Crimewave
Dir: Sam Raimi
1985
*****
Crimewave, or The XYZ Murders as it was also known, was panned upon release by critics and by director Sam Raimi, star and producer Bruce Campbell and scriptwriters The Coen Brothers. Sam Raimi described it as one of the least favorite moments of his careers after the studio executives reversed their initial agreement that he would would have complete creative control of the film and disrupted everything he had worked towards. It is safe to say that Raimi, who had reached success with his debut The Evil Dead but not without issue, learnt about film making and working with big studios the hard way with Crimewave. He miscalculated the finished budget of the film, forgetting the cost of union fees and the executives pounced. After escalating costs, the studio dropping Bruce Campbell as lead and a lengthy battle over final editing, Raimi buckled and the final cut of the film is not what anyone had intended. Campbell wrote in his autobiography (the brilliant If Chins Could Kill) that lead actress Louise Lasser had a terrible cocaine addiction that halted filming on a daily basis, actor Brion James went crazy and trashed his hotel room in an attempt to "exorcise a ghost from his light fixtures" and an incident whereby dynamite was used to de-ice a river was almost the last straw for many of the crew. It's amazing how Crimewave and the Coen's Blood Simple both came from the same script, one meeting great success and the failing miserably. However, i would argue that it failed miserably due to the fact it was only released in Kansas and Alaska. It was released in France and Italy as Death on the Grill and The Two Craziest Killers in the World respectively. It was clear that the marketing people had no idea how to promote such a unique cross-genre film so they "hid under the table" and in the end "it wasn't released, it escaped" as Campbell put it. I can understand why Raimi, Campbell, the Coens and the crew would want to forget the grueling experience but almost everyone who has seen it loves it. It's an amazing exercise in genre-merging that I can't say I've seen accomplished as well before or since. It's comedy-noir but without being a spoof, it's clearly the work of Raimi and Coen and just as good as you'd expect from a collaboration of the three, circa 1985. Bruce Campbell's scenes are some of my favorite of all time, the film is consistently funny and dazzlingly inventive. All the flair and originality in direction that was celebrated in The Evil Dead is present here, it's part Maltese Falcon, part Three Stooges as well as Raimi/Coen's unique energy and humour. It's a thriller, it's a horror, it's Philip Marlowe in an Ealing Comedy, it's a one off and it's bloody brilliant. Every single scene is beautifully lit and composed and every character and performance is a treat. To work on it is to hate it, but to watch it is to love it.