Every actor makes the odd baffling decision every now and then, but I suppose it’s a fairly natural thing when you want to tale a break from the type of roles you’re normally know for. And yet Clint Eastwood’s to star in a comedy romp that reads like the most insane movie every made will be a constant form of befuddlement to me until the day I shuffle off this mortal coil. I mean, if the man who played Dirty Harry, the Man With No Name and the outlaw Josey Wales wants to let his hair down, who am I to question him – but if I had to bet folding money that letting said hair down meant playing a hard drinking, bare-knuckle fighter whose best friend is a bird flipping orangutan named Clyde, I would have lost my fucking shirt.
Thus we got Every Which Way But Loose, quite possibly the slowest paced raucous comedy you’ve ever seen that throws everything but the kitchen sink at you, yet still moves at the rate of a mass snail migration.
Meet Philo Beddoe, a typically emotionally stunted truck driver operating out in the San Fernando valley who lives in a small place behind his mother and brother’s house. However, what sets Philo apart from every other beer sucking truck jockey you’ve ever met is that he makes ends meet by being the best damn bare knuckle fighter you’ve ever seen – oh yeah, and his best buddy is an orangutan named Clyde.
As Philo saunters through life with his ginger ape by his side while punching out the occasional challenger, he’s constantly making peace between Clyde and his foul-mouth mother, while looking for that special gal who will notice that under those scowling features and that grizzled demeanor, Philo actually has a heart of gold. He finally thinks he’s found the one when on night, in a Country and Western bar (where else), he spots Lynn Halsey-Taylor warbling on the stage and is instantly smitten – however, after their relationship seems to be picking up steam, Lynn suddenly up and leaves one day leaving Philo so emotionally rock, he actually cocks an eyebrow. Reasoning that her quick getaway might have something to do with a possessive boyfriend she previously mentioned, Philo, his brother Orville and the ever-faithful Clyde all hop into the nearest truck and heads to Colorado to find her.
Of course, you can’t casually throw hands whenever you feel like it in California and not make some enemies, so following Philo on his road trip are a couple of cops and a Nazi biker gang named the Black Widows who both want to pay our hero back for the various thrashings they got thanks to his constantly flying fists.
Will Philo manage to track down a woman who has finally managed to penetrate the emotional armour of 6 foot 4 inches of pure machismo – and while he’s at it, can he take down unbeaten fighter Tank Murdoch in the process?
There are times during my long overdue rewatch of Every Which Way But Loose, when I tapped into that inner 9 year old who laughed like a drain whenever Clyde the orangutan did something funny, however, watching this film with adult eyes proved to be a far more bizarre experience than I originally expected as the sodding thing moves so slow, at times I was genuinely terrified that I’d had a stroke. The best way I can think if to describe Every Which Way’s plot is that imagine if someone was programming a Grand Theft Auto game to be full of side quests, but then forgot to put in any missions before sending the fucking thing out to the stores as the pace of this thing moves with all the purpose of a dementia victim shuffling aimlessly to the toilet at 3am.
And yet, despite all this, the very nature that this lazy, fever dream of a movie exists at all means that its perversely watchable even though nothing fucking happens. I’m guessing that director James Fargo was hoping to ape (snicker) the frantic lunacy of Hal Needam’s Smokey And The Bandit, but if he was, he obviously forgot to take the damn thing out of second gear, but even though the story doesn’t even seem sure of what its main storyline is supposed to be (tracking down Sondra Locke’s gurning Country and Western singer, or meeting up to fight Tank Murdoch – take your pick), the sheer insanity of some of the subplots hold you in the kind of hypnotic lock that Derren Brown could only dream of.
Of course there’s the comedic stylings of Clyde, who delivers a middle finger with the very best of them, but there’s an actual subplot that sees a drunken Eastwood break into a zoo so that his furry buddy can get laid; and while you’re reeling from that, I suppose now a good time to hit you with the knowledge that the villains are a bumbling bunch of motorbike riding neo-nazis, whose leader (played by the great John Quade) manages to somehow find the comedic sweet spot between Gene Hackman and Oliver Hardy. Next up we have Philo’s battleaxe of a mother, whose character thread of being too old to renew her drivers licence takes up way more of the running time than you’d think – but then the sight of Harold And Maude’s Ruth Gordon seeing off the Black Windows with a shotgun that’s bigger than her is truly something to behold. Then we have the two cops who have gone as far as to take their medical leave in order to find the guy who socked them in a off duty barfight, but as these guys have the reasoning powers of Elmer Fudd, it pretty goes nowhere, fast. Also somewhat confusing is the relation between Geoffrey Lewis, whom I think is playing Orville as someone with learning difficulties, but who manages to pull Beverley D’Angelo while Clint is stuck with Locke.
Ah yes. Sondra Locke. It’s amazing to me how Eastwood’s former partner managed to play so many unappealing characters in Clint’s movies and not tell him to take a hike, but her callous, flighty singer may actually be the worst of them all and the denouement of their love story literally seems to amount to not much more than a shrug, a tut, an eyeball roll and a sacastic utterance of “women!” when compared to the needs of an honest, hard working, beer swilling, jaw-socking, all-American joe.
However, I have to be honest, I do find all this dated stuff incredibly funny to watch (the drink driving alone is so prevalent on this movie that I’m frankly amazed that anyone made it out of the fucking production alive) and everything about Every Which Way is just so goddamn strange, that I can’t just dismiss it outright. However, it frequently feels less like a thigh slapping comedy and more like a filmed midlife crisis.
The phrase Every Which Way But Loose means never giving up, however, it can also mean confused and indecisive.
To quote the sequel: right turn Clyde.
🌟🌟
We Have Issues 