A Texas-fried James Belushi is Stuck in a Murderous Time Loop in 1997's Trippy Retroactive
It's one of the actor's better direct-to-video joints.
James Belushi’s career has followed a rather conventional arc. He got off to a roaring start with memorable supporting performances in 1981’s Thief, 1983’s Trading Places, and 1986’s Salvador and About Last Night.
Belushi graduated to leading roles in films like The Principal, 1988’s Red Heat, and 1989’s K-9. Then came the flops. Belushi experienced flop after flop after flop after flop.
At a certain point, people lost faith in the actor’s ability to generate boffo box office because all of his movies were big old stinkers. After K-9 made WAY more money than it deserved, Belushi followed it up with Homer and Eddie, Dimenticare Palermo (a political thriller co-written by Gore Vidal, apparently, and consequently a movie I’ll cover for this series as soon as I can track it down), Taking Care of Business, Mr. Destiny, Diary of a Hitman, Once Upon a Crime, Traces of Red, Royce, Parallel Lives, Separate Lives Sahara, Destiny Turns on the Radio, Canadian Bacon and Race the Sun.
What do all of those titles, some TV movies, have in common? They’re all flops, and you’ve probably never heard of most of them.
So in 1997, Belushi did what actors whose best days are behind them generally do: he downsized and went direct-to-video with the tricky 1997 science-fiction Neo-Noir Retroactive.
I first became acquainted with this oddity when it was covered on We Hate Movies, one of my favorite bad movie podcasts. It sounded far more intriguing than a low-budget direct-to-video vehicle for Belushi from this period has any right to be.
That’s largely because Retroactive is, surprisingly and intriguigningly a time-loop movie where the lucky few can go back in time, but only for about twenty minutes.
The time machine is the creation of Brian, a scientist played by Frank Whaley. As Pulp Fiction indelibly established through dialogue, the actor has a big old brain, one impressive enough to crack the mysteries of time travel.
The time machine center seems low-key, a one-man operation, which suits this minimalist thriller.
Kylie Travis stars as Karen Warren, a former criminal psychologist whose car breaks down on a lonely Texas road. She makes the mistake of hitching a ride with Frank Lloyd (Belushi), a career criminal, killer, spousal abuser, and all-around bad guy.
Belushi leans into the character’s scuzzy villainy. He’s clearly having a ball playing a redneck with unforgivable sideburns and the world’s thickest Southern drawl.
Frank is ugly and gross on the outside. He’s even more hideous and grosser on the inside. The canny shrink instantly sized up Frank’s traumatized wife Rayanne (Cinemax After Dark Shannon Whirry, in a rare fully clothed role) as a victim of his drunken rages.
At a gas station manned by the late, great M. Emmet Walsh, beautifully typecast as a random-ass rural shit-kicker, the proprietor gives his pal Frank photographic evidence of his wife in compromising positions with a Hispanic gentleman.
The gun-toting lunatic does not respond favorably to the revelation. He shoots his wife, and then he fires at Karen as well. In an exceedingly lucky development, Karen is fortunate enough to run into the laboratory where Brian’s experiment is conducted.
This sends our heroine back in time, precisely twenty minutes, so that she can undo the past hour’s events so that Rayanne doesn’t have to die.
Things go even worse this time around, however. In trying to fix the problems of the recent past, they only create more. Karen asks a police officer for help, which causes the unhinged Frank to kill the cop, Rayanne, AND Jesse, the tow truck driver with whom his wife had slept.
More and more people get killed by Frank as Karen tries to engineer a past that will ensure a happy, murder-free future.
If you’ve ever wondered what The Source Code or Primer might look and feel like if it were a moderately over-achieving James Belushi vehicle from the mid-1990s, Retroactive has you covered.
It’s the kind of trifle that falls apart if you think about its premise. But if you DON’T think about the plot and its many holes, this is a spunky little B-movie with moxie, pizzazz, and flair. It might look more or less identical to all of Belushi’s other vehicles from this era, but it’s got a certain bonkers X factor that sets it apart.
Two notes:
-Kylie Travis was on some awful Aaron Spelling show in the ‘90s where I thought she was cute. I looked her up. Apparently she married a very rich man who is tight with Donald Trump. Ugh.
-Are you going to cover Belushi in the TV miniseries WILD PALMS? It’s basically an LA type TWIN PEAKS with some cyberpunk elements that’s kind of interesting but mostly a whole bunch of references designed to seem smart but just dressing up an empty story. Belushi would, ironically, later do some of his best work in the revival of the actual TWIN PEAKS