User Reviews

My favorite comedy feature of all time. Harry Hurwitz's greatest film. This film has a following of three people. Unfortunately I'm one of them. See this movie…don't worry you can trust me, I'm a Werner Herzog fan!

Ken Hotz -director of "PITCH"

In this second and last feature film comedy for Harry Hurwitz.Chuck McCann again tries to satirize the movie making industry.But Unlike his previous endeavour with Hurwitz:"The Projectionist"."Comeback Trail"Is a forgettable look at movie pornography.As Hurwitz fills the script with unnecessary violence,Tasteless gags,foul language and unreal settings that do little to endear this stupid parody of low budget filmaking to audiences and film students.The plot(Or what little plot there is)has "Enrico Kodiak"(McCann)(A bad screen version of Chuck's popular kidult tv villian:"The Great Bombo Dump")and his bumbling partner:"E.Eddie Eastman"(Bob Stats)trying to find a way of saving their little film business by trying to get enough monies to pay off their creditors.They come up with a scheme to bring an ex movie cowboy actor:"Bute Montanna"(Buster Crabbe)out of retirement to appear in a contemporary western and.Since the two fiends believe that this old guy is in no shape to do the strenouious stunts on camera.He'll drop dead,as the only beneficaries of his life insurance policy.They collect a fortune and pay off the bill collectors.But "Montanna"prepares himself for the film and succeeds in not only making the film a hit.He also takes over "Kodiak's & Eastman's"studio and their fourtunes.Crabbe gives his most capable performance in this film.But with little or no plot and with alot of offensive material being done.There is only so much that he can do in this film.Even Ina Ballin and Jara Kohout(Chuck's co stars from The Projectionist)do very little to help make this film a hit."The Comeback Trail"is Buster Crabbe's Last Movie.It's sad that this film provides very little in the way of thrills and excitement for Buster Crabbe fans or gives us any real comedy or nostalgia remincising for old movies fans or for fans of movie comedy and fans of Chuck McCann in general.Kevin S.Butler

My review was written in June 1982 after a screening at Manhattan's Thalia theater.

Made on a shoestring budget, "The Comeback Trial is a mainly-improvised comedy that has been on the shelf for a decade. Though boasting some genuine laughs and an impressive "winging it" lead performance by Chuck McCann, pic is likely to return to the vaults forever.

Filmmaker Harry Hurwitz started shooting in December 1970, shortly after the public bow of his affectionate nostalgia comedy "The Projectionist", and used many of the same players and technical people who worked on that earlier film. Final product is a series of disjointed episodes, with internal evidence of off and on tinkering, reflecting a probably troubled shooting history.

Though Hurwitz's emphasis here is on vulgar (R rating level) humor, pic bears an affectionate attitude towards serials and early cinematic forms, as did his "Projectionist", "Chaplinesque docu and earlier "The Penny Arcade" short. Chuck McCann and Robert Staats topline as porno-exploitation pic producers running Adequate Studios, with product displayed in posters and clips bearing titles ranging from "Pussy Patrol" and "Bull Dyke Baby" to "The Phantom of the PIzza Parlor", and filmed in processes such as "Sinnerama".

Cameo players show up in black & white clips from these films, including Prof. Irwin Corey as a doubletalking mad scientist plus Lenny Schultz title-roling "Revenge of the Chickenman"; Monti Rock III singing and dancing in front of nude chorus girls; and Henny Youngman intercut with authentic footage (a prototype of the technique used in current "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid").

Duo devises a scheme to make some big money: hire an old-time actor for a comeback role, have him die during production and collect the big insurance payout. Cowboy star Duke Montana (Buster Crabbe) is selected for this honor, but shows up for work looking so fit that the producers embark on a series of murder attempts (poison, dangerous stunt work, etc.) to no avail. Film ends arbitrarily with an epilog in which Montana is back on top as a big star again, with duo working as his house servants.

Though vaguely similar in format to the latter Victor Mature pictures "After the Fox" and "Head" in which Mature pleasantly ribbed his old image, "Comeback Trail" fails because Buster Crabbe is used as merely a good-sport straight man to the adlibbing comedians. One quickly begins to feel sorry for him having been involved in such a tacky comeback. Gags of them trying to film a Western in Manhattan's Central Park are painfully amateurish, as is Hurwitz's use of static, long takes with virtually no transitions between scenes.

At times McCann is very funny in explosive comedy routines here, including in some Abbott & Costello-style crosstalk bits with Robert Staats. Staats is okay, though his patented pitchman routine (with tagline "If you know what i mean") was much funnier in Charles Band's 1978 bawdy comedy "Fairy Tales", The decision to emphasize improvisation is probably what killed this project (and made it unreleasable), evidenced most obviously in a sequence taking place on Joe Franklin's N. Y.talkshow. McCann and Staats get carried away and start making fun of Johnny Weissmuller and Glenn Strange, much to the on-screen discomfort of Crabbe.

This tastelessness goes against the spirit of Hurwitz's best work and would simply annoy rather than amuse the nostalgia-oriented audience "Comeback Trail" could have courted. Tech credits are lousy.