EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE (1978) ¢ ¢ ¢
D: James Fargo
Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke, Geoffrey Lewis,
Ruth Gordon, Beverly D'Angelo, Bill McKinney,
John Quade, Dan Vadis, William O'Connell,
Hank Worden, George Chandler, Walter Barnes
You get a clue about what kind of movie this is going to be in the opening shot. Clint Eastwood pulls up in a pickup truck, unwraps a stick of chewing gum, and throws the wrapper out the window. It's a throwaway gesture for a throwaway film - the least substantial piece of work in Eastwood's career, unless you count its sequel, "Any Which Way You Can". Clint plays Philo Beddoe, a bare-knuckles fighter living in a trailer park with an orangutan named Clyde, next door to his buddy Orville (Geoffrey Lewis) and Orville's foul-mouthed mother (Ruth Gordon). The story, as much as there is one, has Philo, Clyde and Orville hitting the road, with Philo trying to track down a cold-eyed country singer (Sondra Locke), and there's a lot of beer-drinking, and some fighting, and they're being chased by two idiot cops and a gang of morons on motorcycles calling themselves the Black Widows, and everybody gets laid eventually, even Clyde. If it were any more disposable, it wouldn't exist, but it does play into Eastwood's preoccupation with surrogate families and his inclination to subvert the conventions of heroism. Sometimes it doesn't even look scripted - "loose" is the operative word - and everybody seems to be improvising their scenes around Clyde. So, yeah, you could say there's not much going on here. It's undemanding, good-natured, unpretentious, and goes real good with a six-pack. If you happen to unwrap a stick of gum while you're watching it, just throw the wrapper on the floor.
John Quade
(1938-2009)
