B-Sides: Tom Hanks and Dan Aykroyd Commit Crimes by Busting Rhymes
Steve Barton
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If hearing Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks rap doesn’t blow your mind, seeing them do so as part of an elaborate song & dance music video for their 1987 spoof Dragnet might be enough to make it explode Scanners-style. This actually happened, folks.
Just in case any of you out there thought Hollywood’s penchant for taking famous yet dated television shows and bringing them back to the big screen as dopey comedies was a recent trend, here’s a reminder that they were already doing this all the way back in 1987. Long before the likes of 21 Jump Street, Starsky & Hutch, Dukes of Hazzard, Dark Shadows, and other such recent comical big screen interpretations of small screen shows, there was Dragnet – an Eighties comedic version of television’s pioneering police drama from the Fifties.
Dan Aykroyd’s satirical take on “by the book” police detective Joe Friday perfectly nailed the vocal inflections and mannerisms of original “Dragnet” star Jack Webb. Pre-multi-Oscar-winner Tom Hanks was his brash, immature, troublemaking new partner – a performance you’d swear had to have been a great influence on Owen Wilson’s career. The goofy plot saw the uber straight-laced cop and his bumbling partner cracking a case involving a pagan cult that isn’t all that it appears to be.
Dragnet spawned a music video, and what a music video it is. You rarely see movie soundtrack videos like this anymore or hear theme songs like “City of Crime”. If you’ve never heard “City of Crime” or witnessed with your own eyes this rare music video, just know nothing I type can adequately prepare you for the level of astonishment that awaits your senses. This is one of those songs and music videos that is beyond being graded on any kind of good or bad scale – it simply must be heard and seen to be believed. That’s just the facts, ma’am.
Not watching this B-Sides would be a crime.
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Categorized:B-Sides
