{"id":14334,"date":"2026-04-18T16:59:02","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T20:59:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=14334"},"modified":"2026-04-18T16:59:02","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T20:59:02","slug":"dirty-tricks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2026\/04\/18\/dirty-tricks\/","title":{"rendered":"Dirty Tricks"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Dirty Tricks <\/strong>(1981)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 AVCO Embassy\/Action-Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 95 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (language, violence, sexual content, brief nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Alvin Rakoff\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: William W. Norton, Eleanor E. Norton, Thomas Gifford and Camille Gifford\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Hagood Hardy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Richard Ciupka\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: March 6, 1981 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: N\/A<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0I admit it without reservation. I have a soft spot for \u201cbad movies\u201d from back in the day. Some of them are more entertaining than the empty vessels made smaller by trying to go bigger (I\u2019m looking at you, Avatar!).<\/p>\n

\u00a0I first heard about the Canadian action-comedy Dirty Tricks<\/strong> on a 1981 episode of Sneak Previews. It was Roger Ebert\u2019s Dog the Week (for the record, Gene Siskel\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It 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\u2019s not like it\u2019s available on streaming or DVD. I worked with what I had. All in all, it\u2019s not a bad copy. It\u2019s also not a bad movie. It\u2019s shoddy and clumsy, but it\u2019s far from being a dog.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Alvin 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<\/strong>, 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\u2019s the classic MacGuffin storyline. In this instance, it\u2019s an old document indicating that George Washington was secretly a British spy. Oh my.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Professor 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\u2019t find what they\u2019re looking for on his person, their attention shifts to the professor. So does everybody else\u2019s. 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0No screwball comedy is complete without a romantic angle. That\u2019s where tenacious TV reporter Polly Bishop (Jackson, Charlie\u2019s Angels) fits in. She wants to interview Chandler about his connection to the dead student. There\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Celebrity impersonator Rich Little shows up in a supporting role. He plays Brennan, a colleague and fair-weather friend. He\u2019s also an author, something he brings up every few minutes. He\u2019s 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\u2019m 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<\/strong>, I can see why he didn\u2019t become a movie star. He can\u2019t act. He basically plays a version of himself that doesn\u2019t do impressions. My guess is the producers hired him because he\u2019s one of the few recognizable names they could afford. Canadian tax shelter films, am I right?<\/p>\n

\u00a0Filmed mainly in Montreal (with some location shooting in Boston), Dirty Tricks<\/strong> desperately tries to be funny and to nobody\u2019s surprise, doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s funny and some of it\u2019s 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\u2019 home with its own discotheque and a basset hound named Howard. There\u2019s no lack or action or activity.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Maybe you noticed something about Gould\u2019s character\u2019s name Chandler? It\u2019s quite possibly a reference to his role in 1973\u2019s The Long Goodbye based on the book by Raymond Chandler. It\u2019s an interesting bit of trivia. As for his performance in Dirty Tricks<\/strong>, it\u2019s okay. It\u2019s no worse than his performance in The Devil and Max Devlin (1981). Jackson is fine as love interest Polly. The two leads don\u2019t generate a lot of chemistry, but it\u2019s not a case of oil and water either. It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Made on a $5M budget, Dirty Tricks<\/strong> isn\u2019t a slick production. It looks cheap. It\u2019s haphazardly put together. It\u2019s not as hilarious or cute as it thinks it is. It\u2019s 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<\/strong> 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\u2019t go back and change the past, I\u2019ll just be glad that I finally got to check it out. Now let\u2019s see what other Dogs of the Week I can track down.\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dirty Tricks (1981)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 AVCO Embassy\/Action-Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 95 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (language, violence, sexual content, brief nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Alvin Rakoff\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: William W. Norton, Eleanor E. Norton, Thomas Gifford and Camille Gifford\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Hagood Hardy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Richard Ciupka\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: March 6, 1981 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Elliott Gould, Kate Jackson, Rich Little, Arthur Hill, John Juliani, Alberta […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14336,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comedies","category-guilty-pleasures"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Dirty-Tricks-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14334"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14338,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14334\/revisions\/14338"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}