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.
