Scavenger Hunt
In this day and age of having just about all Hollywood comedies centered around one or two big stars, it’s a shame that most people don’t remember the time of the large scale ensemble comedies which always featured an extensive, varied cast (complete with cameos) and were constructed in such a way that the top 8 or 10 main characters (the “leads” so to speak) were given plenty of time to build and develop their characters while also being able to incorporate plenty of hilarious schtick. It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World practically invented this style of comedy (and still remains the standard bearer to this day) but other examples include The Cannonball Run movies, Rat Race, and Death Race 2000. The concepts usually involved the characters being a part of some sort of competition (usually involving money but sometimes it was simply bragging rights of some kind) with everyone then going all out to be the one that becomes the winner (or winners) with the occasional twist being thrown into the outcomes as well. This 1979 release was so front loaded castwise and expected to be so successful that it caused another large ensemble comedy in Midnight Madness to be bumped from its original release date so as not to be in direct competition. It proved to be a modest box office success with a steady run of showings on pay cable in the early 80s that continued to build its audience and then abruptly disappeared from the landscape, not receiving neither a VHS or DVD release and nearly being forgotten for decades until its recent Blu Ray release just a couple of years ago. The plot (or at least the plot setup) shows us Vincent Price as an elderly game designer playing some sort of elaborate contraption game with his nurse (Carol Wayne, best known as the female sidekick to Johnny Carson’s late night movie host character Art Fern who mysteriously drowned at age 42) and after losing to her, Price (who never speaks a word onscreen but is later heard over a tape recording) suddenly dies. It being that Price was a game designer named Milton Parker (evoking the names of real life board game manufacturers Milton Bradley and The Parker Brothers), it turns out at the reading of his will that his estimated $200 million fortune will be decided by having his named heirs play an elaborate game, that being a scavenger hunt where the various groups are divided into five teams and each given a list identifying the necessary items along with the amount of points that each one is worth. With Price’s lawyer (Robert Morley) acting as the de facto administrative official / arbitrator of the game, the five teams break down and spread out over the city: First there is Price’s sister (Cloris Leachman) who fakes crying incessantly at the reading until she learns that the money to which she thinks she’s entitled is now up for grabs whereupon she flies into a rage, her son (Richard Masur) who appears to be somewhere between a hopeless mama’s boy and a legitimate retard, and her slimy lawyer (Richard Benjamin) who was the only one present at the reading that was not invited but was there just in case she wanted to contest the will whom nonetheless joins up with her team. The second team is Price’s son in law (Tony Randall) whom we are told was widowed and his offspring of four kids (two girls and two boys) who Randall naively tries to motivate into being a “team” even as the kids could care less about either him or the game. The third team are Price’s two pretty boy nephews (Dirk Benedict and Willie “Bibleman” Aames) who recruit Leachman’s estranged stepdaughter (Maureen Teefy) into joining them and are the designated “good guys” of the story, being the only ones to obtain many of their items by having a wide circle of friends who allow them to borrow whatever they need. The fourth (and maybe best) team are Price’s household staff, they being his butler (Roddy McDowall), his chauffeur (Cleavon Little), his cook (James Coco) and his ditsy French maid (Stephanie Faracy) and with this much legitimate acting talent on one team, it’s a sheer delight watching McDowall take charge just like a coach would and rallying them towards the common cause of winning their late employer’s money. The fifth team (and the only team with just one member at the outset) is an idiot cab driver (Richard Mulligan, a greatly talented and underrated comedy actor whose name rarely comes up today in most circles when talking about the funniest actors of the 70s and 80s) who doesn’t even know why he’s been invited there and by his own admittance has never even met Price! So why is he there? It turns out that some years back Price’s old business partner had hailed Mulligan’s cab and (due presumably to Mulligan’s bumbling) had not survived the ride, giving Price full control of the company and earning Mulligan his undying gratitude which is why he was named in the will! So once the one chief rule (no items may be obtained via purchase) is clearly explained to all of them, the five teams fan out across the city of San Diego, leading more or less to a series of vignettes showing them grabbing up various items (mostly by theft) as we then start to see the various cameos come into play with some of them like Ruth Gordon (as a little old lady survivalist gun nut) not quite hitting the mark and others like Meat Loaf (as a biker gang leader named Scum) being quite hilarious when his gang get their hands on Benjamin’s blue leasure suited shyster after they catch him stealing an item and he pathetically tries to bullshit his way out of it by claiming that he was actually hoping to become a member of the biker gang itself (with Loaf’s quick reaction to that being “beat him to death”). Of all the teams, the most consistently hilarious in their bits is probably McDowell and his team of servants who were so used to working in a millionaire’s mansion for all these years and now find themselves being lowered to breaking and entering various places, stealing a toilet (by unscrewing it and causing the building to flood) which the idiot maid names “Montclair” as if it were some sort of pet or mascot and best of all, putting paper bags over their heads and using a water pistol to rob a grocery store not for the cash, but rather for the cash register which is a required item for them to obtain (leaving the cash behind in the process) and watching McDowell in particular engage in this sort of activity is really all kinds of funny. Mulligan on the other hand appears to be hopeless until he hooks up with a store security officer (Scatman Crothers) while in the process of stealing a white wedding dress(!) and convinces him to become his accomplice while Randall almost completely loses hope until his kids finally promise to help their dad win which leads to the near historic cameo by Arnold Schwarzenegger as a gym owner nearly acting like Hans and Franz by putting Randall through a grueling workout when all Randall really wanted was just a medicine ball. Meanwhile, Benedict and Aames use their nice guy charm to coax both friends and strangers into either giving up or allowing them to borrow various items temporarily in order to build their treasure chest. As for the trio of Benjamin, Leachman and Masur, having them constantly fighting amongst themselves makes for some good banter as Benjamin becomes a virtual cartoon character with his slimy lawyer being on the receiving end of heaps of physical abuse yet still bouncing back to continue his quest for the money that was never even intended for him, Masur risks becoming the most annoying character in movie history but thankfully has a lot of his schtick kept to a minimum and Leachman mercilessly berates both of them while effortlessly becoming the most hatable character in the movie. The script here is certainly uneven with the lack of realism (most of these characters would be rounded up and arrested within the first ten minutes of the game) and varying levels of humor depending on who is onscreen (Benedict and Aames can best be described as likable but bland) and who happens to be doing a cameo at any given point in time (Avery Schreiber as a constantly lisping and sputtering zookeeper wears out his welcome very quickly), but the novelty of the film (and the large ensemble comedic format itself) guarantees that things never get totally boring and those amongst this cast who are at the top of their game here make it a very fun and watchable piece of work which has happily come out of obscurity to be enjoyed by generations anew…
8/10