the boys on the set of their Great White North show with the topic, not surprisingly, being movies. Bob and Doug show off the film that they made together and it turns out to be a crudely shot science fiction tale called The Mutants of 2051 AD that pokes fun at post-apocalyptic films that were all the rage at the time. When their film fails to satisfy a theater full of people (what were they expecting?), Bob and Doug give their dad’s beer money to a man and his pitiful two children begging for a refund. To mollify their irate dad (his voice provided by none other than Mel Blanc), the boys unsuccessfully try to get free beer with the ol’ mouse-in-the-beer-bottle gag which, of course, doesn’t work.

So, they decide to go to the source: Elsinore Brewery, an ominous-looking castle-like complex located right next to the Royal Canadian Institute for the Mentally Insane. Bob and Dog end up saving a woman whose car is stuck in the electrified gate of the complex. Her name is Pamela (Lynne Griffin) and her father, who used to run Elsinore, has been killed by his brother (Paul Dooley) who proceeded to marry Pamela’s mother. Sound familiar? However, it is the malevolent Brewmeister Smith (Max von Sydow) who is the puppetmaster, manipulating the brother so that he can take control of Elsinore and perfect his mind control formula through an electronic music device that he experiments on the neighboring mental patients.

In a nice touch, the patients don plastic armor and play hockey while this creepy synthesizer music plays reminiscent of Rollerball (1975) with a bit of the Stormtroopers from Star Wars (1977). Doug even pretends he’s Darth Vader to which Bob proudly says, “He saw Jedi 17 times.” As thanks for saving Pamela, Bob and Doug are given jobs in the brewery counting bottles of beer on the assembly line. It’s a dream come true and they end up bringing cases of free beer home to their ecstatic father. However, the McKenzie brothers also become unwittingly involved in the power struggle between Pamela and Brewmeister Smith.

Strange Brew displays its Canadiana with pride. During the opening credits, TTC streetcars can be plainly seen and, at one point, Bob and Doug’s van launches into Lake Ontario and the distinctive CN Tower can be plainly seen in the background, gracing the Toronto skyline. That’s kinda the point with Bob and Doug as they were Canada’s cultural ambassadors during the ‘80s, preserving and also poking fun at the Canadian stereotype: the beer-drinking, doughnut-eating, hockey-playing Canuck. Bob and Doug speak with words like “hoser”, “knob”, “take off, eh”, and “beauty” that were meant to poke fun at the way Canadian accents are perceived by those outside of the country but they ended up being absorbed into our popular culture lexicon anyway.

The McKenzie brothers were created in 1980 when the Canadian version of SCTV had to be two minutes longer than the syndicated version on American television. However, the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission dictated that the two extra minutes be Canadian in content. Thus, Bob and Doug were born as a flip response to that decree. A typical skit would involve the brothers announcing a topic of discussion, like back bacon or snowshoes, and end up getting into an argument about beer or other petty sibling disagreements. The skit became quite popular and in 1981, they recorded a comedy album which sold a million copies. Because the record did so well, Moranis and Thomas thought about parlaying that success into a film.

After fellow SCTV cast member John Candy got an offer from Universal Pictures to do a film called Going Berserk (1983), Moranis and Thomas started talking about writing a screenplay for a Bob and Doug film. Andrew Alexander, executive producer for SCTV, reminded them that he had exclusive contracts and if they wrote a script he would sue them. So, they hired Steve De Jarnatt (the cult film genius behind Cherry 2000 and Miracle Mile) to write the first draft. Initially, Thomas told De Jarnatt that he wanted to base the film’s story around Hamlet but the writer stuck to it too faithfully and Thomas told him to have fun with it by making Bob and Doug like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and Pamela like Hamlet. Their agents sent the script to various studios in Hollywood and a few days later they had a deal with MGM based not on the script but on record sales, “the breakout potential, and the fact that it was being advertised on a television show,” Thomas remembers. He and Moranis were unhappy with the script because Bob and Doug were improvised characters done in their “comic voices” and they felt that nobody but them could write these characters.

Moranis and Thomas faced the challenge of expanding their improvisations from “two guys talking about how hard it was to get parking spaces in donut shops to a full-length story,” said Thomas at the time of the film’s release. He began re-writing the script without Moranis who began to get cold feet about doing the film. After working on the first 50 pages, Moranis took a look at what he’d done and they worked together rewriting it. However, they weren’t sure just how much they could legally change and did most of the major alterations in the first third with Bob and Doug’s cheesy lo-fi SF film and the McKenzies watching it in a movie theater and causing a riot. Thomas remembers that the script was “far more bizarre and conceptual in the beginning ... If we had been able to rewrite the whole thing, we would have made the whole thing like that.”

Originally, Moranis and Thomas were not going to direct or write Strange Brew but ended up doing both with the guidance of executive producer Jack Grossberg, who had produced films by Mel Brooks and Woody Allen. They were given a modest budget of $5 million. Before filming, all of the major breweries wanted the McKenzie brothers to appear in beer ads. Molson’s Brewery was even featured prominently in their SCTV segments. They had the promise of Molson’s but once the company found out that there was a joke in the film about putting a mouse in a beer bottle so that a complaint can be made in order to get a free case of beer, the company distanced themselves from the film. The filmmakers were also banned from filming in a Brewers’ Retail store so they built a replica of an outlet at a cost of more than $15,000 and used the Old Fort Brewing Co. in Prince George, British Columbia to double for Elsinore Brewery.

Moranis and Thomas had already been playing these characters for some time by the time they did Strange Brew – in fact, the characters were at the height of their popularity at the time of the film – and so they effortlessly slipped into these roles. They really capture the sibling dynamic so well. Bob and Doug may bicker and pick on each other but when it counts they get it together and save the day. The casting of Max von Sydow as Brewmeister Smith was an inspired choice as he brings a certain amount of gravitas to the role and is actually a threatening presence, not some cartoon buffoon, which is in sharp contrast to Paul Dooley’s easily bullied character.

Strange Brew received generally positive reviews from critics. The New York Times’ Janet Maslin wrote, “Anyone who's partial to the McKenzies' humor doubtless has a fondness for beer. The price of a ticket could buy enough beer for an experience at least as memorable as this one.” In his review for the Washington Post, Gary Arnold called the film, “neither triumph nor fiasco, Strange Brew leaves plenty of room for improvement, but I hope Thomas and Moranis get the chance to demonstrate that they've learned a lot from the mixed assortment of nuttiness in their first movie comedy.” The Globe and Mail’s Jay Scott wrote, “What's terrific about the McKenzie Brothers is their offhand depiction of two English-Canadian working-class dimwits ... and what's terrific about the movie is its equally offhand surrealism.”

For a film about two goofball brothers, Strange Brew is surprisingly clever with a fairly elaborate plot that riffs on Hamlet quite a bit with Bob and Doug essentially playing the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern parts. By today’s gross-out comedy standards Strange Brew is kinda tame but that is certainly part of its appeal because it reflects the Canadian identity at the time. There is almost a sweetness to the goofy humor that is endearing. A film like this one probably couldn’t be made today, which may explain how a few years ago a proposed sequel fell through at the last minute when financing didn’t come through. Moranis’ self-imposed exile after the death of his wife didn’t help matters but Thomas was able to coax him out of retirement for a television special that took a irreverent look back at Bob and Doug’s legacy. At least we will always have Strange Brew.

Here are two great fan sites dedicated to all things Bob and Doug:

An Unofficial Bob & Doug McKenzie Page

The Hoser

SOURCES

Godfrey, Stephen. “Hoser Brothers Hope Beer Film Will Take Off, Eh?” The Globe and Mail. August 26, 1983.

Plume, Kenneth. “Interview with Dave Thomas.” IGN. February 10, 2000.