night patrol

This is second worst movie I've ever written about, and definitely falls into the category of "so bad it's good". The worst, in case you're interested, is Smokey and the Bandit Part 3.

Night Patrol is a movie a friend told me about a long, long time ago. So long ago that none of us hadn't heard the word 'internet' until years later, so it's not like you could hop online and check a review to see if the flick was any good or not.

I'm guessing the only reason why that friend thought this movie was so funny is because he was probably drunk when he watched it. Either that or he has a seriously low-class sense of humor. Maybe both. I don't know.

This flick is a 1984 comedy movie that tried and failed to ride the coattails of Police Academy, released the same year seven months earlier. It is said that Night Patrol was made on weekends only, and that everyone in the movie worked on a deferred salary. From that information alone you should know right up front what to expect from this piece of garbage.

It is true that the Exorcist "possessed girl" Linda Blair is in this movie. She's an all-grown-up hot 25-year-old at the time the movie was made - if you can excuse the hairspray-extreme hair:

This and one other super-quick shot are the only parts where you see Linda showing some skin.

Other than that, there is one and only one scene in this movie that's actually funny, and that's the diner scene.

The scene is below, but before you watch it, this is about as good as it gets for a truly funny comedy scene. Whoever wrote it knew what he was doing, there's no trying-too-hard-to-be-funny crap going on, there's actual character that's good, the set design is right, atmosphere is right, continuity is spot-on correct and the whole thing works. If the entire movie was done just like this one scene was, it would have been a smash hit. Unfortunately it wasn't. The end result is only 3 out of 85 minutes actually worth watching, and those 3 minutes are below.

Enjoy.

Published 2011 Jul 23