Night Patrol

Night Patrol is one of those films where you finally catch your breath after laughing, and then lose it again a second later. I seen the movie for the first time on the same day I'm posting and I'll say it tops most comedies I've seen to this day.

If you like Conan O'Brien type humor then this movie will put a smile on your face, and a tear in your eye. Or something like that.

I rented this movie more than 10 years ago when I was in my very early teens. It's loaded with juvenile sex, gas and lesbian jokes. It also had so much gratuitous nudity that I often watched it for no other reason than to stare at the bodacious breasts. I LOVED IT!! Too bad I decided to give it another viewing a few years back. JEEZ was I a stupid kid. In fact, I couldn't even sit through it again and the below review is from my childhood memory of this disaster caught on celluloid. Remarkable, how age completely alters perception.

Not that it matters, but the plot (if you could call it that) involves a stupid masked ('Unknown') comic running around robbing convenience stores, subjecting his victims and the audience to a barrage of horrible jokes. For reasons that become clear at the movie's 'twist ending', a certain police officer becomes interested in catching the masked madman. Into this mess, throw Pat Morita as a girl-voiced sex-crime victim forced to abuse himself repeatedly to amuse a gang of lesbians, women repeatedly coming under a bizarre spell causing them to spontaneously remove their shirts, Bill Barty walking around releasing enough gas to inflate the Hindenberg and 'The Unknown Comic' gaining enormous popularity, despite telling worse jokes than Jackie Martling.

A lot of nonsense happens, all supposedly related to the police investigation of the masked thief's crime spree. It all comes together in the end when we learn the 'Unknown Comic's' true identity and the leads fall in love and have sex (giving us a glimpse of Linda Blaire's ample bosom).

Still interested? Then keep in mind that this movie is shot in such an amateurish manner, you'll swear the cinematographer was either blind, or couldn't bare to watch what he was filming. Further, the dialogue is so inane, you'll be scrambling for a knife to cut your ears off.

In the end? Avoid at all costs, unless you are 12. However, if you want your girlfriend to leave you, I suggest you rent this movie, tell her you saw it just before you met her and you know she'll love it.

This film does a superior job of balancing its exceptionally crude humor against the setting of occupational narrative of a police officer moonlighting as the Unknown Comic (bag over head), just as the protagonist does a superlative job balancing both careers. While criticized as appealing to a adolescent sense of humor, Night Patrol is entirely worthwhile for all ages, so long as they have a vulgar and adolescent level of maturity. The fact that the humor is very coarse and the laughs cheap does nothing at all to detract from the intensity of that laughter or the sense of fulfillment that it engenders. Night Patrol has been too long out of print and deserves a reissue.

Make no mistake, Night Patrol is a mix of juvenile stupidity and toilet humor.

Maybe that's why I liked it so much.

Comedy of this nature doesn't ask much of your brain. Your age and/or sense of humor fills in the blanks. Even years down the road some pretty funny segments stand up. On a shoestring budget and featuring the likes of The Unknown Comic from the 80's (who? Yeah exactly), Pat Paulsen, Linda Blair and a few other familiar faces.

The whole thing isn't trying to be anything it's not. Sure you could say it was riding the coat tails of the 80's Police Academy screwball cop genre, but it does it way cruder and funnier than anything Guttenberg and Co. Ever did. Night Patrol has it's own camp style.

I was pretty young when I first seen this (no surprise). Now much older it still ranks as one of my favorite comedies. Sure some of it is dated. Some of the material didn't hold up well. There's also some gags I'm sure you couldn't get away with today, but few things are classic shtick. Bodily function jokes, boobs, a The Good, The Bad and The Ugly parody, more boobs, etc. I'm not going to attempt to sell this movie to you. If you like it - you already know why. The humor is raw, crude and funny.

I could NOT stop laughing.

Does that mean I have a juvenile sense of humor? I'll try to feel as bad about that as I can.

Great casting. Murray Langston runs off with this one in both roles. And I agree with Michael (Psychotronic Magazine) Weldon. Pat Paulsen can make me laugh with a facial expression.

Billy Barty's gassy chief was a trip too. And Linda Blair was great looking in her semi-serious role.

The best scene was the two gay cops getting their assignment. "Yes, I'm 1 are you 1 too?" "If you're 1 then you must be 4." "I'm 4 whatever he's 4." It was great seeing a pre 'Diceman' Andrew Dice Clay playing basically himself too.

A laugh riot.