Good Pimps

Rounding out my Dan Aykroyd film collection, I watched “Doctor Detroit” the other night, followed by watching again (for the first time in years) “Night Shift”, not a Dan Aykroyd film but having a similar plot.  Both are films about sympathetic pimps.

Night Shift (1982).   We had this on VHS ages ago.  My favorite line is when Chuck (Henry Winkler) tries to get Bill (Michael Keaton) to stop talking, so he shouts into Bill’s tape recorder, “this is CHUCK reminding BILL to SHUT UP!”

            Chuck Lumley works at the morgue in NYC.  Normally he’d be a financial manager, but he found that job too stressful, so he slummed down to the morgue, where nothing ever happens and office politics is non-existent.  The boss demotes him to night shift, to give his own nephew the cushy day job shift Chuck formerly had.   Much to his dismay, the quiet of night shift is rudely interrupted by his reckless, irresponsible new shift partner, Bill.  In addition to never shutting up, Bill also runs a limo service using the morgue’s hearses.  “What if we get a call?” asks Chuck.  “No big deal, the corpse isn’t going anywhere,” is Bill’s response.

            Eventually they cross paths with a sympathetic prostitute, Belinda (Shelley Long) (best known as Diane from “Cheers”, a role she’ll pick up soon after this movie) who also happens to be Chuck’s neighbor.   This causes problems with Chuck’s fiancé Charlotte (Gina Hecht) who is neurotic and not much fun, nor all that attractive either.  With Belinda’s pimp an early casualty of the story line – Chuck meets her when she’s at the morgue to identify the late pimp’s corpse – Bill gets the bright idea for the pair of them to act as pimps themselves.  They take 10% (instead of the customary 90%) and invest the girls’ earnings in legitimate business enterprises (no car wash, though).   The excrement hits the oscillating ventilation device when the local baddies – who had murdered the prior pimp – then try to kill Chuck.   The bigger story line is Chuck finally growing a pair and telling everyone – Charlotte, food delivery sleazebag, hostile apartment building dog – to f**k off.   

Doctor Detroit (1983).  I think of this as an early Dan Aykroyd film, and it is – but not that early.  It’s after “Blues Brothers” and only one year before “Ghostbusters”.   James Brown has a cameo in this one.  As you recall, he was in “The Blues Brothers” as well. 

            Borrowing heavily from Jerry Lewis’ “The Nutty Professor”, here’s the plot.  Chicago pimp Smooth Walker (Howard Hesseman) is in big trouble; he’s been embezzling money from his boss, “Mom”, a mafia godmother (Kate Murtagh).  So he cooks up a fictional competing mobster, “Dr. Detroit”, who he claims has been shaking him down.  All well and fine, but Mom decides she wants to bump ugly with this Dr. Detroit guy in person.  Now SW has to find a patsy to fill the role.  Enter Clifford Skridlow (Aykroyd), a mild-mannered English professor at a local college.  I’ve lost track of how many films feature a college desperate for money to stay in business, but this is one of them.  Although assured de facto tenure because his father (George Furth – the sourpuss guy in the “Cannonball Run” movies) is the dean, Skridlow is nonetheless on shaky ground because the school can only survive if a magnanimous benefactor, Harmon Rausehorn (Andrew Duggan) is persuaded to make a donation.  Skridlow himself is assigned by his father to sweet talk Rausehorn and persuade him to follow through on his promise.

            Although he has misgivings about filling the role of DD, Skridlow is persuaded by SW’s four girls:  Monica (Donna Dixon), Thelma (Lynn Whitfield), Jasmine (Lydia Lei), and Karen (Fran Drescher).  Of course now he’s having far more fun in one night than he’s had in a lifetime; onscreen he gets drunk and heavily stoned, plus the implied offscreen sex with the four women.   In addition to the challenge of portraying a pimp/godfather face to face with Mom, Skridlow still has to schmooze Rausehorn, who remains mercifully patient throughout this whole affair.   Finally it will boil down to a climax where he has to bounce back and forth between competing engagements - and identities - in the same hotel.  

Both films have an undeniable 80’s flavor to them:  the 80’s finally asserting themselves as a new decade and no longer looking like the 70s [in “Night Shift”, look out for: Ron Howard as the subway sax player who pressures Chuck into donating, and Kevin Costner as a frat boy at a morgue party.]   The pimps were drawn into the business almost by default, and share the issue of concealing this unconventional profession from their straight-laced peers who might not understand.   And naturally – hate to spoil the surprise – but their issues wind up successfully resolved.

“And there was much rejoicing…”