Writer/co-director Larry Cohen got fired in the middle of making this crime story comedy and I don’t know how much he shot or what exactly he shot for it, but his eccentric stamp is still present. As in most Cohen films, nothing here feels normal.
Sure, Billy Dee Williams brings loads of charisma as a New York City private detective who has an uneasy relationship with the law. He’s your regular 80s loose cannon. Someone’s always yelling at him or beating him up. Everyone knows him, but no part of society wants him. He’s also notorious for shooting people on the job, usually with an accompanying one-line joke, and his name is Hamberger.
Meanwhile, everything around Hamberger is totally screwball, starting with the opening scene in a gun permit office. The camera roves past a series of quick gags that, despite the salty language, feel very 1930s. Right away we’re in another world. When the plot blows a gasket about halfway through (probably due of the production shake-up), it doesn’t really matter. We’re already in La-La Land.
A well-to-do businessman approaches Billy Dee with a job. He wants someone to murder his wife. Why would someone go to a detective with that? I don’t know. Again, we’re in Crazy World here.
Williams takes the cash, but instead of killing her, he goes to meet her and warn her. She’s played by Morgan Fairchild in a terrible black wig and she’s so upset by the news that she has sex with Billy Dee about three minutes later because why not? She leaves him a nice note afterward and then takes off into the night. Our hero, meanwhile, sleeps well and wakes up refreshed and done with this seedy business and ready to celebrate the holidays (the setting here is between Christmas and New Year’s) with his hot girlfriend, Vanity.
Until he learns that the woman he thought he saved was found dead. And his fingerprints are all over her house.
The plot thickens when Billy Dee goes to see the body in the morgue and it’s NOT Morgan Fairchild!. Also, the husband who shows up is a different guy from the creep who hired him.
Wha?
Billy Dee’s efforts to get to the bottom of this involve him getting attacked with a scythe, an investigation into a crooked fashion model agency and a shoot-out in an empty Shea Stadium.
And that’s all I can say. Mostly because the plot lost me.
Cohen’s replacement director, William Tannen, might have also been a little lost, I suspect.
This isn’t a good movie. You can shoot holes in it all day long. Its list of nonsense moments is exceeded only by its list of cliches. What it has to offer is raw charm achieved through a combination of Billy Dee Williams in a rare leading man turn in the 80s (and seeming to enjoy every minute of it) and the offbeat, jokey tone that I can’t help but credit, at least partially, to Larry Cohen. This film has flaws, but taking itself too seriously isn’t one of them.
Never released on DVD or any other format invented after the Reagan Administration, as of this writing. The digital revolution marched right past private eye Hamberger and his convoluted misadventures in a strange world.