Devotees of filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen probably know their most expensive box office bomb is The Hudsucker Proxy, a $40 million period piece with resplendent art-deco sets, wild visual effects, and a supporting role from Hollywood legend Paul Newman. It failed to clear $3 million at the box office, and it took a Best Picture-nominated follow-up that’s still regarded as one of their best to get the Coens back in Hollywood’s good graces. Hudsucker Proxy, a tribute to Frank Capra and screwball comedies, was also a collaboration with the filmmaking duo’s old friend Sam Raimi, who co-wrote the script with the brothers and served as second-unit director. It’s wild to think that a team-up between filmmakers who would collectively go on to win multiple Oscars and make multiple world-beating blockbusters in the 2000s would hold the seemingly permanent title of lowest-grossing Coens movie. It’s even wilder that there’s another Raimi/Coens movie that even fewer people saw or liked.
No, that doesn’t refer to the original Evil Dead, which Joel Coen worked on as an assistant editor. Small as it was in its initial release, that future classic opened on 15 screens. Crimewave, which Raimi directed from another Coens-and-Raimi screenplay, opened on two, out of contractual obligation to the studio’s HBO deal. According to an interview with producer and demoted star Bruce Campbell on the movie’s Shout! Factory Blu-ray, the film’s U.S. release was confined to a screen apiece in Kansas and Alaska. (That release was 40 years ago, on April 25, 1986; IMDb and others list the movie as a 1985 release because it played around Europe first.) For years, despite presumably hitting HBO at some point, Crimewave was similarly hard to find on home video. Currently it tends to bounce around free streaming services, though the Blu-ray is out of print.
That disc release elects Bruce Campbell as a sort of unofficial spokesman for the film, despite the fact that (as he and others have explained) he was booted out of his presumed leading role and recast in a supporting part as the picture’s “heel” while staying on as a producer. He wasn’t considered well-known enough to play Victor, the hapless hero who is mistaken for a murderer while pursuing his dreamgirl Nancy (Sheree J. Wilson). So what household name did they hire instead? Why, Reed Birney of course! Birney could boast guest appearances on episodes of Eight Is Enough and 3-2-1 Contact, so obviously he was the man for the job.
To be fair, Birney has gone on to a fine career in film, television, and stage. He won a Tony in 2016! And he’s not bad in the Raimi film. But it seems characteristic of Crimewave’s messy production that the filmmakers’ preferred obscure and goofy actor was forcibly swapped out for another, equally obscure and goofy actor. On the other hand, Campbell is hilarious in his replacement part as Renaldo, Victor’s romantic rival. None of the acting in Crimewave is really a problem; everyone is more or less achieving the absurd pitch the material seems to demand.
Tonally, Crimewave is The Hudsucker Proxy’s uncouth, roustabout cousin. (The name “Hudsucker” even turns up as the name of a penitentiary at one point in Crimewave, suggesting a Raimi-Coen extended universe of misunderstood box office bombs.) While Hudsucker riffs on screwball comedies and Capracorn, Crimewave is basically a wrong-man noir from around the same era, with a pair of contract “exterminators” (Brion James and Paul Smith) committing mayhem commissioned by one of Victor’s corporate bosses, and Victor accidentally taking the blame. Misunderstandings, mishaps, and chases ensue. But while Hudsucker parodies screwball through close imitation of its rhythms and humor, Crimewave is many times goonier, outright spoofing movies from the 1940s with such severe caricature that it distorts its subject nearly beyond recognition.
This approach has a certain charm, especially for anyone who enjoys attempts to make live-action Looney Tunes. Fans of both Raimi and the Coens will spy their respective sensibilities in it, from the visual ingenuity of its gravity-defying slapstick to the whoosh-pan timing of its best gags. Actually, anyone who hates any of those filmmakers’ works will have plenty to recognize, too; they just won’t be so tickled by all the mugging, screaming, and running in circles.
In his book If Chins Could Kill, Campbell — again, he’s rather charmingly taken it upon himself to chronicle the making of Crimewave more closely than Raimi or the Coens care to — explains that the film was plagued by a combination of studio micromanagement and unlucky on-set mishaps. The result is a movie that winds up closer than any other to matching the harshest criticisms these filmmakers have received since, particularly the early charge against the Coens (well-summarized in this old New York piece) that they favor arch, smirky pastiche and technique over all else. Raimi, it turns out, can commit even more heavily to technique-first goofing around, and Crimewave makes the following year’s Coens project Raising Arizona (and, for that matter, Raimi’s Evil Dead II) look all the more accomplished and well-rounded by comparison.
Yet there’s still plenty to appreciate in Crimewave. It has a ramshackle climactic three-car chase that has more creative (and literal) spark than many bigger-budget action movies, a pink-hued nightclub sequence with a killer punchline, and enough energy to power two or three additional movies. It’s far from the worst movie with a Coens screenplay credit (remember Suburbicon?) or Raimi in the director’s chair (check out For Love of the Game, or maybe don’t). The fact that Crimewave is just a compilation of its filmmakers’ favorite ridiculous techniques has made it surprisingly well-equipped to survive for the past 40 years. In any era, it would be near-instantly recognizable as Sam Raimi. His subsequent success has made his sophomore feature’s unhinged, self-contained silliness into something weirdly timeless.
Crimewave is currently streaming for free on Tubi and YouTube.
