and one William Shakespeare even gets a co-writing credit.Anyway, the film is not by any means a masterpiece but it's amusing in a so-bad-it's-good kind of way. On this IMDbrief, we present a Streaming Passport to just a few of our favorites from and about the world's neighbor in the North.

Scholar Linda Hutcheon discusses this transcoding … The police accompany the brothers back to their house to retrieve their dog, Hosehead, to invade the party. Title Strange Brew Original title The Adventures of Bob & Doug McKenzie: Strange Brew Year 1983 ... but the place where they are going to work is called Elsinore - as Hamlet’s castle - and it evokes disturbing atmospheres. ), I also found fascinating how Strange Brew seems to blend adaptations. Plays, then, as an artificial performance form, must be transcoded into a screen mode. The brothers' antics at their trial cause the judge to declare them insane and put them under Brewmeister Smith's care at the asylum. Strange Brew is the soundtrack album to the 1983 cult comedy film, Strange Brew.

and running away.

The Elsinore Brewery is named after the Elsinore estate in Denmark. They are testing it on the inmates, making them play hockey and attack the opposite color when the music is right.

Filming also took place at the Old Fort Brewing Co. in Prince George, British Columbia. 17 of 31 people found this review helpful. Moranis' and Thomas' agents sent the script to various Hollywood studios, and a few days later they had a deal with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer based not on the script but on record sales, "the breakout potential, and the fact that it was being advertised on a television show", Thomas remembers. He crashes into the tent at the celebration and, mistaken for a skunk, frightens people away from the tainted beer. I especially liked the beginning of the film, which makes itself so conscious of being a film, including the false start, which results in everyone angrily leaving the theater at the failed McKenzie brother film. (1983).

As in Hamlet, madness is a central theme and the main plot of the evil Brewmeister in Strange Brew. [13], The plot, according to a Maple Palm (Dave Thomas' production company) release, would feature Bob and Doug, now working as garbage men, being convinced by a fast-talking insurance salesman (Aykroyd) to get into the microbrewing business. The KFC and Petro-Canada gas station seen in the background still exist. Having figured out Brewmeister's plan, Rosie foments an uprising among the brainwashed mental-patient test subjects. So they do. As part of its genre and setting shifts, the film adapts Hamlet in the following ways: In other words, Strange Brew frequently appropriates elements of Hamlet, refashions them in a burlesque, exaggerated fashion, and undercuts the tragic, noble authority of the “original” play. He appeared as Doug McKenzie on SCTV, for which he won a Primetime Emmy Award out of two nominations, and in the film Strange Brew (1983), which he also co-directed. She believes their mouse story, and Henry says such things never happened when they had men watching the bottling lines, so she gives them both jobs watching the bottling lines. One hockey game sequence goes on for about seven minutes and doesn't really have anything to do with... well... anything! Strange Brew.

Candy rose to fame as a member of the Toronto branch of the Second City and its related Second City Television series, and through his appearances in such comedy films as Stripes, Splash, Cool Runnings, Summer Rental, Home Alone, The Great Outdoors, Spaceballs, and Uncle Buck, as well as more dramatic roles in Only the Lonely and JFK. Also the woman playing the ex-brewster's daughter is supposed to be about 21 but she's clearly in her mid to late thirties... and at one point her birthdate is revealed in the film, and according to the date of the film, it places her at a much older age... so evidently Moranis and Thomas didn't really care at all about trying to convince audiences of anything with this film.And it's better that way. Brian McConnachie is an American actor, comedy writer, and children's book author.

Steve De Jarnatt is an American film and television director, screenwriter, and short-story author. These shifts in genre and setting undercut the film’s credibility as a “faithful” adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and actively challenge “fidelity criticism,” the idea that successful adaptations must attempt to be as close as possible to the adapted text (discussed at length by Hutechon in A Theory of Adaptation). [10], To promote the film, a beer-shaped paperback book was released in 1983, The Adventures of Bob & Doug McKenzie in Strange Brew: The Book About the Movie About the TV Show About the Men!.

I've rarely laughed so hard. Strange Brew The movie ends with an over-the-credits commentary by Bob and Doug about the movie and select crew members as their names scroll by in the credits. This album was released as a tie-in with SCTV at the height of the popularity of Bob and Doug, and a screenshot from the show was used on the album cover. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account.

Scholar Linda Hutcheon discusses this transcoding process in her book, A Theory of Adaptation, particularly focusing on the ways in which film can adapt “a manifestly artificial performance form like an opera or musical.”  While Hutcheon is specifically discussing musicals and operas, plays can also certainly be included as an “artificial” performance form, since the modern playgoer is periodically reminded that the action on the stage is fictional.

Meanwhile, Smith has locked Pam and Bob in a brewery tank and is filling it with beer; they escape this possible death when Bob consumes all the beer, expanding to a cartoonish size.

Enticed by promises of free beer and sausages, Hosehead leaps into the air and flies over the city like Superman.

Which rare movie snack would you put in all theaters? Thus, the tragic drowning scene of Jean LaRose/Ophelia becomes this: Hutcheon, Linda. It was released in August 1983 by PolyGram and Anthem Records of Canada. In the end, the McKenzie Brothers save the day and Pam and Rosie find true love.

Bob recognizes a brewery employee as one-time hockey great Jean "Rosie" LeRose (Angus MacInnes), who suffered a career-ending nervous breakdown and has fallen under Smith's control.

The best part is actually the beginning when Bob and Doug reveal their movie about a man who survives the holocaust and wonders the earth in search of beer. Strange Brew (also known as The Adventures of Bob & Doug McKenzie: Strange Brew) is a 1983 Canadian comedy film starring the popular SCTV characters Bob and Doug McKenzie, portrayed by Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis, who also served as co-directors. John Franklin Candy was a Canadian actor and comedian known mainly for his work in Hollywood films. As they pull up, a woman is stuck in her car between the entry gates, sparks flying. In 1982, he won an Emmy Award as part of the writing team for SCTV Network, and in 1979 he was nominated for an Emmy as part of the writing team for Saturday Night Live. One way of engaging with the Canadian comedy Strange Brew (1983), co-directed by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas, is to consider the film as a transmedia adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Bob is crying because they've never been apart before. SCTV Network is available on terrestrial network, cable, and satellite. The ghost then shows Rosie which vat Pam is in, and they rush down there to open it, only to discover that Bob drank all the beer and really has to go to the bathroom.

Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. However, the beer is already gone, so they have to stop the crowd from drinking it. A Theory of Adaptation. In 1981, Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas recorded a Bob and Doug McKenzie comedy album, The Great White North , which sold a million copies.

The book also included a joke library card with the names of numerous Canadian celebrities who had checked it out. Pingback: Covey On Film | Halifax film screening picks — June 26-July 2. It is a rare example of a Canadian show that moved successfully to American TV. it reimagines Hamlet as a woman named Pamela. Portrayed by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas, the duo reunited one last time in a retrospective on the characters and their lasting impact on Canadian and American pop culture. It begins with Bob and Doug McKenzie on a couch in front of a map of Canada as on SCTV, only now they're doing a movie. Directed by Rick Moranis, Dave Thomas. In other words, Strange Brew serves as an example of an adaptation that has been transcoded from one medium—a play medium—into a film medium.

Bob and Doug McKenzie are a pair of fictional Canadian brothers who hosted "Great White North", a sketch which was introduced on SCTV for the show's third season when it moved to CBC Television in 1980. He and Pam get captured and placed in a beer tank, which Smith starts filling. With Rick Moranis, Dave Thomas, Max von Sydow, Paul Dooley.

Hutcheon argues that there are two ways that a film can adequately transcode from an artificial performance mode to a screen mode: “There seems to be two possible ways to proceed. (This particularly occurs whenever the curtain drops between acts, or at intermissions, and the playgoers are drawn out of the action of the play.).

Since these threats are ultimately contained, the film becomes a comedy, but the plot’s darker moments remind the “knowing” viewer that the film could very well end in tragedy, just as the first Hamlet did. The Lone Star name is now owned by Pabst Brewing Company. Strange Brew could have been an even more direct adaptation of Hamlet, but screenwriter Steve De Jarnatt was advised to make the film a little less faithful to the original. The artifice can be acknowledged and cinematic realism sacrificed to self-reflexivity, or else the artifice can be ‘naturalized’” (46).

Bob and Doug learn that the brewery's former owner, John Elsinore, has recently died under mysterious circumstances and his daughter Pam (Lynne Griffin) has been given full control of the Elsinore brewery.

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"Strange Brew Soundtrack and Movie Music - The 80s Movies Rewind", "Strange Brew: Complete Motion Picture Score: Music", "Adventures of Bob + Doug McKenzie in Strange Brew: The Book About the Movie About the TV Show About the men!

Use the HTML below. While exploring the massive brewery, they find a shuttered cafeteria containing an old Galactic Border Patrol video game, which supernaturally reveals that Brewmeister Smith murdered John Elsinore and that Pam's bumbling Uncle Claude (Paul Dooley) was deeply involved. He flies all the way to Kitchener from Toronto and crashes through the tent roof. An Afternoon with SCTV is an upcoming Canadian-American comedy web television special reuniting the cast of Second City Television that is set to premiere on Netflix and CTV. Pam somehow got out of hers, and Rosie dove in to save her. They are accused of kidnapping, and Pam pretends to go insane. Once they have bribed the secretary and gotten in to see the uncle about their mouse, guided by hockey player Jean la Rose (aka Rosie) who seems to be both an Elsinore employee and an RCIMI inmate, they discover that she is Pamela Elsinore.

The album was produced by Marc Giacomelli, Rick Shurman and Ian Thomas. But to do so, they must confront the suspicious brew master and two teams of vicious hockey players.

The exterior shots of the store (now a Tim Hortons/Pizza Pizza) were filmed in Scarborough, Ontario, at the corner of Eglinton and Midland Avenues.

Like Andrew, I really enjoyed your mention of the film being very aware of its filmic medium.