For a long time, one of Hollywood’s dirty little secrets was the Alan Smithee pseudonym. For decades, it was the fake name used when a director wanted to have their name removed from a film due to the film being taken away from them, re-edited, or reshot in post-production. Most Alan Smithee movies ended up becoming pretty obscure, but one of the most high-profile movies to wind up carrying that name was the 1986 action movie, Let’s Get Harry. It was a movie that had a real shot at being a hit, being a big-budget action movie with a hot cast that included then-recent Oscar winner Robert Duvall, Biff from Back to the Future, Jake from Sixteen Candles, Gary Busey, Mark Harmon, and even Glenn Frey of The Eagles. Yet, it’s a movie that barely got a theatrical release and went direct-to-video in most places. So what happened?
The premise of Let’s Get Harry
The director who took his name off Let’s Get Harry was Stuart Rosenberg, who is probably best known for directing the Paul Newman classic Cool Hand Luke, as well as the Robert Redford hit Brubaker, and—of course—The Amityville Horror. The film has a fairly moronic eighties plot—which apparently was hatched by B-movie auteur Sam Fuller, who—in addition to his many B-movies—also made some great films toward the end of his career, including The Big Red One, and the controversial White Dog—which is a movie about a racist dog and was shelved for many years.
The plot is pure eighties cheese, in which an American engineer, the titular Harry, is kidnapped while working on a pipeline in Colombia along with an American ambassador. A cartel leader, Carlos Ochobar, wants to trade the ambassador for the freedom of his fellow cartel heads, but the government won’t negotiate. So, Harry’s pals back home—four blue-collar factory workers, who include Harry’s brother Corey—decide to hire a mercenary and head to Colombia themselves so they can rescue him.
Why the premise feels so unbelievable
Pretty silly, right? Let’s not forget that Let’s Get Harry was made in the era of Rambo, so the idea of four untrained factory workers grabbing Uzis, explosives, and taking on a cartel probably sounded to some studio head like a good idea. It’s probably the most unbelievable premise in the history of action movies, especially now that the public has a less naïve version of what the drug trade in Colombia was actually like. In the film, Ochobar has a dozen or so men in the jungle, whereas cartel bosses like Pablo Escobar literally had armies at their disposal.
What makes the premise especially hard to swallow is that none of our heroes have any kind of combat experience or are even presented as veterans. They are just a bunch of naïve, blue-collar guys, with the cast an interesting mix of eighties personalities.
Cast highlights: Glenn Frey, Gary Busey, and more
Arguably, the lead in the film is Michael Schoeffling as Corey. While you may not recognize that name, at the time he was quite the heartthrob, having starred as the iconic love interest Jake Ryan in Sixteen Candles opposite Molly Ringwald. He also had a nice role in Vision Quest and had the dark good looks of a Matt Dillon–like star. In the film, Corey is the ringleader for the group, with his search for Harry motivated partially by the fact that his elderly father, Harry Sr., played by The Last Picture Show Oscar winner Ben Johnson, is heartbroken that Harry has been taken, and Corey never felt he measured up to his brother in his dad’s eyes.
The second most prominent member of the team is the most interesting casting choice, with Glenn Frey playing Spence, the shop steward who secretly is also a serious cokehead. Despite this being shot in the “just say no” era, Spence’s coke addiction isn’t presented as too much of a problem, as when things go sideways, despite being gacked to the tits, Spence is the most badass member of the group, with him rocking an Uzi and mowing down bad guys. And no, he doesn’t quit drugs by the end—in fact, in the final showdown, it’s strongly suggested he pockets a little of the bad guy’s coke for personal use.
Frey’s casting is unusual, as he was—of course—best known for being a rock star, with him the frontman of The Eagles. At the time, his solo career was at its peak, with him having a couple of huge hits, “The Heat Is On” from the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack, and “You Belong to the City” from Miami Vice. The latter was key, as in a popular episode, “Smuggler’s Blues,” which is named after one of his songs, he has a good role as a drug-smuggling pilot, and his easy charisma on screen was noticed. Although outside of small roles, this would be his only headlining film. He’s actually a blast in it.
The other two members of the crew are played by Thomas F. Wilson, with it his follow-up to Back to the Future, in which he plays the tough-talking Bob, who has a moment of cowardice on the mission but comes through in the end, and Top Gun co-star Rick Rossovich as Kurt, the only one with common sense, as he bails on the mission halfway through. Best of all is Gary Busey as a local car salesman, Jack Abernathy, who has the money the guys need to bankroll the mission and comes along for the thrill of the hunt. Being Gary Busey, you get a sense that he’s a psycho, but next to Spence and Corey, he rises to the occasion and gets a heroic death scene.
Robert Duvall’s performance and what went wrong
What elevates Let’s Get Harry is the performance of Robert Duvall, who plays a mercenary named Shrike, who the guys hire. Duvall apparently took the role very seriously, mingling with real-life mercenaries, and as such shaved his head and sported a goatee—which is a very contemporary look for a movie set in the eighties. Of all of them, Duvall is the most convincing in the action scenes as far as weapons handling goes, and he has an amazing hand-to-hand fight scene that makes you think Duvall should have headlined more action movies in middle age.
So, what happened to make Let’s Get Harry such a disaster? Apparently, the reason Rosenberg took his name off the movie was that the studio financing it, Tri-Star Pictures, wanted a lot of reshoots. Why? Partly because the man they’d hired to play Harry, Mark Harmon, became a major star in the months following the initial shoot. Best known for St. Elsewhere, where his character was sent off with a highly dramatic AIDS storyline, Harmon got some major heat when he was named People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive.
The troubled production and Alan Smithee legacy
As such, chunks of the movie were reshot to shoehorn in more Mark Harmon, which is why the movie often cuts away to him as a prisoner in Colombia as he tries to escape. Supposedly, you never actually saw him until the ending in the original cut.
More Harmon supposedly meant less Duvall, with his role pared down, which is a shame, as far as charisma goes, Duvall should have been the lead, with Busey and Frey as strong support. All due respect to Michael Schoeffling, who quit Hollywood in the early nineties, but he didn’t have the presence to lead a big-budget action movie. He was too lightweight—although to be fair to him, he gets nothing to play with. Had Harmon played his role instead, then maybe you would have had something.
In the end, Let’s Get Harry vanished into obscurity, only getting a regional theatrical release on just over 133 theaters, where it made a king’s ransom of only $140k domestically. It went direct to video outside of the U.S. but found some notoriety on cable, likely thanks to the involvement of Busey and Duvall.
The comment section exists to allow readers to discuss the article constructively and respectfully, focused on the topic at hand.
What’s Not Allowed