My Steve Railsback double feature concludes with the odd 1980 movie-movie THE STUNT MAN.
I don’t know what I was expecting from THE STUNT MAN, but it wasn’t this. It opens with a shot of a dog licking his balls, which is appropriate because this is another movie about making a movie. Two cops are chasing Steve Railsback for crimes unknown. He gets away but, through a complicated series of events, winds up hiding out on the set of a WWII movie pretending to be a stuntman named Bert who is actually dead due to a stunt gone wrong. The identity-switch is arranged to cover the ass of the eccentric director (Peter O’Toole) and he quickly falls for the female lead (Barbara Hershey), who he considers famous because he recognizes her from a sexy dog food commercial.
The police keep hovering nearby and he continues to work on the movie as a stuntman, comparing his situation to a war buddy who stepped on a landmine and couldn’t step off because that’s how you get blown up. But strangely it never really goes back to the story of him being a fugitive. It’s just this really surreal, inventive story about his possessive love for Hershey, his friendship with O’Toole, and eventually his fear that it’s all a conspiracy to kill him in a re-try of the stunt that killed Bert. (more…)
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Time to get back to my ongoing study of the works of Brian Trenchard-Smith. This one will also be part 1 in a Steve Railsback double feature.
