Tuesday, August 24, 2021

Film Appreciation - Fully Loaded with Laughs

Cody Hamman broadcasts some Film Appreciation for the 1980 comedy Used Cars.

Kurt Russell starred in some of the coolest box office disappointments of all time, and not just his cult favorite John Carpenter collaborations The Thing and Big Trouble in Little China. Another Russell classic that didn't have the success it deserved was the 1980 comedy Used Cars, which was gifted to the world by writer/director Robert Zemeckis and co-writer Bob Gale five years before they made the hugely successful Back to the Future. Like Back to the Future, Used Cars has a terrific script - not quite perfection like Back to the Future's, but pretty damn impressive. But unlike Back to the Future, this isn't family friendly entertainment with characters that are easily loved by all ages. Used Cars is populated by lying, thieving, foul-mouthed people, and its comedy comes from the fact that the characters have no scruples and are willing to go to ridiculous lengths to get ahead of the other guy.

As you might have guessed from the title, Used Cars is about used car salesman, and it started off as an idea that Steven Spielberg and John Milius (writer of Magnum Force, Apocalypse Now, and Conan the Barbarian, among other things) were interested in pursuing about a used car salesman operating outside of Las Vegas. Knowing Spielberg and Milius would never get around to it, Zemeckis and Gale asked if they could take the concept and run with it. They didn't keep the Vegas setting, the movie takes place in Arizona, but they did turn the idea into something awesome.

Russell's character is Rudy Russo, an employee at New Deal Used Cars who has dreams of a political career and is in the midst of raising enough money to buy a nomination to the state senate. New Deal is owned by the kindly Luke Fuchs (Jack Warden), such a good-hearted mentor to Rudy that he's even willing to put $10,000 toward his senate dream. Unfortunately, Luke has a brother who's a major jackass, Roy L. Fuchs (also played by Warden). Roy owns the used car lot right across the street from New Deal, Roy L. Fuchs Pre-Owned Automobiles - and it's interesting to note that Used Cars was filmed at a used car lot that was open for business. Roy's place was a real dealership, and New Deal was set up in a vacant lot across the street from the dealership.

It's not public knowledge yet, but Roy knows that a new freeway will soon be constructed, and the plans call for a ramp to be built right where his car lot is. So he's scheming to take control of his brother's lot... and if he knew that Luke died of a heart attack, New Deal would be his immediately. That's why Luke's employees Rudy, intense Vietnam veteran Jim the Mechanic (Frank McRae), and deeply superstitious salesman Jeff (Gerrit Graham) keep Luke's death a secret. Things are complicated for both the New Deal guys and Roy by the unexpected arrival of Luke's daughter Barbara (Deborah Harmon), who hadn't been in contact with her father for a decade, but just happened to call right before his death. And now she has come to visit him, but he seems to have skipped town. But at least Rudy can romance her a bit while keeping her father's death a secret.

Roy suspects that his brother is dead, and while he does everything he can to thwart the New Deal crew and take over the lot, Rudy and his cohorts come up with some insane ways to promote their business. Like hijacking TV broadcasts to air live commercials that include vulgarity, explosions, and accidental nudity.

I say the script for Used Cars is just about perfect because it provides all the information you need for the entire movie within the first 16 minutes. The Luke / Roy situation. Luke's heart condition. The freeway plans. Barbara's absence. That Rudy is in business with a guy named Manuel (Alfonso Arau), who has 253 cars sitting down in Mexico, waiting to be brought to the lot. That Manuel's cars are covered in crappy, water-based paint. That Jeff thinks red cars are extremely bad luck. The concept of the Consumer Protection Agency and the fact that these used car salesmen are in danger of getting in trouble for their tactics and advertising; in fact, New Deal is on probation for consumer fraud from the beginning. As in Back to the Future, Zemeckis and Gale are masters of set-up and pay-off.

I've made it known that Smokey and the Bandit is one of my all-time favorites, and Used Cars has a touch of that to it as well, in that it's a comedy with some spectacular car stunts here and there. The film builds up to a huge race against time involving 250 or so cars speeding through the desert - and there's even a precursor to Mad Max: Fury Road with a sequence in which Rudy is knocked off a vehicle in the lead on to one of the others. He then has to make his way from vehicle to vehicle in an effort to get back onto that lead vehicle.

Russell, Warden, McRae, Graham, they were all absolutely hilarious in their roles. Harmon has to play the "straight woman" in the midst of all the craziness, but she's good in her role as well. Notable appearances are also made by Toby the Dog, David L. Lander and Michael McKean as the tech guys who help with the TV signal hijackings, Al Lewis as a judge, Michael Talbott as one of Roy's lackeys, and Joe Flaherty as another one of Roy's lackeys, a character who was originally meant to be played by John Candy. Candy had to drop out because his agent had double-booked him, he was already signed on to a different project... and really, this movie doesn't feel right for Candy's screen presence. It was impossible to dislike him in the way we should dislike Roy and his stooges, so I don't think he was a match for this material.

Used Cars was one of the rare comedies my father would actually sit and watch. In general, he wasn't a fan of the genre, he would rather be watching action. But this movie had the right brand of comedy and Kurt Russell in the lead, so he found it entertaining. The stunts and car chase action didn't hurt, I'm sure. It's a movie that still makes me laugh after I've watched it many times. In fact, while watching it again for this write-up one of its jokes caught me while I was taking a drink and I ended up doing a spit-take laugh. When a movie can still do that after so many years and so many viewings, you know it's a winner.

The movie's funniness is actually the reason why its release was botched, because it was supposed to be released in August of 1980, but then a test screening response was so positive that the studio decided to push it forward into July, where it faced heavy competition with little promotion. It did so poorly in that rushed, under-advertised initial release that it didn't even rollout to the entire United States. A lot of people didn't even have the chance to see the movie until video and cable, but once they had the chance the movie started to gain a following. It still doesn't get talked about as a comedy classic as often as it should, but there are a lot of people who love it. As I do.

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