Last year, I convinced my mother to
“let me just peek” in the video rental store located in her
sleepy little mountain town. She had never been with me on one of my
video rental “raids” so, she was a little concerned 15 minutes
later when I hadn't returned to the neighboring coffee shop. She
found me shortly thereafter, sitting in the floor of Movie Time Video
in front of 6 racks, surrounded by stacks of “10 for $5” VHS.
Despite several minutes of protesting on her part and the painstaking
15 minute check-out by a lady with half as many teeth, I left with
several grocery bags full of happiness. It was then that I added “The
Naked Man” to a still-growing VHS collection.
Today's game of VHS roulette brought
“The Naked Man” back to the limelight and, true to the box, it
did not disappoint. Not many movies could combine underground
wrestling, holistic medicine, chiropractics, Elvis, a
physically-challenged drug kingpin, bikers, deadpan detectives and
plane propellers in a way that makes perfect sense.
Poor little Eddie Bliss Jr. falls
victim to one of the most serious ailments facing youngsters in the
late 1990s – his mom dressed him like a pussy and the other kids
beat the shit out of him. So what else would you have done, being
said youngster in said decade? Who could you turn to? What could help
make you not such a pussy? Luckily, little Eddie Bliss Jr. had a
library card and it was here he found the answer to his woes –
wrasslin'.
Spending so much time participating in
the greatest of Grecian sports – you know, rolling around with
another man, getting all sweaty, grunting a lot - naturally led
little Eddie to explore more of the lifestyles of the ancient
Greeks. I speak of course of their holistic approach to the human
body. Despite his pharmacist fathers' outright damning of America's
truer past-time, little Eddie suffered through years of grueling
exercise montage. This landed him the opportunity of a lifetime - a
wrestling scholarship to a Chiropractic college. Jaded by his
father's disapproval, as it has happened innumerable times before, he
leaves his little hick town behind to pursue both of his dreams.
Luckily, on down the road, he knocks
up one of those real pretty girls who is totally supportive of her
interesting boyfriend's hobbies until she gets that second line of
doom. Hence, the end of Eddie's illustrious career as the Naked Man –
his main outlet for all the emotional dysfunction he would have
obviously developed having been given wedgies by a fat kid wearing a
shirt with a silhouetted middle finger and flannel, yeah, THAT
kid. Eddie, now in his 30s, with a kid on the way, (I mean, hey, his
life is over now anyway, right....) returns to that little hick town
to open up his own Chiropractic practice, right across from his
father's pharmacy.
Shortly after a heart-warming reunion
with his father and introduction of his knocked up wife to both of
his parents, Eddie leaves the pharmacy for a quick errand. Oh, Eddie,
if only you had stayed! Well, if he had stayed, he would be pushing
up daisies like the rest of his family, what a boring movie that
would have been.
Upon his departure, Eddie runs into
(literally) The Driver (John Caroll Lynch) and Sticks Verona (Michael
Jeter) – the aforementioned Elvis and physically-challenged drug
kingpin. The two men settle into Bliss Pharmacy. They enjoy such a
delicious banana split you see, so much so that Sticks decides to
make them an offer they can't refuse. Since “you can't get any
older than dead” and you certainly get a whole lot of dead from
crutches that double as shotguns - or maybe they're shotguns that
double as crutches....either way, they're bad ass – most of the
Bliss family eats it. Poor Eddie, having arrived too late to acquire
the X-Ray machine he set out after, then
having locked himself out of his running car, walks back to town –
only to find the body bags being zipped up.
This
would be enough to ruin a man of lesser character, but not dear ol'
Eddie. He picks himself up, steals a cop car (and a very stylish hat)
and returns to the ring – re-enter the Naked Man!!! This isn't the
Naked Man we all have grown to love though – this is a Naked Man on
a mission! Luckily for all of us, this mission begins with a 30-man
battle royal. After disposing of every wrestler at Sammy's
Sport Shows, Eddie takes the mic, delivering quite a heartfelt speech
to a gym full of confused wrestling fans about spinal-sacral
alignment and the plight of the human race that stems from a
misaligned spine. Such a prophecy left only empty folding chairs and
battered wrestlers.
Disturbing the peace at this magnitude of course requires the
involvement of deadpan detective duo Koski (Joe Grifasi) and Burns
(John Slattery). These two have their roles down pretty well, they
even get a Gumby joke in there.
Like so many of us in the throws of a psychological break, Eddie
winds up at a biker bar. Nothing compliments an individual's
descent into madness like shooting pool, air heavy with stale
cigarette smoke, and guys with names like Mountain. Besides, where
else could Rachael Leigh Cook make her leather-clad entrance? Dolores
(Cook) was present for his Yin V. Yang post-wrestle'pocalypse speech
and is wholly enamored. She and the Dali-Naked Man cruise on out,
leaving in their wake a plethora of broken pool cues and shoddy chalk
outlines. A night spent toasting marshmallows leads to a few weak
memory sequences followed by an early morning of proper campfire
extinguishing and hitting the open road.
It's on this “know it when I get there” stolen motorcycle trek
that Naked Man passes Puffy's Drug Outlet. Wherein, Eddie learns one
of life's most truest truths – the best front for an illegal drug
trafficking ring is a drug store.
It's time for a little consumer investigating, and ass-kicking.
Naked Man works his way to the top of the operation rather quickly. I
mean, there's just 3 thugs, an old dude and an incarnation of Porky
Pig in human form standing in his way. Dispersing the lower ranks so
easily only sets Eddie up to get a needle of drugs in the ass. Now,
it is hard to distinguish just what type of drugs are in that needle
based on the scenes that follow, but there's at least a HINT of
sign-over-your-inheritance-inol in there. Having so thoroughly
eliminated the threat Bliss Sr. and wife posed having their quaint
little pharmacy, all that was left was to acquire from their sole
heir the rights to their property and business.
His John Hancock secured, poor Naked Man is shipped off to the
mental institution no one could have seen coming. Followed shortly
thereafter by the Dolores-assisted breakout no one saw coming.
All of this leads up to the big pay off – the drug deal gone
horribly awesome. Turning the lone guard on duty at the airfield into
a pretzel was nothing compared to what is about to go down.
Assuming he has endured years of a very serious drug habit, the
Driver is obviously no match for the mental gymnastics the Naked Man
unleashes. This basically entails an arms-length struggle ending in
the Driver accepting his new “very important work” as an honorary
narcotics officer. Time to make our way with a revolver out onto the
airstrip to shoot a few dudes that are unloading a plane full of
drugs.
BUT
WAIT, that plane full of drugs still has it's PROPELLERS on!!!
Thence, we witness the best scene in the whole movie. It's one of
those scenes where you think to yourself “Ohhh....THAT'S
where the budget for most of the movie went”. It's short, but it's
rewarding regardless. What follows is an exercise is stupidity even
for this movie. After a “riveting” final confrontation with his
wheelchair-bound nemesis, Naked Man delivers a Spina Bifida curing
adjustment to Sticks Verona on the tarmac in the company of our two
favorite detectives. If he had spent more time running away instead
of taunting a man in an anatomically correct full-body leotard and
two cops with their guns drawn, Sticks may have made it out a little
more “alive-ish”. This, coupled with news that his wife survived
the showdown at the Bliss Pharmacy Corral, brings our hero's
ass-kicking spree to an end.
It's one of those movies I know I can't recommend to just anyone. I
don't want to hear “this is stupid, can we please watch something
else” when I put this on. It's one that I save for those few people
I know will really appreciate it. Those people I know will agree with
me and join in when I proclaim, “Naked Man...You're the man!”
-Kalan
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