Buddy Buddy (1981)
Aug. 12th, 2020 06:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ivyficI found myself diving down a wikipedia hole yesterday, looking into the filmography of Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. They starred in 10 films together, the most famous (and best) of which is The Odd Couple. They were both great favorites of my parents, so I thought I'd look up one of their other films. I found them scattered across streaming services, but there was one that was not available anywhere -- Buddy Buddy.
Buddy Buddy (1981) is Billy Wilder's last film. Best I can tell it was only ever released on DVD in Spanish, and other than that, you're on ebay looking for VHS copies. It offends my sensibilities that a film can so completely disappear like that. And it's Billy Wilder, Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon! Billy Wilder, who gave us Some Like It Hot! So I went looking further around the internet, and found it on youtube. Now, had it not been impossible to find, I would probably have put it on my watchlist and moved on. But now I was intrigued.
It was... Well, let me quote Roger Ebert's review:
Trigger warning for this whole dumb plot being about suicide attempts.
The premise is that Matthau is a mafia hitman. He checks into a hotel across from a courthouse to snipe a witness. And wouldn't you know it, Lemmon checks into the room next to him, playing a more pathetic and less likeable version of Felix Unger. Lemmon's wife has left him for some sort of new age sex cult, and he has checked into the hotel to kill himself, which he does incompetently. The rest of the film is Matthau trying to control/stop him from doing so and drawing the attention of the police.
Things that happen in this film:
- Lemmon tries to hang himself and rips a pipe out, flooding the bathroom. Matthau manages to talk the bellhop out of telling the manager or calling the cops. I say talk him out of it, but Matthau just says don't call the cops, and the bellhop goes, yeah, okay.
- Matthau chloroforms Lemmon and ties him to a chair. (Why doesn't he just kill him, as he is a hit man? No idea.) A maid comes in and finds him tied up and completely ignores him. No explanation is given for this.
- Lemmon goes out on a ledge. Cops at the court house see him, remark on it, then decide to do nothing about it.
- Matthau takes Lemmon out into the desert to shoot him, but is interrupted by two motorcycle cops who commandeer his car to drive a woman in labor to the hospital. ?????
- The hospital turns out to be the sex clinic Lemmon's wife is at, leading to the only good line in the movie: "We're a sex clinic. We don't handle the results!"
- If you think that them showing up at a sex clinic is an excuse for a ton of extremely excruciating jokes about penis size, female orgasms, premature ejaculation, and blow up dolls, you would be 100% correct.
- They go back to the hotel for I don't care. Lemmon has now decided to douse himself in lighter fluid, set himself on fire, and jump off the roof of the hotel. He tells Matthau because he has decided, and keeps declaring, that Matthau is his best friend. As a reminder, Matthau CHLOROFORMED HIM AND TIED HIM TO A CHAIR, and has done nothing that could otherwise be considered friendly.
- Matthau chases him out onto the fire escape, where he is hit by the window sash and concussed.
- At this point, the sex clinic guy/cult leader shows up at the hotel for I don't know why, mistakes Matthau for Lemmon, and injects him with thorazine, because that is totally a thing doctors do.
- The wife shows up. There is further discussion of orgasms and male inadequacy. It is not funny.
- The wife and sex cult doctor now leave FOR NO GODDAM REASON, after having dosed the wrong guy. Nothing is resolved. We never see them again.
- Matthau, now dosed with thorazine, realizes he still has to shoot the person he was hired to kill. This was going to be his one last job before he retired to an island he was going to purchase. (I will point out that the stated price for this hit was $10k. I don't think that buys you an island even in 1981.)
- Lemmon now realizes Matthau is actually a hit man. Matthau is too fucked up to take the shot.
- LEMMON VOLUNTEERS TO SHOOT THE WITNESS FOR MATTHAU. HE THEN DOES SO. Let me reiterate. Lemmon then MURDERS AN INNOCENT PERSON. After playing the whole movie as a pathetic guy who works in the censorship division of a TV network and has been an innocent patsy the whole time. Why? Cause Matthau is his best friend. Obviously.
- ??????????????????????
- ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
- Cut to an island off Tahiti where Matthau has retired with his $10k from the hit and appears to have also acquired islanders, including one fanning him and a topless woman making the bed. Lemmon shows up. This scene is here just to...add some last minute racism? The hell.
I think I have discovered why this movie is unavailable. Gene Siskel called it the worst movie of 1981. Ebert didn't--but only because he reserved that right for Heaven's Gate.
The weird thing about it, too, was that it's from 1981 but seems to think it's still the sixties. Everyone is wearing hats. Now, 1981 is the year I was born, so I can't affirmatively say whether I noticed hat wearing, but I have spent a lot of time looking at photographs from that year, and no hats. My dad was working then--no hat. Pornstache, yes. Hat, no.
People also keep picking up the phone and asking the operator for long distance. They're in a hotel, so....maaaaaaaybe? But they also jiggle the switch hook (I just had to look that up--the thingy the phone hangs up on). In my lifetime, jiggling that would never check the connection. It would just hang up. I don't think that's a thing you could do in 1981. And there's the aforementioned milkman. Also all of the stuff about sex positivity seems very out of the sixties--like, the Feminine Mystique came out in 1963. It is not a hot topic for satire in 1981.
So, overall, this is a bad, bad, bad, baaaaad movie, made by three old guys who were very out of touch with the moment. I still don't like that movies disappear from availability, especially in a world of streaming, where all the rights holders need to do is put the danged file in their library. But yeah. Don't bother buying a DVD in Spanish to watch this.
Buddy Buddy (1981) is Billy Wilder's last film. Best I can tell it was only ever released on DVD in Spanish, and other than that, you're on ebay looking for VHS copies. It offends my sensibilities that a film can so completely disappear like that. And it's Billy Wilder, Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon! Billy Wilder, who gave us Some Like It Hot! So I went looking further around the internet, and found it on youtube. Now, had it not been impossible to find, I would probably have put it on my watchlist and moved on. But now I was intrigued.
It was... Well, let me quote Roger Ebert's review:
“Buddy Buddy” is very bad...This whole movie is like one of those pathetic Hollywood monsters drained of its life fluids...Seconds later, [Matthau]'s disguised as a milkman, delivering poisoned milk. Are there still milkmen? This early in the film, we're still asking such logical questions. Later, the despair sets in.
Trigger warning for this whole dumb plot being about suicide attempts.
The premise is that Matthau is a mafia hitman. He checks into a hotel across from a courthouse to snipe a witness. And wouldn't you know it, Lemmon checks into the room next to him, playing a more pathetic and less likeable version of Felix Unger. Lemmon's wife has left him for some sort of new age sex cult, and he has checked into the hotel to kill himself, which he does incompetently. The rest of the film is Matthau trying to control/stop him from doing so and drawing the attention of the police.
Things that happen in this film:
- Lemmon tries to hang himself and rips a pipe out, flooding the bathroom. Matthau manages to talk the bellhop out of telling the manager or calling the cops. I say talk him out of it, but Matthau just says don't call the cops, and the bellhop goes, yeah, okay.
- Matthau chloroforms Lemmon and ties him to a chair. (Why doesn't he just kill him, as he is a hit man? No idea.) A maid comes in and finds him tied up and completely ignores him. No explanation is given for this.
- Lemmon goes out on a ledge. Cops at the court house see him, remark on it, then decide to do nothing about it.
- Matthau takes Lemmon out into the desert to shoot him, but is interrupted by two motorcycle cops who commandeer his car to drive a woman in labor to the hospital. ?????
- The hospital turns out to be the sex clinic Lemmon's wife is at, leading to the only good line in the movie: "We're a sex clinic. We don't handle the results!"
- If you think that them showing up at a sex clinic is an excuse for a ton of extremely excruciating jokes about penis size, female orgasms, premature ejaculation, and blow up dolls, you would be 100% correct.
- They go back to the hotel for I don't care. Lemmon has now decided to douse himself in lighter fluid, set himself on fire, and jump off the roof of the hotel. He tells Matthau because he has decided, and keeps declaring, that Matthau is his best friend. As a reminder, Matthau CHLOROFORMED HIM AND TIED HIM TO A CHAIR, and has done nothing that could otherwise be considered friendly.
- Matthau chases him out onto the fire escape, where he is hit by the window sash and concussed.
- At this point, the sex clinic guy/cult leader shows up at the hotel for I don't know why, mistakes Matthau for Lemmon, and injects him with thorazine, because that is totally a thing doctors do.
- The wife shows up. There is further discussion of orgasms and male inadequacy. It is not funny.
- The wife and sex cult doctor now leave FOR NO GODDAM REASON, after having dosed the wrong guy. Nothing is resolved. We never see them again.
- Matthau, now dosed with thorazine, realizes he still has to shoot the person he was hired to kill. This was going to be his one last job before he retired to an island he was going to purchase. (I will point out that the stated price for this hit was $10k. I don't think that buys you an island even in 1981.)
- Lemmon now realizes Matthau is actually a hit man. Matthau is too fucked up to take the shot.
- LEMMON VOLUNTEERS TO SHOOT THE WITNESS FOR MATTHAU. HE THEN DOES SO. Let me reiterate. Lemmon then MURDERS AN INNOCENT PERSON. After playing the whole movie as a pathetic guy who works in the censorship division of a TV network and has been an innocent patsy the whole time. Why? Cause Matthau is his best friend. Obviously.
- ??????????????????????
- ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
- Cut to an island off Tahiti where Matthau has retired with his $10k from the hit and appears to have also acquired islanders, including one fanning him and a topless woman making the bed. Lemmon shows up. This scene is here just to...add some last minute racism? The hell.
I think I have discovered why this movie is unavailable. Gene Siskel called it the worst movie of 1981. Ebert didn't--but only because he reserved that right for Heaven's Gate.
The weird thing about it, too, was that it's from 1981 but seems to think it's still the sixties. Everyone is wearing hats. Now, 1981 is the year I was born, so I can't affirmatively say whether I noticed hat wearing, but I have spent a lot of time looking at photographs from that year, and no hats. My dad was working then--no hat. Pornstache, yes. Hat, no.
People also keep picking up the phone and asking the operator for long distance. They're in a hotel, so....maaaaaaaybe? But they also jiggle the switch hook (I just had to look that up--the thingy the phone hangs up on). In my lifetime, jiggling that would never check the connection. It would just hang up. I don't think that's a thing you could do in 1981. And there's the aforementioned milkman. Also all of the stuff about sex positivity seems very out of the sixties--like, the Feminine Mystique came out in 1963. It is not a hot topic for satire in 1981.
So, overall, this is a bad, bad, bad, baaaaad movie, made by three old guys who were very out of touch with the moment. I still don't like that movies disappear from availability, especially in a world of streaming, where all the rights holders need to do is put the danged file in their library. But yeah. Don't bother buying a DVD in Spanish to watch this.