By Fred Blosser
As
a kid, I watched “Bourbon Street Beat” (1959-60), a Warner Brothers TV series
starring Richard Long and Andrew Duggan as two private detectives in New
Orleans, Rex and Cal. Even in those days
of generally undemanding audiences, most grown-up viewers probably realized
something I didn’t as a nine-year-old. “Bourbon Street Beat” was produced on nickels and dimes like every other
Warner Brothers PI and Western series of the day, and authentic New Orleans
backdrops were limited to a fleeting street shot of the French Quarter, taken
from stock footage. Everything else was
filmed on the Warners backlot in Burbank, including a partial exterior set
representing the Absinthe House at 240 Bourbon Street where the two private
eyes supposedly held down their office. With a quick switch, the detectives’ window looking out on the Vieux Carre
could be transformed into a window looking out on Waikiki, once this week’s
episode wrapped and filming began tomorrow for “Hawaiian Eye.” The most
authentic element of the show may have been Arlene Howell, a gorgeous model and
former Miss Louisiana who played Rex and Cal’s secretary, Melody Lee. Certainly, she was a better reason to tune in
than the archival footage.
Fast-forward
to 1986 and “The Big Easy,” a crime drama with on-location street scenes and
Crescent City atmosphere in abundance. Budgets and audience expectations had come a long way since “Bourbon
Street Beat.” The movie, directed by Jim
McBride, is available from Kino Lorber Studio Classics on Blu-ray. It opens with Detective-Lieutenant Remy McSwain
(Dennis Quaid) investigating the murder of a hit man that he and his fellow
officers in the New Orleans Police Department quickly attribute to a war
between rival organized crime gangs, one commanded by an aging mafia capo (Marc
Lawrence) and the other by a Black kingpin, Daddy Manton (Solomon Burke). The theory begins to unravel when Assistant
District Attorney Anne Osborne (Ellen Barkin) looks into the case and calls
McSwain’s conclusion premature. She is
as strait-laced as the half-Irish, half-Cajun McSwain is uninhibited, and offended
by his offhand acceptance of free meals at restaurants and other gratuities as
perks that go with his badge. So
naturally, in the usual Hollywood formula prizing sexual chemistry over logic,
the two quickly get a thing going. But
duty intrudes. Remy is caught in an
Internal Affairs sting operation, and Anne faces him in court as the chief
prosecutor. Meanwhile, additional mob
gunmen are murdered. McSwain examines
new clues with a more critical eye as they begin to pile up, and he comes to
agree with Anne. A gang war isn’t as
air-tight an explanation as he’d first thought.
Well-cast
with Ned Beatty, John Goodman, and Charles Ludlam in supporting roles, “The Big
Easy” was a respectable hit, even launching a 1996-97 TV series
executive-produced by Daniel Petrie Jr., who wrote the script for the
movie. Quaid and Barkin, both rising
talents, were a big draw, as were McBride’s plentiful scenes of zydeco parties,
crawfish boils, dinner at Antoine’s, and other exotic rituals in those days
before the Mardi Gras Week marathons on the Travel Channel and the Food
Channel. For fans of detective films who want scripts to cut to the chase,
though, there may be too much of Remy’s toothy flirting with Anne and too much
jambalaya in the first half of the movie, which begins to drag. But the pace
picks up in the second half with clever plot twists and a couple of crisply
directed action scenes, in which Quaid appears to do his less dangerous
physical stunts. Full disclosure, I have three degrees of separation from
Dennis Quaid, through someone who knows members of the Quaid family, but fuller
disclosure, I’ve never met the actor and I’m sure, never will.
The
Kino Lorber release of “The Big Easy” presents a rich image at the 1.85:1
aspect and informative audio commentary from Jim McBride, moderated by filmmaker
Douglas Hosdale. McBride offers interesting behind-the-scenes anecdotes,
including an explanation of how the great R&B singer Solomon Burke was cast
as Daddy Manton. Burke is one of two surprise faces in the cast. The other is
former New Orleans district attorney and Kennedy conspiracy theorist Jim
Garrison, who held a Louisiana state appeals court judgeship from 1978 until
his death in 1992. Garrison plays Judge Jim Garrison, who presides over Remy
McSwain’s bribery trial, much as the Beatles, Nicholas Cage, Tommy and Jimmy
Dorsey, Alan Freed, John Malkovich, and others have played “themselves” on the
screen.
The Blu-ray edition
of “The Big Easy” also includes trailers for several other Kino Lorber crime
movies and SDH captions for those of us old enough to remember who Jim Garrison
was.
Click here to order from Amazon.
(Fred Blosser is the author of "Sons of Ringo: The Great Spaghetti Western Heroes". Click here to order from Amazon)