Misfit Patrol (1996)

Welcome to the second of two directorial efforts from Anthony Cardoza. His name is probably not familiar to you but if you’re reading this site, his work is.  Let’s start with “Mystery Science Theater 3000”. One of their more beloved directors was a fellow by the name of Coleman Francis, who made “The Beast of Yucca Flats”, “The Skydivers” and “Red Zone Cuba”, incompetent and weird but made with a genuine black heart. Francis’ producer for those movies was Mr Cardoza, who’d made a little bit of money as a welder but had also produced an Ed Wood movie by the time they met.

Anyway, Francis died in 1973 but Cardoza’s dreams didn’t, so he hung around the movie business. He produced a few things (most famously and profitably, 1968’s “Hellcats”), but it’s his directing work we’re interested in at the moment. We already covered 1979’s “Smokey and the Hotwire Gang”, one of the more confusing / rubbish “Smokey and the Bandit” ripoffs, and then almost 20 years later came this. I've been racking my brain and can't think of any trend he was capitalising on, unless it was made when "Police Academy" but was never "released" until the mid 90s?

For those curious movie buffs among you, the first question might be “why?” Why did Mr Cardoza, seven years after his last job in the movies (line producer on something called “Crime Of Crimes”), and almost twenty from his last directing job, want to make another one? I’m going to go out on a limb here and give you one of my patented unfounded movie theories!

Dave Fuentes, writer / star (and, if we’re being honest, probably financial backer), was a big fan of Ed Wood. He wanted to make a movie and approached the star of “Plan Nine From Outer Space”, Conrad Brooks, then in his early 60s and still working in the same sort of bargain-basement entertainment that had made him “famous” almost 40 years previously.  Brooks had met Cardoza while working on “The Beast Of Yucca Flats” in 1961, his last movie before taking a twenty year break from the movies, and as Fuentes needed a director called his old friend, who accepted. Or the original director pulled out at the last moment and Cardoza stepped in to protect his own investment, as he was also listed as producer. Or something else. Like I’ve said, I’ve really got no idea how any of this works but I like to speculate. This was Fuentes’ only movie, though, which at least hints at it being a vanity project of some kind. Oh, and there’s the fact he wears heels in a bunch of scenes so he can appear taller than his female co-star.

“Misfit Patrol” was never released, anywhere. I contacted the writer, Baltimore journalist “Buzz” Beeler, still working and generous with his time. Sadly, he didn’t even have a copy (or didn’t want me to watch it) so I gave up, mentioning my fruitless search to a friend who used to run B-Independent, a site like this only better, back in the very early days of the internet. He also helped distribute micro-budget movies back then, and casually mentioned that he had a copy, obtained from Conrad Brooks himself at a convention many years ago! A little while later, and a package arrived in the mail, more anticipated by me than any hot new Marvel epic.

The tape itself is unusual (to me, anyway) – a finished product, sent to potential investors to secure investment and distribution. As well as playing the trailer, it features a little segment with all the positive words people said about it at the time and a “hey, you could make money with this great movie” bit.

I may be the first person to watch this movie in 20 years, and I appreciate it’s not exactly going to drive traffic to this site as it’s almost impossible that you’d be able to track it down based on my recommendation, or lack thereof. So I’ll have to try and paint a word-picture of this absolutely 100% forgotten, zero reviews on the internet, buddy cop comedy, and hopefully it’ll be entertaining. Let’s journey through “Misfit Patrol” together!

There are two cops, Dave (Fuentes) and Murphy (Brooks) and they suck. No particular reason is given why they’re so dumb, they just are – answering a grenade like a telephone, sticking a shotgun in their own face to see why it’s jammed, etc.  – and are hated by both their co-workers and boss, Captain Cook (Vernon Wells, who must have owed someone a favour). All the other cops look like old bums who got pulled off the street and given uniforms, like you can see one person in white sneakers and trousers that are 6 inches too short for him in the background of one scene.

There’s so much miserable comedy misfiring on display here. Like getting “gynecologist” and “geologist” mixed up, which might be the best joke they have. Or when they mock a midget by talking to her like she’s a child. Or a bit where Dave is busted down to crossing guard and uses his Stop sign like he’s riding a horse. Or the way they seem to not really understand how human beings talk or behave. There’s a courtroom scene where the judge just accepts a bribe in full view of everyone, then lets the murderer off.

There’s a plot, kind of, which leads me to the most curious thing about “Misfit Patrol”. Dave and Murphy stumble upon a turf war between rival gangs of drug dealers, and find, pretty much by accident, a witness prepared to testify against them. She happily comes down to the station, and you assume a romance is on the cards – she’s a nice, normal looking woman of around 35. Then, we find out she’s a high school student? What? Then they still sort of get together? But if you read the IMDB profile of the movie, you’ll know that she’s actually (SPOILER, BUT YOU’RE NEVER EVER GOING TO WATCH THIS MOVIE) an undercover DEA agent, and might actually be age-appropriate – in movie terms – for Dave. But then why was she so willing to help the cops against the people she’s undercover with? Why go undercover as a student when there’s no indication those particular drug dealers are operating in schools?

I appreciate this will be curious to you, dear reader, as you’ve never seen it. I’m really trying to get across how wrong-headed “Misfit Patrol” is, how devoid of anything approaching laughs, or dramatic tension, or sense.

Conrad Brooks gives it his all, but he’s not a natural comedy actor, so his mugging comes across as vaguely offensive, only I can’t figure out to who. Jeff Celentano, who’s been featured by us before in “American Ninja 2”, “Puppet Master 2” and “Demonic Toys”, tries his best but is subject to maybe the worst gag in this or any other movie, as the Captain keeps getting his name wrong. It has no pay-off and isn’t remotely funny the first time, let alone the twentieth. Another ISCFC regular, Jimmy Williams (“Samurai Cop”, “Cybernator”, “Silent Night Zombie Night”, among others) shows up as the villain, should you be a completist of his.

There’s perhaps a good reason why some movies never got official releases. Made cheaply as vanity projects, tax dodges, or misguided investment attempts, they have nothing going for them at all and every distributor, mercifully, leaves them well alone. Perhaps even some of them are comedies, like this, just with no jokes in them. But I feel even the lousiest self-produced never-released effort would struggle to approach the dismal beyond-failure of “Misfit Patrol”. It’s so bad that it becomes fascinating, not the sort of fascinating I’d ever want to watch again, but fascinating anyway.

I’d like to spend a little time, after we’ve thoroughly trashed the movie, talking about how it was marketed. One of Brooks’ VHS tapes has made it to Amazon, and someone decided to write a product description for it. I’ll give you a few highlights.

“Every once in while moviegoers are treated to a wholesome family entertainment. That's when film producers decide that movie watchers, especially those who like to bring their family along, have had enough of crime, sex, drugs and violence for a plot.” –

literally the entire plot of the movie is about crime and drugs, and there’s a shootout with multiple deaths in the first fifteen minutes.

“Misfit Patrol fits that once-in-a-while wholesome family entertainment to a tee.”

 Once in a while. I love it!

“The zany duo 's pairing with sultry Sheila (Hope Kelley), who plays undercover DEA agent, who later displays her affection for Bryant, provides more solidness to the zany and comical plot upon which this comedy revolves. There is no gain-saying that the horizon is bright for this very talented former Texan beauty to get more action roles in the immediate future, not to mention comedy roles,”

 Is she a former Texan or a former beauty?

And these gem scame from the reviews they quoted:

"The wackiest film to date" -- Dusty Brandel -A.A.R.W.B.A   

That would be the American Auto Racing Writers & Broadcasters Association (Brandel is its president). Wackiest? Did Ms Brandel never see “It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World”, which at least bears more of a relationship to the sport she’s spent her life covering?

"... as we track this weekend through the last eight years, "Misfit Patrol" grossed better than previous years with more traditional product." -- D. Edward Vogel- Bengies Drive-In Theatre  

I’d love to know why this wasn’t considered “traditional product”.

“My two thumbs up for this zany comedy flick's plot and its worthy lessons...” -- Noel T. Castorillo- L.A. Free Press 

One of those worthy lessons is “ if you’re a middle aged cop, develop an inappropriate relationship with a high school girl, on the off chance she’s an adult undercover DEA agent”.

One last thing – go back to the top of the screen and check out the poster. That indicates it’s some sort of Police Academy-style everyone’s-crazy cop comedy; only it’s not, at all. I’d be annoyed at the false advertising, if it had ever actually been released.

Rating: thumbs down

Smokey And The Hotwire Gang (1979)

Although you may not have heard of him, Tony Cardoza is bad movie royalty. His most famous series of credits is as producer and co-star of the entire filmography of Coleman Francis - “The Beast of Yucca Flats”, “The Skydivers” and “Red Zone Cuba”, three of the most miserable, dark-hearted, and just plain incompetent movies ever made (although they have a few defenders). You may have seen them covered on “Mystery Science Theater 3000” - to be fair, you're unlikely to have seen them anywhere else – and those sleazy performances, along with whatever he did to secure money for Coleman Francis, means his place in the ISCFC Hall Of Fame is already set.

But there wasn't just that. This one-time welder was bitten by the movie bug, so as well as helping Francis, he produced a few films for other people – the Ed Wood Jr movie “Night Of The Ghouls” is probably the most famous, but there's also “The Hellcats” and a smattering of other biker movies. He also, which is the thing that interests us today, directed two movies of his own, twenty years apart. One is a genuinely puzzling-looking cop comedy from as late as 1998 (“Misfit Patrol”), and the other is this.

It might reasonably be said the super-success of “Smokey and the Bandit” in 1977, and lesser stuff like “Convoy” persuaded Mr Cardoza to put aside biker movies and move on to...whatever genre you'd say those gems inhabit. Easy-going Southern comedy? Whatever it was, he rustled up a few dollars and was able to give the world “Smokey and the Hotwire Gang”.

 

The first thing you see is a couple of good ol' boys get tricked by a sheriff who's using the CB to encourage drivers to speed down the stretch of road he's looking after. Unfortunately, his car is garbage and theirs is a Porsche, so they blow past him and continue with their day. One of them is on leave from the Army, the other one is...blond. That's about as much character as I got from them. They exist to get the audience up to speed on how amazing CB radio is and how dumb cops are, basically.

After that, all bets are off on what the movie is about. There's a van, with some sweet paintings on the side, driven by “Billy The Kid”, and he picks up a hitch-hiker who's also got their own portable CB radio which they use to ask for rides. Then there's a couple of car thieves who spend some time at classy strip joint “Filthy McNasty's” before heading off to an upscale party hosted by one “Hotwire”, aka Eleanor Brookhurst; she's the crime boss of the city, stealing cars for her upscale clients (who ought to be able to afford their own), running prostitutes, and (in what passes for the central plot of the movie) arranging for an armored car full of a million dollars to get held up.

There's a mobile brothel, run by two cheerful prostitutes, who announce their wares over the CB too; a guy who's handle is “The Jewish Cowboy”; and a couple of idiot cops. The cops suck at driving so they release a guy in a weird sparkly costume from jail so he can drive them round – sparkly suit guy then really gets into being on the side of good. Oh, and a gang of Hotwire's mafia-style goons, one of whom is Tony Sirico, who'd go on to huge fame as Paulie Walnuts in “The Sopranos” (despite him being listed in the credits, this doesn't show up on his IMDB profile).

ASIDE: There's also James “Son of Stacy” Keach, Alvy Moore (formerly of sitcom “Green Acres”) and Tony Lorea (who was in “What's Up, Hideous Sun Demon?” and “Hot Shots”) rounding out the cast. So, Cardoza had a few dollars to throw around, at one point.

My chief broad stroke is that Tony Cardoza perhaps bit off more than he could chew when it came to his directorial debut (I think he wrote it, as well, under the “pseudonym” T. Gary Cardoza). I've listed a bunch of different characters above, and I'd love to say one of them is the star, but they just sort of bounce of each other in random pairings, or are just featured in short scenes on their own. The CB radio is perhaps the star of the movie, as every character uses it, and we're treated to tons of CB speak, which for the uninitiated is just sorta like the language that develops around large websites, only said by a bunch of people with mostly redneck accents.

I've tried, quite a lot, to figure out why this movie was put together the way it was – Cardoza seems to have had almost complete control over it, so the way it looks like it was edited mostly at random (apart from a few scenes near the beginning and a few near the end, the rest could be in almost any order) is weird. It amounts to a series of 2-minute scenes featuring whichever actors he had on set that day? I mean – the acting is tolerable, it's lit so you can tell what's going on, the camera remains in focus throughout – but it does have quite a few technical issues, like focusing on the wrong character in a scene, or the sound being weird, stuff like that.

 Oh, my favourite is when you see a shot of two people talking in a supposedly moving car, and it's very obviously standing still. I love that they try to give the impression it's moving, by rocking it a little and running a light over it (to recreate street lights zooming past) but then don't bother not shooting the background, which stays completely still.

It does have one of the most amazing pieces of product placement I've ever seen, too (more for the time it was made, when that really wasn't a thing that movies did). Action basically stops for a minute while the entire screen is taken up with an ad for Dad's Root Beer, with the impression being it's on the TV that a couple of characters are watching. But it's an advert, straight-up inserted in the middle. Well done, Mr Cardoza!

Perhaps the most curious thing about it all, though, is the complete lack of anything approaching progress. Take the Jewish Cowboy, who appears to just be some guy driving through town. The movie takes place over several days, but he's still close enough to the action at the end to be able to still comment on it. Where was he going? He ought to be half a country away by the end of the movie. At least “Convoy” and “Smokey and the Bandit” ended up somewhere different to where they started.

So strap yourself in for some 70s slang, 70s sexual politics, and get ready for a good time. This is why I love bad movies so much – anyone can make a normal-ish drama, there are tons of perfectly competent actors and technical crew around for the hiring. But not everyone can make something that sort of looks normal but is in fact absolutely bonkers, seemingly without effort. Anthony Cardoza has been involved in the making of many such bonkers movies, and for that we must celebrate him. I see an old interview with him where he talks about writing an autobiography – he's sadly no longer with us, but if anyone reading this knows his family, and that book is sat somewhere unpublished, I'd love to read it. I bet he's got some fascinating stories of the Z-list.

Rating: thumbs up