Crimewave (1985)

Crimewave (1985)

Directed by: Sam Raimi

Starring: Reed Birney, Sheree J. Wilson, Bruce Campbell

Well, here you go, a movie directed by Sam Raimi, co-written by the Coen Brothers, and with Bruce Campbell in a supporting role. And yet, given all those factors, this is one incredibly bad, unfunny movie. What can you say, they were all still pretty new at this point. This was between Evil Dead and Evil Dead II for Raimi, and between Blood Simple and Raising Arizona for the Coen bros. This half-hearted slapstick comedy is very much a testing ground for all these now-big names… and sometimes tests fail.

Crimewave gets the ball rolling when a partner of a security firm finds out that his partner is about to sell the firm to Bruce Campbell, who intends to turn it into a strip club. Of course, this makes the jilted partner hire a couple of exterminators to break into the office that night and kill the traitor with a machine that electrocutes him. Or, wait, not “of course.” Anyway, these two exterminators (who have unnecessarily dubbed voices to make them sound like cartoon characters) go on a “crime wave,” if you will, and kill a bunch of people. Meanwhile, our hero… whatever his name was, manages to eventually fight them in a car chase and he almost gets the chair and nuns save him from being executed, etc etc.

The idea behind the movie is that it’s just a wacky slapstick escapade with dance numbers and such and so on, but it just manages to drain all the funny right out of everything it tries. It’s really weird to think about, but the same techniques are used in Evil Dead II, and pulled off much better. Maybe it’s just that in the context of a comedy it’s too cliche and groan-inducing, but when it’s a horror film it’s surprising and funny? I’m not sure, but I certainly never want to see Crimewave again, I’ll tell you that much. Just makes me sad.