Patron Pick – Quigley

This special reward is available to Patreon patrons who pledge at the $10 or $20 monthly levels. Each month, those patrons will pick a film for me to review. If they choose, they also get to include some of their thoughts about the movie. This Pick comes from Matt Harris.

Quigley (2003)
Written and directed by William Byron Hillman

When you see a film like Quigley, many questions flow through your mind. “Are we meant to believe 50-year-old Curtis Armstrong is actually 35?” “Was this just a money laundering scheme by the mob?” “Are we laughing with Gary Busey or at him?” If Quigley were to come out today, it would, like the work of Neil Breen, be caught up in the meme machine. Yet, this picture was released in the early 2000s, shot on video, and released straight to the VHS format. At every turn, I was confused by this picture, wondering how aware the people on set were that this was utter garbage. A paycheck is a paycheck, I suppose.

Archie Channing (Busey) is a greedy billionaire who has profited from video games. He dies in a car accident and is given an option to atone for his many sins. The catch is that he will be reincarnated in the body of a Pomeranian named Quigley. He’s watched over by his guardian angel, Sweeney (Horror director Oz Perkins), who doesn’t really help him but stumbles into scenes while watching from afar. While Archie lives life as a dog, his business partner Dexter (Armstrong) attempts to launch a new console for the company. Meanwhile, Archie is reconnecting with his estranged brother Woodward (Christopher Atkins) as part of his atonement. It’s a painfully confusing movie.

One of the film’s biggest problems is a complete lack of coherent geography. It is impossible to determine where characters are in relation ot each other. The blocking in a scene might be completely off, breaking the 180-degree rule and leaving us scratching our heads. Even worse is when a character goes from one location to the next. There is zero sense of time and space. The video game company is either a vast distance from Woodward’s home or right next door to it. By the end of this film, I wasn’t sure if it all took place in one day or throughout several. Characters will talk about something happening later that day, but we don’t see it until the film’s end. However, other characters speak about days passing. The film takes place in a limbo dimension where time doesn’t matter.

The core plot of the movie is about Archie getting a second chance. When he gets to Heaven, which looks like a set for a public access talk show, he’s told that god has a couple tasks for Archie, as a dog, to complete, including helping his younger brother. If the man-dog does this, he will be allowed into Heaven permanently. Archie does as he is told, but when he returns to Heaven, he says you can only get in with faith; there are no second chances. Then god offers him a second chance. This leads to Archie waking up in the hospital and the audience wondering what we just forced ourselves to sit through. Was this just a shit It’s a Wonderful Life and Heaven Can Wait with a dog? Also, Busey reportedly got into arguments on set because he said Heaven didn’t resemble what he saw when he had his near-death experience and suffered the brain trauma that seems to get worse with each passing year.

I don’t know if it’s a selling point to you, but the angel Sweeney can see Archie’s human form, so much of the film features Gary Busey on all fours wearing a dog collar. I’m sure someone has a fetish for that particular imagery. Sweeney is such a pointless character. He doesn’t really do anything to help Archie. He’ll show up wearing a different bowling shirt each time and then very awkwardly trip and fall into bushes. When we think of great physical comedians like Keaton or Chaplin, we think of their balletic fluidity, making everything seem so real. Perkins is not anywhere close. He looks like a guy pretending to fall down. I think the pivot to directing over acting was an intelligent choice.

Hinging a major part of the film on video games is made even worse when we see the movie’s approximation of a video game. Woodward has been creating family-friendly games, and we watch his kids play one of them. While onlookers remember how amazing it is and the best video game they have ever seen, I don’t think most audiences will feel the same. It’s the crudest, non-video game-looking interactive thing I’ve ever seen. The character will proclaim the beauty of the graphics. You will look at the muddy junk on the screen and wonder if anyone was convinced by this. The video game in question involves skipping stones across a pond and is treated like it is the most revolutionary thing in gaming ever. 

You will see Busey slip and fall into a pile of fake dog shit. You will wonder why his offices are decorated with so many ancient Egyptian statues, which never come into play in the plot. The sound mixing will drive you crazy. It’s such a stunning mix of technical and creative incompetence. While the actors involved aren’t known for any mind-blowing performances, you would at least expect them to salvage something from this mess. However, not even they have the talent to overcome the sheer bizarro nature of this whole affair. Without Busey, the movie would have been bland & forgettable, but his particular brand of insanity takes this to a whole other level of film. 

Would I recommend Quigley? Uh…not really. But this isn’t the type of film you recommend to a person. You warn them about it, and then it’s in god’s hands.