EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE - DVD review

Sooner or later almost every comic actor wants to do "Hamlet," and almost every action hero wants to do comedy. Stallone has done comedy, Schwarzenegger, Burt Reynolds, Bruce Willis.

It was only a matter of time before Clint Eastwood would get around to it, so in 1978 he made "Every Which Way But Loose." It is probably the single most mediocre movie Eastwood ever made, but the public loved it and the film became one of the actor's biggest moneymakers. Go figure. It was so popular it spawned a sequel two years later, "Any Which Way You Can," that was almost indistinguishable from its predecessor. Go figure again. Both movies are available on DVD for the fan who can't get enough of brainless heroes, clever apes, and copious car chases.

It's appropriate that Warner Brothers produced the film because it's little more than a live-action Looney Tunes cartoon, with Eastwood the chief looney. The actor pokes fun at his usual macho image with the laid-back charm and easy smile we've come to expect from his less-serious roles; but that only serves him a short while when there are so few moments of genuine character, genuine emotion, or genuine humor in the picture. The movie was directed by James Fargo, who a couple of years earlier had directed Eastwood in "The Enforcer." This was quite a change of pace for him.

Eastwood is a good ol' boy truck driver, Philo Beddoe, in cowboy hat and jeans, who lives in Pacoima, CA, one of those sprawling suburbs of Los Angeles that spread out into the San Fernando Valley. Pacoima is best known as the birthplace of singer Ritchie Valens, if that's of any interest. Philo makes a few extra bucks on the side in bare-knuckles pickup fights. He lives with his best friend, Orville Boggs (Geoffrey Lewis), a tow-truck operator; Orville's goofy, foul-mouthed old mother, Ma Boggs (Ruth Gordon); and Clyde, a male orangutan Philo won in a bet. The ape upstages everyone.

Played against a background of ever-present country-western music, the story focuses on two things: Philo chasing after a girl, and everybody else chasing after Philo. Every place Philo goes, he gets into trouble. (The role was originally meant for Burt Reynolds, but Eastwood saw it first and liked it.) Philo never gets into any serious criminal trouble, mind you, just trouble. He stops in for a drink after work and immediately gets into a fight over peanuts with a customer at the bar. He stops at a traffic signal and gets into a fight with a pair of motorcyclists. That kind of thing. For a basically gentle, peace-loving guy, Philo is always fighting. And, of course, winning.

He meets a new flame one night in a country-western night club, the Palomino, where an attractive singer, Lynn Halsey-Taylor (Sondra Locke), is entertaining. It's love at first sight. Before she sings, though, the club's main attraction, real-life country singer Mel Tillis, gets in a song or two. Later, Charlie Rich also gets in a few songs, so be prepared for a truckload of country singing for nearly two hours. Anyway, Philo and Lynn seem to hit it off, they spend a little time together, and then she zips away unannounced for Colorado, leaving Philo high and dry. So Philo does what any sensible male would do; he packs up Orville and Clyde and they take off in hot pursuit.

But nothing is so simple because Philo is himself pursued by a gang of comic-book bikers, the Black Widows, and a pair of policemen he's somehow offended. It all gets very silly very fast, with hardly a smile anywhere in sight. It's just, you know, good ol' boy stuff of the kind Burt Reynolds made popular in his "Smokey and the Bandit" films from about the same period. If Reynolds could do it, Eastwood could do it, and Eastwood did do it--to the tune of over $100,000,000 in grosses. A lot of motorcycles bite the dust in this one, and a lot of people get beat up without getting hurt.

Pressing on, Philo chases and gets chased all the way from L.A. to Denver, always on the watch for his true love, Lynn, as well as laying for a chance to meet up with his only competition in bare-knuckles brawling, the legendary "Tank" Murdock (Walter Barnes). Somewhere along the way, our heroes encounter a young lady named Echo (Beverly D'Angelo), who comes along with them as Orville's new girlfriend, no questions asked. This is about as empty headed as films get, but it moves along in short order and seldom riles anyone. It's a film you don't want to question; like why Philo works as a truck driver but never seems to actually work.

Eddie Rabbit sings the title song, "Every Which Way But Loose," over the opening and closing credits, and it's about as innocuous as the movie's story line and characters.

Video:
Warner Brothers' picture quality for this 1.74:1 ratio screen presentation (enhanced for 16x9 televisions) is only fair. The image has a slightly gritty look to it, with a moderate degree of grain in some scenes. The colors are bright enough, but there is a somewhat darkish overall tone to the picture, with the dark areas too murky to admit much detail. Definition is reasonably good, and there are very few moiré effects.

Audio:
The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound is a little better than the picture quality. The dynamics are strong, the midrange clarity is excellent, and the frequency range is adequate except for deepest bass. The front-channel stereo spread is fine, but there are only a few directional clues given the rear speakers, things like a couple of glasses clinking in the rear of a night club, the occasional dog barking or bird singing, and a few crowd noises.

Extras:
There is little in the way of special features on the disc. We get a couple of text pages of behind-the-scenes production notes and a brief cast and crew listing with only Eastwood's biography displayed. Additionally, there are thirty scene selections and a widescreen theatrical trailer. English and French are provided for spoken languages and subtitles.

Parting Shots:
"Every Which Way But Loose" may have been a good career move for Eastwood at the time. It showed he could do more than be the tough-guy Western or detective hero, and a year later he followed "Every Which Way" with the much more amiable and intelligent "Bronco Billy." But then it was on to the "Every Which Way" sequel called "Any Which Way You Can," which, as I said, is also available on DVD from Warners.

Put it this way: If you liked the first movie, you're sure to like the second one just as much because it's almost identical. If you didn't like the first one, as I admit I didn't, don't even think about the sequel. In fact, for lightweight Eastwood, consider "Bronco Billy" or "Space Cowboys," instead.