After the success of Stir
Crazy, Columbia/TriStar urgently wanted to reteam Richard Pryor and
Gene Wilder in another comedy, but a host of personal factors got in the way. Even a partial list
reads like a soap opera. There was Pryor's 1980 self-immolation while freebasing cocaine; his
subsequent recovery from drug addiction, only to be diagnosed with multiple sclerosis; Wilder's
marriage to Gilda Radner, with whom he made three films; and their repeated unsuccessful
attempts to start a family, followed by Radner's diagnosis with ovarian cancer.
It was during an apparent remission from Radner's cancer that Wilder and Pryor reunited with
their Silver Streak director, Arthur Hiller, to shoot See No Evil, Hear No Evil.
Wilder had insisted on script participation, and he shared the credit with five other writers. But viewers
expecting another Stir Crazy were disappointed. The two stars still had undeniable onscreen
chemistry, but they'd become different people in the intervening nine years. The film itself
lacked the loose, improvisational style that Stir Crazy's "fish out of water" format and road
trip story allowed. Instead, it relied on intricately choreographed physical comedy and, in one
instance, a film-length conceptual gag with a delayed pay-off (I'm being vague on purpose for
those who haven't yet seen it). Contemporary critics were harsh, but See No Evil, Hear No Evil
has aged well precisely because physical gags are timeless (which is why Chaplin and Keaton
still make us laugh). To the credit of the writers and the performers, the routines are funny even
though many of them depend on Pryor's character being blind and Wilder's being deaf. Pryor and
Wilder are so good that they never seem to be making fun of the disabilities. Instead, they use the
disabilities to make fun of everyone else (including each other).
Wally Karue (Pryor) lost his sight in a car accident. To the endless frustration of his sister, Adele
(Kirsten Childs), Wally routinely pretends that he can still see, which lands him in all sorts of
trouble. He also has a bad habit of placing bets on horses (both legal and otherwise), which he
rarely wins, and of quitting jobs when he doesn't feel respected.
Dave Lyons (Wilder) lost his hearing to teenage scarlet fever. A skilled lip reader, Dave can
conceal his condition as long as he can see people's faces while they're talking. Formerly an
actor while he still had partial hearing, Dave now runs a newsstand in an office building in Union
Square. Needing an assistant, Dave places a want ad, and Adele brings Wally in response. The
job interview, like many scenes to come, is a precisely timed dance of comic miscues, but Wally
eventually gets the job.
The pair seem to get on, and they even discover a talent for coordinated bar room brawling, with
Wally putting all his rage into his fists and Dave directing his jabs and his footwork. But then one
day Wally's bookie, Scotto (John Capodice), comes looking for him on an overdue marker and
gets himself murdered right in front of the newsstand. The killers are a sleek pair of psychopaths, Kirgo and Eve (Kevin Spacey and Joan Severance),
for whom Scotto was
transporting some sort of rare gold coin (McGuffin alert!). They, in turn, report to a shadowy
figure named Sutherland (Anthony Zerbe), who, for the longest time, is seen only in silhouette at
the other end of telephone calls.
Wally heard the gunshot that killed Scotto, and Dave, who happened to have his back
turned examining his shop's antacids, saw only Eve's spectacular legs as she walked away. By the time
the police arrive, they're both crouched over Scotto's body, and Dave has thoughtlessly picked
up the gun that Eve left behind. They're both arrested, but not before Wally has managed to
pocket the contents of the newsstand's change box, where, as it happens, Scotto dropped
the rare gold coin just before Kirgo and Eve caught up with him. As we know from what we've
already seen, neither Wally nor Dave has great communications skills, and New York cops aren't
renowned for delicacy; so both of them are hustled off in cuffs.
For the rest of the film, Wally and Dave are chased around New York and New Jersey alternately
by the police—from whom they manage to escape after an exasperating interrogation by a police captain named Braddock (the late Alan North, who
also played cops in Highlander and Police
Squad!)—and by Kirgo and Eve, who want first the coin and then to kill them, because they're
classic "loose ends". Wally and Dave take the news of their impending elimination each
according to their character: Dave tries to bargain his way out, promising they won't say
anything, while Wally asks Eve for a last wish, adding, "I suppose a fuck is out of the
question?"
Evading pursuit makes the mismatched pair bicker like an old married couple, but it also forces
them to work together in numerous intricate maneuvers. Their flight in a police car driven by
Wally results in one of the more unusual chase scenes in Eighties films (and can anyone explain
how the cops manage not to notice Eve's hot red sports car joining the pursuit?). Their
masquerade as a pair of European doctors (German and Swedish) attending a medical convention
so that they can infiltrate a luxury hotel where Kirgo and Eve are staying gives Pryor some of his
best moments of pure silliness. (He gets pulled into a seminar where he has to answer questions
about orgasm therapy—in a Swedish accent.) And the long-postponed encounter with the
mysterious Sutherland is, for me, one of director Hiller's finest set pieces. But let's not spoil it
for the first-time viewer.
Keep an eye out for Second City member Audrie Neenan, who shows up in two roles, one as a
maid at the New Jersey hotel, and the other as a hapless police photographer who finds herself
trapped in a clever variation of "Who's on first?" as she tries to take Dave's mug shot.
Image completes its recent trilogy of Richard Pryor releases (the other two being The Toy and
Stir Crazy) with a
respectable 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray that brings out all the detail in
cinematographer Victor Kemper's imagery. Kemper, whose credits include Dog Day Afternoon
and Eyes of Laura Mars, knows a thing or two about shooting a bustling cityscape, and he uses
locations like Union Square, Tribeca, the Westside Highway and the Hudson River to great
advantage. People often debate whether comedies are worth upgrading to Blu-ray; regardless of
where one stands on the issue, when a film includes scenery like this, the question isn't even
close.
Detail in everything from Dave's newsstand products to Eve's lacey undergarments is well-rendered.
Black levels and contrast are appropriate, and colors are well-delineated and properly
saturated. Film grain is visible but not intrusive, and the grain pattern appears natural and
undisturbed by digital manipulation. I saw no indication of high frequency filtering or artificial
sharpening, nor were any compression artifacts visible.
The film's original stereo soundtrack is presented as PCM 2.0. The left and right separations are
distinct from the opening bars of the lively score by Stewart Copeland, but there is no surround
activity to speak of, even when the track is played through a decoding system such as DPL IIx.
Voices sound natural, and the dialogue is always clear.
I don't have Sony's 2001 DVD release of See No Evil, Hear No Evil for comparison, but informed sources report that the disc included the
film's theatrical trailer, along with trailers for Money Train, Bad Boys and Blue Streak. The Blu-ray, however,
contains no extras.
The film in which Pryor and Wilder first teamed, Silver Streak, is probably the one that fans
most want to see on Blu-ray, but it's a Fox property, and who knows when it'll see the light of day?
Meanwhile, Sony controls the rights to two of Pryor's peerless standup films, Richard Pryor Live
on the Sunset Strip and Richard Pryor . . . Here and Now, which would make a terrific
double-feature Blu-ray. Pryor was a brilliant and subtle actor, but no film role ever fully tapped his
restless genius, even the autobiographical Jo-Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling, which he co-wrote and directed. He needed a live audience and a
stage that he could people with characters, all of
them rendered so vividly that even inanimate objects acquired distinct personalities. (Pryor's
crack pipe in Live on the Sunset Strip spoke with a more distinctive voice than the
leads in many contemporary films.) For now, though, See No Evil, Hear No Evil will have to hold us.
Recommended.
In addition to Friday's announcements of Adaptation and Stir Crazy, Image Entertainment also revealed plans to bring A Soldier's Story (1984), Nothing in Common (1986), See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989) and The Toy (1982) to Blu-ray. All four of the Sony catalog ...
See No Evil, Hear No Evil Blu-ray, Forum Discussions
