Bandit: Bandit’s Silver Angel (dir. Hal Needham, 1994)
This one would feel equally goofy, were it not so bloody earnest. Bandit (Brian Bloom) finds himself trying to defend a traveling circus, and while I think Needham was trying to show off a spark of real carny life, it only ends up feeling a little cartoony.
So yeah, Bandit’s eccentric uncle Cyrus (no kidding, Donald O’Connor) arrives out of the blue, claiming that he has just married a gal named Angel, and that he is happy to be running his traveling carnival with her. Why did he talk to Bandit? Goodness knows. And then, just as unexpectedly, Cyrus dies. I guess we could only get O’Connor for a few days. Angel delivers the bad news. She is played by Traci Lords. It turns out Cyrus was a compulsive liar, and that he didn’t marry Angel (?), but he bequeaths the carnival to her anyway.
Angel begs Bandit to take over the carnival. Which he kind of does in a few scenes. The goofy local sheriff is being featured in a “Cops”-like docu-drama. There is an evil developer or something who wants to take over the carnival, and eventually Bandit has to smuggle the carnies to… a place… And there’s, uh… some silver ingots hidden in a truck… and an evil trucker guy, I think… Sorry, but I had to fight to pay attention to this one. Too much Bandit at once is not good for you. I do know that Bandit lands Traci Lords at the end. Between Elizabeth Berkley, Ami Dolenz, Kathy Ireland, and Traci Lords (all vintage 1994), Bandit has had a good track record.
It’s late, my friends, and I need to go to bed. Suffice to say, the final Bandit film does not bring things to a grand close, and doesn’t put any sort of cap on the series. There are no big parties where all the characters come together. The four Bandit films are all autonomous, and can be watched in any order. They are essentially four random, unconnected episodes of a “Bandit” TV series that just happens to have 2-hour episodes (with commercials).
