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The "Magnum Farce" of Sledge Hammer aims at deserving
targets and scores a bull's eye every time. Thanks to DVD, one of the funniest,
most unconventional sitcoms of the 1980s has been gloriously revived, with an
abundance of bonus features that fans are going to love. This is sweet revenge
given the show's original ABC time-slot, buried under Miami Vice and
Dallas on Friday nights, but creator-producer Alan Spencer's savvy spoof
of Dirty Harry had critical praise in its favor when it premiered (with a
senseless laugh track, mercifully deleted here) on September 23, 1986. Played to
perfection by David Rasche and introduced with an infectious Danny Elfman theme
song, Sledge is a trigger-happy male chauvinist pig (er, cop) in mismatched
clothes who thinks The Deer Hunter is a comedy, sleeps with his .44
Magnum (called simply "Gun"), drives a bullet-riddled sedan with an "I ♥
Violence" bumper sticker, and somehow manages to always catch his quarry. "I'm a
nihilist, not a stylist" he says (in the hilarious episode "Sledgepoo"), and
that puts him at reckless odds with his lovely, karate-kicking partner Dori
(played with flawless aplomb by former soap-star Anne-Marie Martin) and the
vocally volcanic Capt. Trunk (Harrison Page, a slow-burn master and vital
ingredient to the show's excellent casting). |
