Johnny Dangerously

The spoof is a delicate art.  You don't want to overload your spoof with pop culture gags, because your movie will feel dated almost immediately.  However, you aren't trying to tell a real story, either.  The spoof should, when properly done, act as an homage to something, even as it pokes fun at it.  Johnny Dangerously is a spoof of old-time gangster flicks, a genre that modern audiences probably aren't terribly familiar with.  Can a spoof be successful and funny, even if its spoofing subject is not well-known to its audience?  Let's find out.

This is a spoof, so I'm not going to spend too much time on the story.  Johnny Dangerously (Michael Keaton) is an up-and-coming mobster in his town, the beloved Number Two guy to crime boss Jocko Dundee (Peter Boyle).  Jocko, feeling the heat from his competition, hires some new guys, including self-described scumbag, Danny Vermin (Joe Piscopo).  The funny thing about scumbags is that they're not very nice.  Or loyal.  Meanwhile, Johnny has kept his professional life very separate from his personal one; his gang doesn't know about his family, and his family doesn't know that he's a mobster.  That's not a big deal, really, until Johnny's little brother Tommy (Griffin Dunne) graduates from law school (which Johnny's illegal activities paid for) and starts a strong campaign to eliminate organized crime from their city, especially that infamous Johnny Dangerously.  Well, that's what happens when you pay for someone's schooling.

Johnny Dangerously: favorite mobster of the young and the elderly

So, the plot is pretty basic, if a little silly.  Is it funny?  It's not side-splitting or anything, but Johnny Dangerously is pretty enjoyable.  Michael Keaton is solid in the lead role; I wish more of his jokes relied on his natural comic timing and dialogue, rather than on physical gags, but he is better than average here.  The surprising performance in this movie is Joe Piscopo's.  Outside of this movie, I have never laughed at anything that he has done, but he is definitely the best part of this film.  And I don't mean that as an insult to the movie.  I can honestly say that I found his character's recurring gag and almost all of his dialogue extremely funny.

Proof that Joe Piscopo was funny once.  Once!

The rest of the supporting cast was a bit of a letdown.  I wasn't expecting comic gold from Marilu Henner --- and she wasn't bad, per say --- but she doesn't really bring anything to the picture.  Maureen Stapleton was more of a prop than a character, but she did deliver a few funny lines.  I was definitely disappointed that Peter Boyle didn't have better lines, even if he sold the hell out of the lines he was given.  Danny DeVito was okay as a sleazy District Attorney, but it was about as nuanced as his part in The Nightman Cometh.

Note: the words "troll toll" and "boy's hole" do not appear in this film.

Ray Walston has a bit part/recurring physical gag in this movie.  It took me a few minutes to realize why he would agree to such a small role, but then I remembered that he worked with this director in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and apparently owed her a favor.  I was disappointed in Griffin Dunne's performance; being the goody-goody character is a thankless task, but I was hoping he would add a little something more to the part.  That expectation is my own fault, I suppose.  This is only the second movie I have seen Dunne in, and he looked like this in the last one:

Oh, and Dom DeLuise makes a cameo appearance as the Pope, delivers one line and got prominently displayed in the opening credits.  I have no idea why he was ever popular.  It is also worth noting that Chicago Bears legend Dick Butkus played a supporting role in this movie.  He doesn't really do much of anything, but, as a Bears fan, I had to mention him.  Sadly, I could find no images of him (in Johnny Dangerously) on the internet.

I did find this using the search terms "Dick Butkus awesome"

Johnny Dangerously was only director Amy Heckerling's second film (the first was Fast Times...).  It's an interesting choice to make a period piece spoof for a sophomore work, but I think Heckerling did a good job.  I like the tone of the movie far more than I like most of the jokes.  There's just something fun and laid-back about this picture, so the little moments that should only be "cute" are more entertaining than they have any right to be (like Johnny addressing his old neighborhood).  The humor drops off in the final third of the film, as it relies more on physical jokes, but Heckerling managed to squeeze out a comprehensible plot from a spoof script.  She deserves some credit for that.


If there is one major weakness in Johnny Dangerously, it is that the script is kind of weak.  Aside from Michael Keaton's delivery and Joe Piscopo's dialogue, this film is lacking in funny jokes.  Don't get me wrong --- there are several funny one-liners and visual gags.  My problem is that this film has about as many funny moments as you would find in a romantic comedy.  That's a low joke quotient for a spoof; that means that way too much time was spent on the story and not enough on making people laugh.  Part of the problem is with the spoofing material.  Poking fun at a film genre that was at least thirty years old at that point?  Really?  And I thought Mel Brooks was late to the party with Spaceballs!  The jokes that playfully nudged the cliches of gangster movies weren't terribly clever or unique, probably because the conventions had already been pointed out by then.  "Well, maybe it's not supposed to be a spoof."  Then why doesn't the main character have a moment of sincerity in the whole movie, jackass?  Let me do the genre categorizing, okay?  Johnny Dangerously isn't a great spoof, but the two lead performances keep it funny and the direction gives it a light-hearted-enough tone so that doesn't really matter.  It's not a classic, but definitely worth a watch.

An American Werewolf in London

It's easy to forget that director John Landis is still alive.  After a string of truly fantastic work, his production fell off sharply, with the hits becoming smaller and the jobs seemingly getting harder to come by (presumably because of his involvement in The Twilight Zone fatal accidents).  Nowadays, he directs odd television episodes, but that's about it.  An American Werewolf in London was made during his string of hits, but it doesn't bear much similarity to his more famous comedies.  If you watch this movie with the assumption that it will rival Kentucky Fried Movie's slapstick or The Blues Brothers' all-around awesomeness, you're going to be pretty disappointed.  However, if you look at this as the horror film from the director of Michael Jackson's Thriller, then I think you'll be in the right mindset for this movie.

The story begins with two American students walking through the moors of England on a cold and wet night.  They agree to take refuge at the first pub they come across; the pub they find is called the The Slaughtered Lamb.  Inside, they find locals unused to travelers.  When the boys try to make small talk and ask about a pentagram on the wall of the pub, the room gets silent and they are more or less forced out of the building.  They are given the cryptic advice to stay on the road, off the moors, and to beware the moon.  Some of the patrons are glad to be rid of the boys, but the matron bartender is distraught that the boys are out on the moors during the full moon.  Soon enough, the boys are walking and talking, trying to find the next town, when they hear a terrifying howl.  They then notice that the moon is full.  And they have accidentally left the road and are lost on the moors.  Well, they were warned.  Sure enough, they are attacked by a savage beast; Jack (Griffin Dunne) is torn to pieces, but the Slaughtered Lamb patrons kill the beast before it can do more than bite and scratch David (David Naughton).  Before David passes out, he sees a naked old man dead next to him.

It's a werewolf story, what do you want?  You know what's going to happen next.  Somebody's going to tell David that he was bitten by a werewolf, which makes him a werewolf.  David isn't going to believe that, because it sounds crazy.  And, at the next full moon, David will transform into a werewolf and kill people and/or animals.  An American Werewolf in London mixes things up a bit, though.  By setting the story in modern times, the Gothic horror and superstitious element that are usually included in werewolf tales is gone.  Instead, David is treated by doctors and nurses, who assume he has some sort of post-traumatic stress syndrome (which I know I would have, in his place).  A love interest is also added to the story in the form of his nurse, Alex (Jenny Agutter), who lets him move into her apartment after being discharged from the hospital; normally, werewolf love interests tend to be virginal women with an implied, but not lusty, relationship with the wolf.  The biggest change to the formula is definitely the person who tells David that he's a werewolf.  David sees the mangled corpses of his victims, starting with his buddy Jack; Jack and all of the werewolf's victims are wandering around in a state of limbo, trapped between heaven and hell.  Jack's advice to David is to commit suicide and release all the innocent victims to their destined afterlives.

Obviously, this is a fresh take on the werewolf movie, and it is a welcome change.  Setting the film in modern day England allows the characters to be sarcastic and occasionally funny, something rare in most over-serious werewolf movies.  This also allows the actors a little more range.  Instead of just being a tragic figure, David Naughton is allowed to be charming and romantic, as well as a tortured monster.  Griffin Dunne does a great job in a difficult role; he manages to be sympathetic and funny, despite having the goal of convincing David to kill himself.  Jenny Agutter is pretty good, too, as a well-meaning woman that has no idea what she's gotten into.

The real star of the show, though, is the special effects.  The work done to Jack throughout is fantastic.  When he first shows up as a talking corpse, he looks pretty awesome.  In most movies, this would be the special effects scene you would be talking about.  But, in each successive appearance in the film, his body continues to rot, giving him a progressively more shocking appearance each time.  He's not the only one, though.  All the victims look awesomely gory, and they all come back to haunt David, although some are more polite than others.  This movie was made in 1981, so the effects are entirely done with make-up and prosthetics; the scenes where David transforms are obviously done with a lot of special effects.  These scenes don't look particularly realistic, but they are obviously high quality.  Despite the movie's age, I would put these effects at least on par with the recent Wolfman remake.  It's also nice to see that, in wolf form, David looks like a scary beast.

This movie isn't really scary, but it is definitely gory.  I liked the little touches of humor throughout and like the modern twist on this classic tale.  The soundtrack shows some dark humor, with tracks like "Blue Moon," "Bad Moon Rising" and "Moondance," but I was disappointed that "Werewolves of London" was not included.  Yes, it's obvious, but it's still awesome.  And his hair was perfect.  The humor doesn't detract from the grimness of the tale, with David's death seeming to be the only possible ending to the tale.  While I haven't done extensive research in the werewolf film sub-genre, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this is the most entertaining werewolf movie of the past thirty years.

For more opinions on Landis' work, check out the link to some LAMB reviews: