Blast From Bargain Bins Past – D.C. Cab (1983)

The year is 1983. The setting is Washington D.C., the nation’s decadent and corrupt foundation upon which swindling political power brokers plot, scheme, and shuffle around Americans’ hard-earned taxpaying dollars like obnoxious Scotch-fueled frat boys drunkenly dealing monogrammed playing cards. The infamous Marion Barry (D.C.’s mayoral “Scarface in Miami” equivalent) presides over a city splattered with narcotics, prostitution, and debauchery that markedly diminish Charlie Sheen’s pre-reformation escapades. Enter D.C. Cab, a Joel Schumacher action-comedy that chronicles the misadventures of the Capital’s most egregiously mismanaged, ineptly staffed, and universally vilified taxi service. These maniacal misfit cabbies reduce Travis Bickle to a soporific tax accountant from Cedar Rapids with a churchgoing, checkered aproned wife and 2.5 well-behaved offspring giddily skipping about with balloons while singing “It’s a Small World After All”.

Albert (Adam Baldwin, better known as psychotic Mean Green Killing Machine jarhead “Animal Mother” in Full Metal Jacket), a fresh-faced, wide-eyed kid from Georgia, heads to the big city after the death of his Vietnam vet father to realize his dream of establishing a cab company. He’s received warmly by his dad’s former Army buddy Harold (Max Gail), a laidback Deadhead with a heart of gold and the proprietor of D.C. Cab, who takes in Albert while he learns the ropes, despite the shrill protestations of Myrna (Anne DeSalvo) his frustrated Real Housewife of New Jersey (pronounced “Joy-zee”).

Harold pairs off Albert with each member of his oddball cabbie crew to master the tricks of the trade. Dell (Gary Busey) a crass, misogynistic, racially insensitive conspiracy theorist veteran doesn’t work on January the 8th “because it’s Elvis’s birthday”. Tyrone (Charlie Barnett) rocks plastic pastel green women’s curlers and grifts his way through each unsuspecting tourist fare in a big “fuck you” to the social inequities perpetrated by “The Man”. The Barbarian Brothers, flannel and overall bedecked, cowboy-booted ‘roid rage twins (an Americanized version of Aussie WWE tag team The Bushwhackers), teach Albert how to deftly navigate the streets in reverse gear. Xavier (Paul Rodriguez) is a Hispanic American Gigolo and Baba (Bill Maher) a cynical philosophizing keyboardist (Paul Simon’s doppelganger from the “You Can Call Me Al” video) caution Albert to reconsider his professional aspirations.

This is where we pump the brakes, people. By far the most integral character and the indisputable star is none other than Samson aka Mr. T. For God’s sake, his magnified scale and hierarchical prominence on the movie poster depicts him wielding a cab door that he doubtlessly wrenched from the vehicle with two fingers because he’s such a badass. Samson pities no fools, hands down life lessons (Prostitute justifying her occupational choice: “I need to make some bread”. Samson: “Then get a job at a bakery.”), and rolls all vigilante Community Activist through the blighted urban landscape. In his cut-off shirt, socks-over-weight belted sweatpants, and feathered earring, Samson is a resplendent fashion-forward bastion of moral heroism and muscle bound iconic international children’s role model for the ages.

We now return you to D.C. Cab’s dramatically uplifting saga of collective empowerment and personal redemption, already in progress.

It soon becomes readily apparent that Harold barely can keep the company afloat. The fleet is in profound disrepair; its operators devoid of mandatory airport fare collection licenses; the Hack Inspector persistently materializes unannounced with citations for the most inconsequential violations; and, unlike their sleek green satin baseball jacketed rivals, Emerald Cabs, the employees’ only semblance of uniformity is their eclectic accoutrements.

Subsequent a chance encounter related to the disappearance of a priceless violin that eventually is recovered by hobo Mr. Rhythm (Whitman Mayo, “Grady” from Sanford and Son), Harold is the beneficiary of a substantial reward with which he intends to remodel and revitalize his floundering enterprise and boost morale. Lamentably for Deadhead Harold, his nagging wife Myrna absconds with the cash, throws him and Albert into the gutter, and repels the protesting throng of D.C.’s staff from their marital abode via masterful utilization of Harold’s Army flamethrower.

Albert ostensibly saves the day when he generously proffers his $6,000 inheritance as capital for Harold’s reinvestment plans. D.C. undergoes significant changes in appearance and management: All the cabs are repainted and upgraded, and the gang is gifted totally bitchin’ new logoed satin yellow baseball jackets. Samson (to reiterate, Mr. T) entirely takes it next-level Rolls-Royce bling with customized gold-plated horns, grill, and an ornate rotating airplane atop his state-of-the-art ride.

Tragedy strikes. Recently licensed Albert is shanghaied along with an ambassador’s two prepubescent egg-throwing private school brats outside of their palatial estate while dropping off their maids. The FBI and the local po-po erroneously assume the abduction is an elaborate ploy to further fund D.C. Cab’s modernized digs. Der Hack Inspection Fuhrer shuts down their operations as the team again find themselves back on the streets. As shit goes south, the squad has a massive Budweiser induced freak out, but all is not lost for one man ascends above the fray. Samson (repeat, Mr. T) once more proves the voice of reason, inspiration, and all things patriotic. He rallies the troops with a spontaneously impassioned speech a la General George S. Patton while emphatically gesturing to the dramatically backlit Lincoln Memorial as a theatrically conducted “Battle Hymn of the Republic” plays tenderly in the background.

In the derelict basement of a ramshackle farmhouse somewhere outside of Washington (because The Beltway not only is teeming with gridlock, it also evidently is flooded with rural haciendas), Albert pulls a Houdini to escape his restraints and uses the CB in his cab to contact the ever-helpful Mr. Rhythm. Trouble is, Mr. Rhythm isn’t exactly the type of person you’d want to provide an accurate description of the perpetrator of an aggravated assault. All of D.C. Cab frantically scrambles to locate Albert and the charming tikes solely dependent on Mr. Rhythm’s discombobulated coordinates. Miraculously guided by the unseen hand of The Lord himself and with naught but the attribute “Bruce Lee” to go on, the drivers somehow find and surround the dilapidated homestead in a Bad News Bears-meets-S.W.A.T. scenario. The dimwitted trio of captors flee with Albert, abandoning the miscreant juveniles – because who wouldn’t after hours holed up in the Ninth Circle of Hell that is overseeing school-aged children.

An epic Bad Boys II hot pursuit leads the D.C. gang on a full-throttle chase down the winding, dimly lit back roads of – Northern Virginia? Maryland? Ours is not to question where. Amidst the erratic demolition derby rescue one of the ancillary feisty cabbies (Marsha Warfield, “Roz Russell” in Night Court) runs the scofflaws off the road by unleashing the contents of her purse (books, assorted toiletries, and cosmetics but not her ginormous dildo). Simultaneously, Albert wrests himself from bondage and is strategically extricated by Samson’s Herculean arms into the “safety” of Harold’s still moving vehicle. D.C. maintains the high-speed hunt and ultimately rams the surveillancey sex van through the back of a massive 3-D drive-in movie theater screen projecting an uncannily similar automotive showdown.

Inexplicably as the sun ascends the very next morning, D.C. Cab’s operations are wholly restored. The entirety of the Washington Metro Area and likely all 50 states and US territories formally recognize the hacks’ assiduous gallantry with an official mayoral commendation betwixt a colossal display of eternally beholden, flag-waving spectators and a Presidential-scale parade of endless high school marching bands and scantily-clad cheerleaders as truckloads of confetti and streamers rain down upon Pennsylvania Avenue.

As with every PG-rated flick pre-Tipper Gore and her gaggle of killjoy PMRC Stepford wives, D.C. Cab is sprinkled generously throughout with a sweeping array of voluptuously bare-breasted women; exaggerated ethnic stereotypes; wanton use of racial epithets; rousing patriotic speeches, clothing, and assorted nationalistic paraphernalia; and, ubiquitous employment of dope, streetwalkers, and hustlers. Essentially, the only archetypal 80s motif lacking is the appearance of aliens.

Once Washington’s most abhorred band of prodigal coachmen, more loathsome than Clive Barker’s abominable outcast Nightbreed hellions or that last putrid drop of orange juice that no one wants to ingest because you know it’s, like, 90% backwash, D.C. Cab forever epitomize the illustrious personification of Reagan’s “Bright Shining City on the Hill”. Analogous to the transcendent mythical phoenix, these undignified ciphers soared victoriously from the smoldering ashes of futile obscurity to the monumental apex of distinguished red, white, and blue mohawked American eagles bedecked in 40lbs of 18-carat gold ornamentations.

by Jacqui O.