Doctor Detroit
One thing that has often been said about the mid to late 70s heyday of Saturday Night Live was that as both a writer and performer, Dan Aykroyd had easily the sickest and most twisted sense of humor of any of the members of that crew, so much so that during the weekly writersâ meeting, he would sit there and pitch ideas to the others that many times brought shock and revulsion to everyone rather than laughter, resulting in very few of his concepts making it to air fully intact. The upside of this was that during the live show on Saturday night, you would have guys like Chevy, Belushi and Murray whom you would EXPECT to be funny, but then Aykroyd would possess the ability during any given sketch to come out of nowhere and say or do something that was literally so far out of left field and hilarious that he would steal the spotlight outright, a quality that endeared him to many and enabled him to continue on to have an extensive movie career. It is well known that his unfiltered original screenplays for both Blues Brothers and Ghostbusters were vastly different from what actually made it to the screen, being tremendously pared down and rewritten by others in order to make them more digestible for modern audiences (reportedly his vision for Ghostbusters was a lot more darker and weirder) while still being allowed to star in the movies as well. A lot of people have wondered just what an untampered with vision of Aykroydâs creative mind in a movie would look like and the two closest examples were his 1991 directorial effort Nothing But Trouble (widely considered to be a horribly bad movie so letâs just leave it at that) and this 1983 release, one which Aykroyd is not credited as being a writer for but is believed to be (it being his first solo starring role in a major film) one in which he had major creative input including his own personal rewrite so that it could be considered tailor made for him. Considering some of the more politically incorrect aspects of the story, it could also be said to have put him at risk of career suicide (though despite a tepid box office at the time, thankfully it did not), but given that Aykroyd was still reeling at the time from the death of his best friend John Belushi, maybe he felt that going all in on this one was the best option at that point. The film portrays a world where prostitution (human trafficking) is an acceptable, enjoyable way of life with no harm coming to anybody who enters into it (as either a provider or a client) provided that they know what theyâre getting into in the first place. Early in the movie, we are introduced to Smooth Walker (Howard Hesseman), a soft spoken, man about town professional pimp who is driven around by his chauffeur picking up his working girls from their hotels and apartment buildings in the morning just as if he is picking them up from school. Turns out however that Smooth is deep in debt to the crime boss who actually runs the city, an overweight, overbearing older woman known only as Mom (Kate Murtagh) which means that yes, she will be referred to as âMomâ by all of the other characters for the rest of the movie. When brought before her, Smooth scrambles for some explanation to buy himself some time, finally lying through his teeth and telling Mom that he has a new âpartnerâ who now controls his business interests and wonât take any shit from anybody (including Mom) who goes by the name of Doctor Detroit. Having fed this line of total bullshit to Mom so that he can be allowed to walk away, Smooth now knows that he has to find a patsy who can fill the role and thus be killed in his place. He finds that guy in one Clifford Skridlow (Aykroyd), a nerdy college professor who enjoys power walking, foreign films and romantic literature while always being put upon by his college chancellor father (George âMr. Foytâ Furth) to carry out menial tasks like picking up guests of the college at the airport. Smooth and his girls (a impressive lineup in Donna Dixon, Fran Drescher, Lynn Whitfield and Lynda Lei) talk Aykroyd into their limo, fill him up with marijuana and pills, and have a round robin sexual marathon with him before giving him a (very) brief crash course on the âerotic entertainment industryâ before Smooth hops on the nearest plane out of the country, never to return. This is where the various elements of the story actually start to gel remarkably well. Being into old time romantic stories of honor, bravery and chivalry as much as he is, Aykroyd (who seems to have lived his whole life on a college campus rather than the outside world) actually AGREES to the mission laid before him to deal with the threat of Mom only on the premise that he will not pimp the girls but rather instead protect and even save them from any further harm. That leads to the real highlight reel for Aykroyd, dressing himself in a snazzy outfit, steel glove and fright wig to become the âDoctorâ himself, mercilessly talking shit to Mom (with no real backup) to try and intimidate her (which he does) while improvising everything else along the way not only to bring her down, but also to become a hero to the underground community at large of pimps, players and petty thieves who have had to cow under to the hated Mom for years now. In some ways, this story seems to be offering a contrast to two different versions of The American Dream, one where being respectable to a fault is all important especially in a civilized academic environment like a collegiate institution and one where the notion of hustling on the streets, begging, borrowing and stealing until youâve built yourself quite a little empire (even if the business is illegal) is commendable, but the one thing that both paths have in common is the end all, be all importance of money, something that is as valuable to a pimp or drug dealer as it is to a fancy college that is angling for an endowment check so that it can keep itself running. Perhaps the fact that Aykroyd so obviously comes from such a privileged, silver spoon type upbringing might account for how whenever he adopts the Doctor Detroit persona (complete with a tinny, high pitched voice), he blithely shows so much contempt for the dangerous criminals that heâs dealing with (doesnât he realize how easily they could kill him?), although plot points about Aykroyd not getting any sleep and his chancellor father getting him involved in college business thatâs only important to him might go far to explain his cavalier attitude (funny how his teaching duties and his fatherâs social functions render him a zombie but when he hears from one of the girls needing his help, he snaps right back to life) and lack of any real fear from the situations he faces. The casting is certainly right on here, with Aykroyd scoring big points as the nerdy college professor turned streetwise superhero and Hesseman perfectly cast as the laid back, high class pimp who sets the pieces in place before bailing on his own people. But itâs the girls who convince us that Aykroydâs cause is worth fighting for with the irony being that Aykroyd is paired off romantically in the film with Drescher but wound up marrying Dixon in real life as their mutual friend Drescher acted as matchmaker. Although drugs are portrayed in a positive light as being a part of âthe businessâ, fortunately no indications of heroin abuse are anywhere to be seen here (since it is such a dominating factor in the real life world of human trafficking) and the girls themselves are portrayed as being happy, healthy and fully in approval of the lifestyle which they have chosen (whereas clean and focused prostitutes / escorts are a rare commodity these days) even as we understand that Aykroyd himself (as much as he has come to love and adore these girls enough to risk his life for them) is actually appalled by them being hookers and undertakes much of his actions in order to free them from that (the filmâs saving grace). The campy, corny 80s vibe is everywhere in this movie but none moreso than at a so called âplayerâs ballâ presumably for pimps and hustlers where the live entertainment is provided by the one and only James Brown (wow). The film announces a sequel during the end credits (which Aykroyd was busy working on) but it failed at the box office, thus killing the sequel plans and putting the film into strictly cult status with a sadly limited fanbase, but yet still the concept of adopting a persona different than your own and using it to do some good is a clever one made to be very funny by the offbeat dynamics of the story that we see hereâŚ
8/10