A weird adventure story
depicting the exploits of three ex-cons traveling through Depression-era West
Virginia, Fools’ Parade features such
a delicate combination of eccentric characterizations and literary contrivances
that it would have taken a director of tremendous artistry to pull the pieces
together into a coherent whole. Alas, Andrew V. McLaglen is not such a
director. Because he presents the story with the same brisk, unvarnished style
with which he made several entertaining action films, the peculiar nuances of Fools’ Parade end up feeling completely
false. So while the movie is watchable thanks to the novelty of familiar actors playing offbeat scenes, Fools’
Parade isn’t satisfying—the execution is too straight for fans of
idiosyncratic cinema, and the storyline is unlikely to thrill people who prefer
conventional narratives.
Jimmy Stewart stars as Mattie Appleyard, a recently
paroled inmate who accrued $25,000 in back pay through 40 years of hard labor
behind bars. Mattie has gathered a surrogate family of fellow ex-cons,
including Lee Cottrill (Strother Martin), a nervous would-be storekeeper, and
Johnny Jesus (Kurt Russell), a naïve youth. The trio’s goal of starting a
business together hits a roadblock when they realize their former jailor, a
psycho named “Doc” Council (George Kennedy), has conspired to prevent Mattie
from safely cashing his $25,000 check. This circumstance precipitates a battle
of wills between the ex-cons and their once and future oppressor, who chases
after them with gun-toting henchmen. There’s also
a subplot involving a blowsy madam (Anne Baxter) and a reluctant prostitute
(Kathy Cannon), plus another subplot involving a corrupt banker (David
Huddleston) who’s in cahoots with Council.
Fools’ Parade was based on a book by Davis Grubb, who also wrote the source
material for the 1955 cult classic The
Night of the Hunter. This is arch material, but McLaglen plays the story
straight, missing opportunities for irony, satire, and whimsy. Only
the action scenes really work, at least in the conventional sense. Another issue is the clunky dialogue by
screenwriter James Lee Barrett, much of which the normally excellent Huddleston
is forced to deliver; Huddleston is little more than an exposition machine here.
Despite these fatal flaws, Fools’ Parade is mildly arresting. Watching Stewart play a stately
crook who does things like yank his glass eye from his skull in order to tell
fortunes is bracing. Martin squirms through one of his signature performances
as a Southern-fried oddball. And Russell plays every moment with the same
gee-whiz sincerity he brought to myriad Disney flicks in the early ’70s. Yet
Kennedy delivers the movie’s most extravagant performance. Wearing grime over his teeth
and wire-rimmed glasses over his face, the bulky actor hunches over like a
troglodyte and drags out utterances in the vocal style a tweaked country
preacher. His acting is spectacularly bad. (Baxter almost matches him for
over-the-top stagecraft, especially since she wears garish whore makeup.) It’s
hard to imagine how or why Fools’ Parade
got made, since it must have been nearly as strange on paper as it is on
screen. After all, the climax features a sight gag involving a lovable dog fetching a stick of lit dynamite. However, these bizarre flourishes make Fools’ Parade a curio—one can only marvel that the movie exists.
Fools’ Parade: FREAKY
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