Dirty Tricks (1981) AVCO Embassy/Action-Comedy RT: 95 minutes Rated PG (language, violence, sexual content, brief nudity) Director: Alvin Rakoff Screenplay: William W. Norton, Eleanor E. Norton, Thomas Gifford and Camille Gifford Music: Hagood Hardy Cinematography: Richard Ciupka Release date: March 6, 1981 (US) Cast: Elliott Gould, Kate Jackson, Rich Little, Arthur Hill, John Juliani, Alberta Watson, Mavor Moore, Nicholas Campbell, Michael McNamara, Martin McNamara, Cindy Girling, Michael Kirby, Angus MacInnes, Hugh Webster. Box Office: N/A
Rating: ***
I admit it without reservation. I have a soft spot for “bad movies” from back in the day. Some of them are more entertaining than the empty vessels made smaller by trying to go bigger (I’m looking at you, Avatar!).
I first heard about the Canadian action-comedy Dirty Tricks on a 1981 episode of Sneak Previews. It was Roger Ebert’s Dog the Week (for the record, Gene Siskel’s was the family sci-fi comedy Earthbound that week). It sounded pretty good to me, but it never opened in Philadelphia. It was times like this I wished I lived in New York. Everything opened in New York. It was why I religiously checked the NY Times movie section at the library.
It would be 45 years before I got to feast my eyes on this cinematic obscurity from the Great White North. I found a recording of a VHS copy on YouTube. Okay, not ideal, but it’s not like it’s available on streaming or DVD. I worked with what I had. All in all, it’s not a bad copy. It’s also not a bad movie. It’s shoddy and clumsy, but it’s far from being a dog.
Alvin Rakoff (in his final theatrical feature) is no stranger to Canadian tax shelter movies. His previous two credits were the disaster piece City on Fire (1979) and the supernatural horror Death Ship (1980). He completes his Maple Leaf Trilogy (catchy name, no?) with Dirty Tricks, a nonsensical comedy caper starring Elliott Gould (The Silent Partner) as a Harvard University history professor targeted by feds, mobsters and a pair of kung fu twins for an object of value they think he has in his possession. Ah yes, it’s the classic MacGuffin storyline. In this instance, it’s an old document indicating that George Washington was secretly a British spy. Oh my.
Professor Colin Chandler gets pulled into the meshugas by a student (Campbell, The Dead Zone) who urgently wants to show it to him. The Ivy League educator, too wrapped up in his own drama, keeps blowing him off. Then the student turns up dead at the hands and feet of the twins (Michael and Martin McNamara). When they don’t find what they’re looking for on his person, their attention shifts to the professor. So does everybody else’s. He becomes a suspect in the murder. The feds watch him from a telephone repair van. Two Mafia killers, Roselli (Juliani) and Tony (Watson, The Soldier), keep trying to kill him as do the chop-socky siblings.
No screwball comedy is complete without a romantic angle. That’s where tenacious TV reporter Polly Bishop (Jackson, Charlie’s Angels) fits in. She wants to interview Chandler about his connection to the dead student. There’s definitely a story there. He wants no part of any of it, but gets in deeper with each development. She keeps reporting on it until she becomes personally involved. I think you know what I mean by that.
Celebrity impersonator Rich Little shows up in a supporting role. He plays Brennan, a colleague and fair-weather friend. He’s also an author, something he brings up every few minutes. He’s going through a mid-life crisis which means he drives an expensive car and has sex on the brain. I never really thought of Little as an actor. I’m used to seeing him on game shows (Hollywood Squares, Match Game) or guest slots on late night talk shows. The only other movie I remember him being in is the 1986 teen comedy One Crazy Summer (as a disc jockey). Watching him in Dirty Tricks, I can see why he didn’t become a movie star. He can’t act. He basically plays a version of himself that doesn’t do impressions. My guess is the producers hired him because he’s one of the few recognizable names they could afford. Canadian tax shelter films, am I right?
Filmed mainly in Montreal (with some location shooting in Boston), Dirty Tricks desperately tries to be funny and to nobody’s surprise, doesn’t always succeed. Much of the comedy is the madcap kind with people running around like idiots and car chases that end in crashes. Some of it’s funny and some of it’s not, but all of is exhausting by the end. In addition to all else, it also has a nosy elderly neighbor forever trying to set Chandler up with her niece, an old folks’ home with its own discotheque and a basset hound named Howard. There’s no lack or action or activity.
Maybe you noticed something about Gould’s character’s name Chandler? It’s quite possibly a reference to his role in 1973’s The Long Goodbye based on the book by Raymond Chandler. It’s an interesting bit of trivia. As for his performance in Dirty Tricks, it’s okay. It’s no worse than his performance in The Devil and Max Devlin (1981). Jackson is fine as love interest Polly. The two leads don’t generate a lot of chemistry, but it’s not a case of oil and water either. It’s always nice to see the late Alberta Watson; I had a brief crush on her in the early 80s. Arthur Hill (The Amateur) shows up as another Harvard history professor, one who may or may not be involved with the wild goings-on.
Made on a $5M budget, Dirty Tricks isn’t a slick production. It looks cheap. It’s haphazardly put together. It’s not as hilarious or cute as it thinks it is. It’s the kind of movie destined to play on HBO ad nauseam. I have a soft spot for such films. I honestly wish I saw Dirty Tricks when I was an HBO-addicted 15YO. It would play great with Love at First Sight (1975) and Nothing Personal (1980). But since I can’t go back and change the past, I’ll just be glad that I finally got to check it out. Now let’s see what other Dogs of the Week I can track down.
