The Retrievers (RiffTrax)

Film Year:  1982

Genre:  Action

Director:  Elliott Hong

Starring:  Max Thayer, Shawn Hoskins, Leonard Miller, Randy Anderson, Bud Kramer, Ed Egington, Roselyn Royce, Hugh Van Putten, Harry Shapiro, Tony Caellano, Susie Holliday, Patricia Monville, John Hilton, Mary McCormick, Betty Caye

RiffTrax Year:  2022

Riffers:  Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett

The Movie

It took me a good long while to find just about any information on The Retrievers as every time I typed the title into a search function the result I got was for a family oriented movie about golden retrievers that came out in 2001.  I had to look up names in the opening credits to finally find it and eventually I found the IMDB listing.  Clearly the internet wanted to forget this movie and maybe it knew best.

This movie has nothing to do with golden retrievers and is instead about a dude who threatens to expose a covert group of combat assassins by publishing a book on them.  To his surprise (for some reason), he becomes their target as they seek to take him, his manuscript, and kill his family.  But one of the assassins has a change of heart and lets the hot sister live in hopes that he can get into her pants.  He then turns on the other bad guys and goes on the run with her and the manuscript to get it published and rescue her brother.

The Retrievers is an action movie that feels like it's taking influence from kung fu flicks and trying to mix them with the grittiness of Dirty Harry.  It's very much a film that feels like it should star Jean-Claude Van Damme but was made long before the Muscles From Brussels was discovered.  Also Van Damme would probably turn it down because the production would have been too low rent for him, and if the movie you're making is beneath Van Damme level then you probably shouldn't make it.

The Retrievers is made without any possible semblance of logic, and while most reviewers would use that phrase as hyperbole just to be an ass to whatever popular blockbuster is out, in the case of The Retrievers it's not an exaggeration.  Even if the movie weren't cheap-looking, it feels like it was written by a 12-year-old who saw an R-rated movie on TV and tried his best to replicate it using what knowledge of how he believes the world works.  Characters don't really drive the plot, they just really springboard reactions and start running in directions.  Our hero, played by Max Thayer (who had roles in Planet of Dinosaurs and Martial Law II), is very good at jumping into situations just to set up an action scene.  Halfway through the film he suddenly remembers he has a girlfriend and decides he needs to rescue her from the assassins trying to kill him, so he runs to the house of the woman we didn't know existed until this moment and SURPRISE she's dead already and the bad guys are there, so a fight breaks out.  This adds absolutely nothing to the movie except another fight scene, and he forgets about her straight away because ten minutes later he's having sex with the sister character that he's on the run with.

The film also climaxes with them getting the book published in a matter of hours and trying to ship copies out.  I mean...look, granted I know little about publishing, especially back in the 80's, but it seems to me that taking a manuscript that was full of typos and written-in corrections (this was seen in the movie) printed into multiple copies and put into a hardcover complete with a dust jacket and cover art is a bit longer than an overnight process.

Even forgiving just how undeniably stupid the plot of this movie is, the action scenes are just awful.  The stunt people look to be skilled martial artists, but the sequences are blocked and staged so poorly that what is supposed to be hard-hitting action just comes off as goofy.  Not helping matters are the foley artists, who go for very loud and animated sound effects for the film making it almost come off like an episode of The Flintstones.  Everything The Retrievers tries it fails at.  It's not exciting, it's not thrilling, it's not cool.  It is kinda funny, but I don't think it was trying to be that.

The Trax

"What the fuck is going on!"

"My review of The Retrievers."

The Retrievers is really stupid, oddly put together, and easy to make fun of.  This one should be like shooting fish in a barrel.  Unfortunately the riff for this film is a bit on the bare minimum side.  They comment upon basic observations of bad acting, weird sound effects, and its nonsensical plot, but very little of it is sharp enough to give one a biting laugh out of the satire.  Some of it is safe but brings a smile, while other material is stale and just kind of drowns.

On the bright side, The Retrievers is too absurd to not bring laughs to the table, even if it's from the trashy movie itself.  I found myself laughing at the bizarre construction of an action movie formula if nothing else and, as an easy t-ball for the riffers, there are some killer setups that they take full advantage of.  They take note of some of the setpieces in the film and just have some fun pointing out how stupid they are, with a favorite of mine being halfway through when our heroes sneak up on a naked book publisher in a bath and get very demanding about her meeting their needs.  There is a killer moment early in this scene where they sneak into the house and Mike is taken aback by the fact that apparently they broke in through the woman's closet.

Also I feel I should point out that this RiffTrax has one of the best "Golden Corral's new slogan!" riffs they've ever done.

But if you haven't picked this riff up, I think it can wait.  There are other riffs out there that are more pressing to add to your libraries, while The Retrievers is just a harmless one with a couple of laughs and just an glaringly incompetent film to coast on.  It's not up to their best standards.

Average