I dunno about you guys,but nothing pulls me out of the dumps quite like a good,unfunny comedy.The bigger a failure to draw some laughs from an audience a movie is actually makes it more fun to watch,in the same way unintentionally funny movies do for me,in most cases,I've found.Of course,nobody does unfunny comedies quite like Mother Italia.Terence Hill,aka/ Mario Girotti had a propensity to churn out quite a few of said films during a lull in his spaghetti western work in the mid to late seventies,and this evening's entry,also known as "Super Fuzz" and "Super Snooper"(just like the infectious theme song by disco legends,The Oceans) and helmed by Sergio "Django" Corbucci,is a splendidly laughless example of just what the fuck I'm talking about.I must have seen tonight's review fifty times back in the black cable box days on channels like HBO and Prism in the early eighties,and I really couldn't tell you why.It's really embarrassingly bad.You'll see less corn on the endless(and pointless)ride through Indiana,save for Indianapolis,of course,which I dug for the most part,thanks.Gary's particularly unsexy while I'm at it,going from The Music Man to Escape From New York in less than fifty years.My days of bopping my way back to Coney Island are pretty much over,but I suppose it's all good copy in the end for the tabloids,to which I have no comments about anything at present,just make sure you get my good side for the mugshots and allow me several marathon conjugal visits a day.
"Listen,Speed(Hill),you'd better not get us caught up in any ridiculous and unfunny adventures with your recently discovered super powers!"
Officer Dave Speed(Hill)contemplates how he ended up on death row over an assload of baked beans as a final meal,about to get the electric chair for the murder of his partner,Willy Dunlop(Borgnine).This will mark their fourth attempt at snuffing the likeable cop.You see,Dunlop sent Speed,who he's always boiling mad at for no reason at all, to the everglades to serve a parking ticket to a man who lives on a small island the same day NASA was scheduled to blow up some rockets overhead.Forget for a second that the space program would do secret,dangerous tests over an area in Florida,or that the top secret information is common knowledge to beat cops,or even that Speed has to canoe to the remote island where the offender(who apparently has no car,mind you) resides to administer the parking ticket.After being exposed to the stock footage of a rocket explosion...err,umm red plutonium,the cop soon discovers he's been given "super powers",which he often references himself,often cuing a sound byte of the disco theme whenever he uses them.He can run as fast as moving cars,catch bullets in his teeth(sideways),see through solid matter,blow chewing gum into hot air balloon sized balloons(that conspicuously have stitching as hot air balloons often do...hmmm),walk on the surface of water,and even talk to fish.The only problem is as soon as the powers come they seem to disappear nearly as fast.
The bullet is sideways.I think it's funnier that way.
Speed and Dunlop unwittingly find themselves on the trail of a counterfeit ring(One dollar bills,mind you.Nothing like small-minded master criminals,I always say),headed by the aptly named Tony Torpedo(Marc Lawrence),who looks like the bastard child of Richard Belzer(whose seventies standup comedy routine was nearly as unfunny as this movie) and dresses like the flamboyantly gay variant of the typical Italian gangster stereotype.To further complicate matters,it just so happens that Dunlop's lifelong crush,aging movie starlet Rosy LaBouche(Joanne Dru),who's just flown into town,is Torpedo's arm candy.While investigating Torpedo's ship(yeah,his operations are run from a boat...)the two officers uncover an assload of fake dough and the machine used to print it all up,but while Speed returns to the station to alert the force,Dunlop is knocked unconscious by the gangster's goons and thrown into a meat locker on the yacht,which the criminals sink.So Speed,who is framed for Dunlop's apparent murder by LaBouche and eventually discovers that the color plutonium red negates his super powers,is strapped into ol' Sparky and talks the attending clergyman to remove the bouquet of red roses sent by LaBouche in time to escape the execution,dive into the ocean,talk to a rubber fish,and swim to the sunken Barracuda,where Dunlop has been frozen for quite some time if you factor in the appeal process,frees his partner,and blows an enormous bubble that both cops float over the city on.Imagine pitching that to a studio.They collar the gangster and his moll,and Speed marries his girlfriend Evelyn,who dyes her hair red to keep her husband from using those super powers of his.Cue that disco byte one more time,man.
Super power #7:The ability to talk to a phony prop fish underwater in a swimming pool.
If you're looking for an Italian who's mastered all aspects of physical comedy,try Roberto Benigni in Il Mostro or Johnny Stecchino.Just saying.Corbucci died in 1990,working in film right to the very end.Girotti/Hill continues to work in film and television,as does the ninety-three year old(!!!) Borgnine,who voices Mermaid Man on the Sponge Bob Squarepants show.I can't even imagine me seeing forty-three.I picked up tonight's review on dvd a while back,to go with my framed original one sheet,and true to form,laughed not once.I shook my head a lot.No laughs.Just how I like it.I guess it's just one of those comfort movies that harkens me back to a simpler time in my life,and for that,it works.On the scale,one wop,but in my mind,hundreds of memories.
Damnit,you forgot to thaw out that ham(Borgnine),and now it's all frostbitten.
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