Memories of the Dudes (1987) VHS cover in the Comedy aisle of a video store, Jon Cryer and Daniel Roebuck with their hands up next to a cactus, promising fish-out-of-water laughs with two punkers in a western, radiating Bill and Ted comparisons, or even Wayne’s World (not knowing as a kid that they were from the same director, Penelope Spheeris). If I’d seen Dudes at the time, it would have been a disappointment from the expectations of the poster. Dudes would have been hard to market, with its strange tone, where there are funny moments, but it’s not a broad or mainstream comedy.
As three punkers – Jon Cryer, Daniel Roebuck and Flea – decide to change their lot in life by driving cross country from New York to the promise of California, they are attacked by redneck criminals, led by Lee Ving. There’s a death, and though beaten and robbed, the surviving duo of Cryer and Roebuck avoid capture and plot revenge, particularly when the cops are no help. In a decade when the western genre was dead, Dudes revives the archetypes and tropes in a contemporary arena, plugging in two nihilistic punks who find purpose in vigilante justice, spurred on by the ghosts of the Old West.
While Spheeris still had mainstream comedies awaiting in the 1990s, Dudes has a foot in her earlier movies, with a gritty edge not too removed from the world of The Boys Next Door or The Decline Of Western Civilisation (certainly not as grim as either). It also preempts the wave of road movie indie flicks in the flyover states like Roadside Prophets. Also shot by Robert Richardson, who would go on to work with Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino amongst others, and contributes to the film’s evolving style, from darkened NYC streets to John Ford type vistas and ghostly apparitions in a dusty Wild West abandoned town.
Best leading part for Jon Cryer outside of a John Hughes movie. Great supporting cast including Catherine Mary Stuart from Night of the Comet as a helpful homesteader, Lee Ving from FEAR as the villain, and Flea as the doomed punker with a lot of heart. And you will believe in the character of “Daredelvis”, a daredevil Elvis impersonator played by Pete Willcox.
Offbeat and slapdash, you can see why Dudes wasn’t a commercial hit. Not everything works, such as a dated subplot where Roebuck dreams about being a Native American Indian during the 1880s and begins to talk and dress like an Indian. And yet Dudes remains a unique take on an iconic American genre crossed with a specific music scene. An oddball forgotten flick for the weirdos. Streamed on Tubi (US).
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