1983 Directed by Michael Pressman
A shy but gentle man named Clifford Skridlow is a professor of comparative literature at the financially-strapped fictional Monroe College in Chicago. A chance encounter with four beautiful women at a restaurant changes his life forever.
Dan Aykroyd Howard Hesseman Donna Dixon Lydia Lei T.K. Carter Lynn Whitfield Fran Drescher Kate Murtagh Nan Martin George Furth Peter Elbling John A. Maloney Pershing P. Anderson William Munchow Ed Meekin Hank Salas Rudolph Kovar Peter Aykroyd Glenne Headly Annabel Armour Robert Cornthwaite Thomas O. Erhart Jr. Parley Baer Oliver Clark Ben Kronen Lance Kinsey Andrew Duggan Victoria Brown Blackie Dammett Show All…
Dr. Detroit, Доктор Детройт, Doktor Detroit, 닥터 디트로이트
USAR
Germany12
Germany
USA
This feels like the sort of deranged vanity project someone would make after a once-in-a-generation hit. Yet Doctor Detroit came out the year before Ghostbusters. Every choice is so bad or bizarre they should only be possible from either an artist who didn’t have a studio looking over his shoulder or a total madman. (Imagine how many people had to approve that ridiculous voice Aykroyd uses for Doctor Detroit!)
It’s one of the few Hollywood movies I’ve seen that merits comparison to The Room, where aesthetic judgments of good versus bad seem secondary to questions like HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? and WHY DID ANYONE THINK THIS WAS OKAY? Every time I revisit it I cannot believe it exists.
Cinematic Time Capsule
1983 Marathon - Film #28
”Nothing can destroy the doctor!”
Dan Aykroyd stars as a geeky college professor stooge who gets roped into running a high-class call girl service.
Aykroyd fills the film with a ton of manic energy and there’s some great songs including a DEVO opener and a James Brown dance number. I just wish more of the absurd goofball humor was actually funny.
The end credits annouce a sequel that Aykroyd was actually in the process of writing, but when this outing tanked the studio axed it faster than you can say Remo Williams.
”If our business here is concluded I’ll kindly ask you to leave”
Dan Aykroyd plays a nerd who has to pretend to be a pimp that acts like he is constantly being electrocuted.
And that’s it...that’s the joke.
I’ve wanted to watch this since I was a child because it seemed kind of naughty...I didn’t know the premise, I just saw hot chicks and Aykroyd acting like a goof. It turned out to be less sexy (read: less naked women) than I was hoping. Also less funny.
But, I did find out that Aykroyd married the hot blond prostitute who looks like Kelly Preston, so I guess he can’t really regret his choice to star in this.
Nice work, Dan!
The writing on this film was terrible. Very unfunny and mostly childish. It had zero creativity, just throwing weird stuff around because that makes people laugh? I don't think so, but these guys seem to disagree with me. It's also a kind of fantasy for Aykroyd, he is surrounded by beautiful women whom depend on him. They didn't even try to make it subtle, it's very "in your face".
Mild-mannered college Chivalric English teacher Clifford Skridlow is enjoying a nice dinner at his favorite Indian restaurant one evening when a man surrounded by beautiful women invites him to join them for dinner. One thing leads to another and, instead of going to see Sayjit Ray's "Pather Panchali" at a revival house as he planned, he ends up leading a double life as a sort of superhero pimp with a metal hand and green pants named Doctor Detroit.
All of that happens in this movie. I shit you not. They even reference "Pather Panchali".
Dan Aykroyd may not have been the biggest star that Saturday Night Live ever produced, but he certainly has to be the weirdest. His name isn't…
One of my favorite WTF DVDs from my ample & bizarre collection was “Dan Aykroyd Unplugged on UFOs,” just an hour and a half of the noted SNL alum and vodka connoisseur smoking cigarettes and yammering into the camera about all his extraterrestrial experiences, while also casually mentioning that he’s got Britney Spears’ phone number in his contacts. It’s one of the nuttiest goddamn things you’ll ever see. I used to throw it on sometimes when I was working, just to keep myself grounded and remind myself not to take things too seriously. I lost it several years ago, probably during one of my moves. Or maybe an alien took it.
DOCTOR DETROIT is another exceedingly nutty Aykroyd offering that I’d…
The vhs box for this shit forever looked at me in video clubs when I was growing up. Man, it blows. Not even James Brown saves this dumb, raunchy motherfucker. Dan Aykroyd tries with all his might to be funny. This sweaty, unfunny performance, especially when he turns into pimp Doctor Detroit is dead baby unfunny crap. Lynn Whitfield, Fran Drescher and Aykroyd's own wife Donna Dixon are hookers with hearts of gold. Early 80s comedy fuckin poison. 🤣
Aykroyd's first solo outing is a film that proves what weird time the early 80's were. This is a film that would never be made today, certainly not with this tone. Essentially this is a light-hearted romp about a man who takes on a pimp to save a few ladies, sort of like TAXI DRIVER made in day-glo colors.
Aykroyd plays a nebbishy professor who is trying to help save his father's college by hosting a fundraising banquet. His life is plunged into turmoil when he sort of inherits four prostitutes and has to save them from the vicious pimp, Mom. Assuming a number of different identities, including the feared Doctor Detroit, a bad-ass pimp from the big city, he…
"Mom, if you want trouble - I am talking about scorched earth, no survival, whole-sale destruction... body-bags and fire TROUBLE then you just keep comin' on!"
"You don't know what trouble is, jerkoff!"
"Mom, I am going to rip off your head and shit down your neck."
Doctor Detroit represents the worst of the past, present and future of 1983 Dan Aykroyd.
Past: dedicating so much time to a musical performance by James Brown, who didn't look at all pleased to be there. It's completely jarring in a comedy about prostitution to devote an entire dance sequence and musical number to somebody doing another favour for Aykroyd.
Present: Aykroyd attempting to break into new character traits that definitely do not…
I don't think anyone who saw this when it was originally released was remotely surprised once NOTHING BUT TROUBLE came out.
An absolute steaming pile of shoddily thrown together 80's trash, but I Iove it. The Doctor makes adjustments to the human spine, I watch this and Hell Comes to Frog Town for kicks. Whatever floats your boat.
1983 In Review - May
#4
A pimp on the run trusts his sex workers to a meek professor of literature, who accepts the challenge.
Up to this point in his career Dan Ackroyd wasn’t the Dan Ackroyd we know and love. Apart from The Blues Brothers he was struggling to find a hit, particularly a starring role. Doctor Detroit would be no different. It’s simply awful. I mean just what was Dan Ackroyd thinking. A comedy with laughs, a paper thin plot, it’s stupid and there really isn’t anything to like at all here.
Luckily for Dan Ackroyd a young comedy actor would be starring in his next film out in June 1983 that would turn his career round with a major hit.
