Let Them Take you Down…
DIRECTED BY ROBERT BUTLER/1981
BLU-RAY STREET DATE: JULY 23, 2024/KL STUDIO CLASSICS
To misquote Howard Hawks, if a movie has three good scenes and all the rest are bad ones… that’s good enough. If that were to be the case (which it isn’t), then the 1981 comedy Underground Aces is downright Hawksian.
At the peril of surrendering any and all critical integrity, I’m going to continue down this road. Admittedly, it’s not so much a road as an enclosed ramp… a ramp that descends further and further downward, until eventually we find a parking spot or we run out of gas. All of which is conveniently apt, as the title “Underground Aces” refers to group of wild and raucous valet parking attendants at a swanky hotel. But here, the Dante-esque subterranean levels that are transversed are more of the early Joe Dante variety (Hollywood Boulevard-early) rather than the Inferno Dante.
The Aces are confident professionals operating by a shared code, simply out to do their jobs on the own terms: the Hawksian heroes. Led by handsome leading man and Starbuck of Battlestar Galactica, Dirk Benedict, the ever-unfazed crew plays by their own rules. When they’re against the clock, they shrug and say, “What clock?” When someone needs their car back in ten dang minutes, but they’ve got it disassembled motor and all, ten minutes is all they need. After all, it’s their job. Finally, there’s a headstrong woman at the center who refuses to be easily parsed: the Hawksian woman (Melanie Griffith). And from there, they’re off and running…
Striving for the raucous Animal House boys club tone (look no further than its caricature-filled poster, now the cover of KL Studio Classics’ Blu-ray edition) but maintaining a softer PG rating, Underground Aces is a curious kind of comedy for its time. Directed by then-TV movie maker Robert Butler, the movie is never too eager to offend tightwads and appall prudes as it’s just looking to have some fun.
Granted, 1981 PG-rated fun can still involve a quick throwaway gag of a woman getting all her clothes torn off by a car door. But generally, that kind of overt subterranean crudity is kept to a shocking minimum. Instead, Underground Aces trades heavily in horny hookup humor- people sneaking in and out of hotel rooms, wide-eyed realizations of who’s with who, and that sort of 1960s nonsense. Which is perfect for Frank Gorshin, who’s not “acting” so much as absolutely hamming it up as a philandering boss.
Butler can tell a joke well enough, although when it comes to the visual “mechanics of the wacky”, he falls short. Case in point, he covers the move-by-move functions of a comical Rube Goldberg machine in a series of cuts rather than one continuous shot. As economical as that might’ve been on the shooting schedule, it’s far less funny. Someone needs to go back and look at Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times.
Butler does demonstrate an aptitude for outside-the-box casting choices. One of the Aces is portrayed by comedian Michael Winslow, that guy from the Police Academy movies who made a career out of making silly verbal sound effects, proving to every seven-year-old boy that the American dream is alive and well. At one point, his under-car creeper accidentally becomes more of a freewheeler, taking off down, down, down the spiraling garage ramp, picking up speed as he goes. Winslow’s character is able to foley his entire descent, but he can’t stop. The other characters hurrying to aid him is a nice touch. These Aces have each other’s back- even when said back is laid flat on a careening garage cart.
When a plot dares to enter the movie, things become less nutty and more cumbersome. It’s then less comfortable slapstick in the parking garage in favor of more strained screwball comedy in the hotel. The guys have to pull off an identity switcharoo to stop a sheik from getting married, or some such thing. One of the guys boasts that he’s the perfect thespian to assume the role of the sheik, boasting proficiency in three different languages: “Ghetto English, Restaurant French, and Carwash Spanish.”
For me, any pleasures of this otherwise strained comedy derive in large part from aspects unintentional: its tactile capturing of its bygone time and place; its interesting cast of fondly remembered has-beens and never-quite-weres; its transparent aspirations to be part of the “cool kids club” of contemporary comedy movies. The KL Studio Classics’ Blu-ray’s brand-new HD master from a 2K scan of the 35mm interpositive certainly elevates the experience, as does the somewhat unhinged newly recorded audio commentary by Horror-Fix.com’s James G. Chandler and Ash Hamilton. The commentary might well be more raucous than the movie. Another highlight is the title song by The Commodores, which goes “Underground! Aces!” Clearly, it’s the level of musical craftsmanship resulting from a half hour of songwriting well spent.
This may not be the valet parking movie to end all valet parking movies, but it probably ended all valet parking for anyone who’d seen it. It’s got three good scenes of valet parking, and no bad ones. Well, maybe just two. But still…! That’s Hawksian enough for me.