Every Which Way But Loose

Every Which Way But Loose. 1978 Warner Bros. Pictures.
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke, Geoffrey Lewis, Beverly D'Angelo, Ruth Gordon, Walter Barnes
Director: James Fargo
Available from Amazon as a single DVD, or as part of a Triple Feature with Any Which Way You Can and Honkytonk Man.

Clint Eastwood makes a comedy where one of his co-stars is an orangutan named Clyde. I supposed this helped his career out considerably, and he did it for a few dollars more.

Eastwood is Philo Beddoe, a truck driver and part-time auto mechanic from the San Fernando Valley, who lives in a small house with his pet orangutan behind that of his best friend Orville Boggs (Lewis) and his mother, simply referred to as Ma (Gordon). Philo earns extra money on the side as a bare-knuckle fighter, and he is often compared to a legendary fighter named Tank Murdock (Barnes).

At the Palomino, where people with heads like potatoes regularly get slobbering drunk and thrown into jail down in San Bernardino for 30 days, Philo becomes smitten with an aspiring country singer named Lynn Halsey-Taylor (Locke). They quickly hit it off, and things seem to be going great until the day that she leaves town without telling anyone. Philo, thinking he's falling in love with her, sets off with Orville and Clyde to Lynn's home in Denver. On the way, Orville meets Echo (D'Angelo), and she joins them on their quest.

In the meantime, Philo is dealing with an ongoing feud with a motorcycle gang called the Black Widows, who get on Philo's bad side after two members insult him and Clyde at a traffic light one afternoon. Philo chases them down and takes their motorcycles, which he repaints, repairs, and resells. Every attempt the Black Widows make to get even results in more humiliation, including the time where they end up losing a showdown to a shotgun-wielding Ma. In addition, a sheriff named Putnam (Gregory Walcott) trails the party to Denver after losing a fight to Philo at the Palamino just after he learned that Lynn had skipped town.

Unfortunately, Lynn isn't as nice of a lady as she has led Philo to believe, and there's also a showdown with Murdock in his future.

Recommended movie, although I can understand why most critics panned it back in '78.