Ruthless People (1986)
Movie rating: 7/10
Danny DeVito is “only” the lead actor here, not the director. Yet Ruthless People has many of the same qualities that would later inform his work as a director: black comedy, disreputable characters double-crossing each other, money squabbles, all seven deadly sins in abundance. The movie was directed by legendary comedic filmmakers David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker (ZAZ), best known for classics like Airplane!. ZAZ usually wrote their own work, but directed Ruthless People after then Disney chief Michael Eisner — who had previously worked with them at Paramount — sent them the script, which the trio found too good to pass up.
The story begins with fashion mogul Sam Stone (DeVito) telling his mistress Carol Dodsworth (Anita Morris) about how he married wife Barbara (Bette Midler) for her father’s money, and now plans to kill her. When Sam returns home, he finds that Barbara has been kidnapped, and receives a phone call from the kidnappers who threaten to kill her unless he delivers them a $500,000 ransom, instructing Sam not to tell anyone. The kidnappers are a young working class couple, Ken (Judge Reinhold) and Sandy Kessler (Helen Slater) who are seeking retribution after Sam used their life savings to help build his business and stole Sandy’s design for a spandex miniskirt. Needless to say, Sam is delighted by this turn of events and has no intention of paying any ransom. Meanwhile, Carol has hatched her own scheme to blackmail Sam with the help of her dimwitted lover Earl Mott (Bill Pullman in his first film role), which similarly does not go according to plan.
Watching today, the first thing you’re likely to notice about Ruthless People is how overwhelmingly ’80s it is: from the music (which includes a theme song by Mick Jagger that plays over the animated opening credits) to the hairstyles, fashions, interior design, cultural references (Carol passes her time in captivity working out to aerobics videos, and Earl’s goldfish are named Crockett and Tubbs) right down to the plot and character motivations. Though Gordon Gekko would not grace movie screens until the following year, his mantra “greed is good” perfectly encapsulates the prevailing ideology of the 1980s: the decade of Reagan and Thatcher, of resurgent conservatism and monetarism; of privatization, deregulation, financialization of the economy, and worship of the free market.
Ken and Sandy are working people — he a retail worker selling stereo equipment, she an aspiring fashion designer — who have been screwed over by the forces of rapacious capitalism embodied by Sam Stone. Sandy is decent and kindhearted, and requires pressure from Ken to convince her that kidnapping Carol and holding her for ransom is necessary. “What the hell’s the point of being a decent person when no one is?” he asks her. “Let’s be assholes and get rich!” This is the guiding ethos of capitalism: veneration of greed and selfishness; individual self-interest and profiting at the expense of everyone else. In order to succeed, Ken tells Sandy, they must become “ruthless”. Ken says this as he is uses a newspaper to let out a spider found inside their house. After a moment’s thought, he follows his own advice and steps back outside to squash the spider underfoot.
Spoilers follow.
Much of the fun of this movie comes from the misunderstandings amongcharacters in their attempts to be “ruthless”. When Carol sends Earl out to videotape what she assumes will be Sam getting rid of Barbara’s body, Earl ends up filming a man having sex with a prostitute, whose screams he mistakes for the sound of Barbara being murdered. Having not actually watched the tape, Carol sends it to Sam in an attempt to blackmail him, only for him to interpret it as a sexy birthday gift and declare he’ll do “the same” to her. Carol thinks he’s threatening to kill her and sends the tape to chief of police Henry Benton (William G. Schilling), who it turns out is the man having sex with the prostitute in the video and believes that Carol is blackmailing him. It all makes for a darkly amusing comedy of errors.
While it would be nice to say the moral is “crime doesn’t pay”, technically crime does end up paying off for Ken and Sandy. The two had repeatedly lowered the price they demanded for Barbara’s life, bottoming out their offer at $10,000, at which point Sam calls them out:
Ken Kessler: Mr. Stone, this is no joke! We’re desperate people! We…
Sam Stone: I believe this is a joke, pal, and you’re it! The last time we spoke you said my wife would be in the morgue if I didn’t pay. Well, I didn’t pay and today I was at the morgue and she wasn’t there. You lied to me! You know what I think of you?
Ken Kessler: No.
Sam Stone: You got no nuts! What do I have to do? Put a gun in your hand, aim and pull your finger down, you spineless wimp? I dare you to kill her!
[Sam hangs up]
Sam Stone: Now that oughta do it.
On the other hand, Ken and Sandy end up collecting all $2.2 million of Sam’s personal fortune after Barbara — who has lost 20 pounds during her captivity and developed something of a friendship with Sandy, trying on her dress designs — realizes that Sam was having an affair and wanted her dead. “Do I understand this correctly?” Barbara asks when learning her ransom price has gone down to $10,000. “I’m being marked down? What is this? The Bargain Basement?” She joins forces with the Kesslers to blackmail Sam, who ends up paying because he is desperate to clear his name after Benton had him investigated and arrested for Barbara’s murder. Ken collects the money and drives off a pier, appearing to drown.
Meanwhile, a serial murderer known as the Bedroom Killer (J.E. Freeman), who broke into Ken and Sandy’s home and fell down the stairs to his death, has been disguised as Ken and is fished out of the car. The film ends with Ken, Sandy, and Barbara celebrating on a beach together with a briefcase filled with Sam’s millions.
While Ken and Sandy had to be “ruthless” and engage in criminal behaviour to collect money after Sam screwed them over, in a best-case scenario they might have ended up with $10,000. It was Sandy’s kindness towards Barbara that paved the way for them to work together to collect the $2.2 million. There’s an earlier scene when Sandy says of Barbara, “No matter what I do, there’s nothing I can say… she just tears into me! She hates me.” Ken responds, “Sandy, you’re her kidnapper. She’s supposed to hate you.” But when the two women bond and Sandy — to Ken’s shock and dismay — releases Barbara, the latter ends up returning to their house, at which point all three begin working together. Sandy’s gestures of kindness play an indispensable role in paving the way for the trio’s happy ending.
Then again, black comedy by its nature does not tend to present characters who are moral exemplars. Ruthless People drags a bit here and there, and some of its humour is a bit backward and sophomoric, like a joke about prison rape. But it’s funny and entertaining overall, and the influence of its dark sense of humour can be seen in later DeVito films like The War of the Roses.
