Any Which Way You Can

Any Which Way You Can

The movie “Any Which Way You Can” directed by Clint Eastwood is not a very good film. But you can’t help feeling a slight affection for it. What other country and western road picture packs in two fights, a bald motorcycle gang, the Mafia, a love story, a pickup truck, a tow truck, Fats Domino, an octogenarian foul-mouth and an oversexed orangutan not to mention the bare-knuckle championship of the world?

It would appear that the movie was made as free-association with those elements in any order. This gives it shape. It starts with a no holds barred fight between Clint Eastwood and somebody (Who? Doesn’t matter). While he’s slugging it out on screen somewhere in backcountry California or Oregon with some guy named William (Big Bill) Smith who used to be in lots of motorcycle movies but now looks like he could use one himself, we see Clint’s highly intelligent orangutan (named Clyde) relieving himself in the front seat of a state police car. And we know don’t ask how, but we know that one of the things this movie will be about is Orangutans Crap In Squad Cars. We are right. That’s what kind of movie this is.

After the fight Clint goes home his home appears to be somewhere near Tulsa; he still lives with Ma played by Ruth Gordon as Ma Kettle meets Ma Barker. He spends all day with his partner Orville Boggs banging on things with wrenches. Occasionally Clyde tears apart old Mercurys with his bare hands.

Then comes word that the Mafia wants to set up this big do between Eastwood and Jack Wilson ((who is actually supposed to be the Eastern States champion but talks just like anybody else). And guess what? I recognized Jack Wilson right away because he’s played by William (Big Bill) Smith!

So Eastwood and Smith meet while they’re jogging out at the airport one morning, and then Smith falls off a cliff and is saved by Eastwood, after which he goes into some bar where a bunch of clowns are drinking beer out of cowboy boots (led by Harry Guardino) and starts beating up on them for making derogatory remarks about Eastwood’s girlfriend.

The girlfriend is played by Sondra Locke, who was also in “Every Which Way But Loose” (1978). You have to give Clint and Sondra credit. Unlike Burt Reynolds and Sally Field who spent the first half of “Smokey II” holding an intense Interpersonal philosophical discussion about their relationship in “Smokey I” Clint doesn’t agonize over his reunions. Two minutes after they see each other across a crowded country & western barroom, she’s being consoled by his orangutan.

Ten minutes later they’re starting a riot at the YWCA. It’s that kind of movie.

Anyhow, so next thing you know, the Mafia kidnaps Sondra Locke to force Eastwood to fight (why do these guys always lay down two-bit bets on bare-knuckle fighters?). And then Big Bill Smith comes around again with his motorcycle gang from downtown L.A., wipes out the Mafia headquarters with 250 rounds from an M-16 fired through an armored window at point-blank range, sends all the Italians running for cover in Tijuana, but decides he still wants to fight.

So him and Clint go back to Tulsa or wherever it is that these guys live (I keep saying Tulsa because there’s one scene on location there at a topless bar called “Peaches,” but it could be Cleveland), lock themselves in an auto-wrecking yard overnight to talk it over (“What?” asks Clyde).

And finally we get down to the big fight, and it’s some fight. It’s one of those fights where every time somebody gets hit in the face, it sounds like they’re taking the top off a convertible; and where every time somebody gets hit on the chin, it sounds like they’re beating hell out of a Naugahyde sofa with a Ping-Pong paddle.

Clint wins.

If we still doubted that this was a Clint Eastwood film, those doubts are removed when Eastwood breaks his arm during the brawl, gets to his feet and says, “It ain’t over yet.”

The other recurring motif in “Any Which Way” besides orangutan crap in squad cars seems to be music. The original movie was fueled to huge box-office success by the release of the hit country single “Every Which Way But Loose,” by Eddie Rabbit.

Everybody but Mr. Rabbit shows up this time: There are songs and/or appearances by Glen Campbell, Ray Charles, Fats Domino, Jim Stafford (who sings “Cow Patti”), Johnny Duncan, Gene Watson, Sondra Locke, Clint Eastwood (“Beers to You”), David Frizzell (“You’re the Reason God Made Oklahoma”) and Cliff Crofford (“The Orangutan Hall of Fame”).

Of all these people, Fats Domino is probably the most inexplicable. What on earth is Fats Domino doing in a Clint Eastwood C & W action movie about an orangutan? I guess it’s that kind of movie.

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