Flash forward to 1992, and he found Joseph Wambaugh's original novel, on which the movie was based. Not only was it a great read, but was impossible to put down once you got started on it. I took it with me to school to read during any slow spots. Yes, it had its share of funny moments throughout it, but it also had its dark and sinister side to it as well. Could the movie be anywhere near as good?
Not long after finding the book, an edited version of the movie was finally shown on one of the local TV stations, Seattle's KTZZ-22. But before we get to that, let's flash forward to finding the original theatrical version on VHS in the summer of 1993.
Wow, it sure had a stellar cast with some very inspired choices to play the different characters in the movie. We have Charles Durning, James Woods, Randy Quaid, Don Stroud, Louis Gossett Jr., Burt Young as the obnoxious Sergeant Scuzzi, and a handful other of actors whose names I didn't know, but remembered by seeing them in other things, sometimes as cops.
What could go wrong?
The direction is lousy and aimless, yet (at the same time) it tries to add so much from the book into it that every scene feels rushed, with no real character development...which is too bad, as there are some great facets to all of the officers in the story, let alone some of the adventures and mischief they get into.
As with a lot of '70s comedy movies, a lot of it looks and feels as if it were a sitcom, minus the laugh track. A lot of the jokes and pranks that the guys pull on one another (or their superiors) fall flat, and get rather tiresome after a while. Another annoying aspect is the score by Frank DeVol, who composed the opening theme and background score for The Brady Bunch, which a lot of the music here sounds like.
My Dad always thought one particular scene was funny, where the racist, homophobic Roscoe Rules gets handcuffed to a tree during one of the choir-practices, naked below the waist, and promptly gets hit on by a stereotypical '70s gay person, swishing through the park, accompanied by a little pink poodle. It's funny in the book, but just doesn't translate well to the screen here.
And then the movie was made and marketed as nothing but a slapstick comedy. Again, the novel has some hilarious stuff throughout it, but it eventually unfolds into drama and tragedy toward the end, and the movie tries to end it on an uplifting note, which just seems out of place. Small wonder it was released into theaters a couple of days before Christmas...the old ploy of sticking it in the theaters to make some money off of it before the public spread the word on how bad it was.
Now, back to the edited version. The thing that really made that version of the movie so odd was that (apart from shortening or deleting the racier scenes) some parts of the film were replaced with others, and sometimes even re-sequenced. After the opening credits, the edited version strangely opens with a scene of some of the guys getting shot at by a "mystery shooter", which doesn't appear in the theatrical cut. There was scene with Art Metrano (later to play Mauser in a couple of the Police Academy movies) getting arrested and booked, which replaced the scene of Roscoe Rules and Whaddyamean Dean getting beaten up during a riot in a rundown apartment building. And of course, the memorable scene with Father Willie scuttering underneath the glass coffeetable below Officer "No Balls" Hadley was shortened on the edited version.
A potentially good movie that ended up a wasted effort (despite the talented cast), and a source of embarrassment for Joseph Wambaugh, who has since lambasted it. This is a prime candidate for either a proper re-make of the movie, or to have it as a mini-series.
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