Loose Shoes (1980)

User Rating:

4.8/10   

Director:

Ira Miller

Writers:

Ian Praiser (screenplay) &
Varley Smith (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

August 1980 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy

Tagline:

There won't be a dry seat in the house!

Plot:

Broad satire and buffoonery presented as a series of movie trailers. Among the titles and subjects are: "The Howard Huge Story"...

Plot Keywords:

Inmate | Spoof | Prison | Sketch Comedy | Nudity

Cast

Royce D. Applegate	...	Delmus
Lewis Arquette	...	Warden
Tom Baker	...	Billy Jerk
Dorothy Van	...	Army Nurse
Dan Barrows	...	Shaggy Dog
J.J. Barry	...	Indian #1
Pat Benson	...	Martha
Jack Bernardi	...	Sam, Prisoner
Jane Alice Brandon	...	Mildred
Thomas Brunelle	...	Biker
Paul Camen	...	Lieutenant
Billy Curtis	...	Menchkin
Paul David	...	Kid
Anthony Davis	...	Guard
Danny Dayton	...	Bartender

Also Known As:

Coming Attractions
Quackers

Runtime:

84 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Iceland:12 | Finland:K-12 | USA:R

Filming Locations:

San Bernardino County, California, USA

Company:

Brooksfilms

Trivia:

The title of the movie, along with a musical number in the movie, gets it's name from an incident in 1976 when US President Gerald Ford's Secretary of Agriculture Earl L. Butz was forced to resign after it was reported that he joked that "the only thing the coloreds are looking for in life are tight p****, loose shoes, and a warm place to s***."

Goofs:

Continuity: In the "Welcome to Bacon County" segment: It's nighttime when the van pulls over because it's out of gas. Inside the van it's daytime, then when Elijah and Boobies get out, it's nighttime again.

Movie Connections:

Spoofs Star Wars (1977)

Wildly uneven but mostly not very good

This is a sketch comedy movie done in the style of movie trailers. It's another in the long line of films that filled theaters in the mid to late 1970's like Kentucky Fried Movie, Groove Tube, American Raspberry, Tunnelvision promising to do what Saturday Night Live was doing but with dirty words and naked women. This is probably the weakest of the bunch.

Spoofing everything from musicals (Darktown after Dark) to prison films (3 Chairs for Lefty) to public service announcements (Buddy Hackett on bed wetting) to biker films (Skateboarders from Hell) to Charlie Chaplin films (The Kid and the Yid) and a few things in between this is a very hit or miss film. Most of the gags had been done before and better in other films and on TV by the time this was made so it was like watching reruns of reruns.3 Chairs for Lefty, which stars Bill Murray is rife with the sort of prison jokes that have been around since the 1930's,including giving Lefty a roast to cook when he finally goes to the chair.

The real problem is that almost all of the sketches go on way past the point of being funny. There seems to be some need to spoof a complete film, so in Skateboarders from hell we get a climatic funeral scene that isn't very funny and destroys the laughs that the film had generated with the "biker" fight. There is no reason that this film needed to be almost two hours long since tighter cutting could have made this a classic.

Worth seeing if you run across it on cable and you're in the mood for a very uneven comedy.It would be also okay to get in the bargain bin at the 99 cent store (which is how I got my copy) since its not worth more than a dollar.