Cult-Movie Review: Leonard Part 6 (1987)

“The only good thing about Bill Cosby's "Leonard Part 6" is that we didn't have to see Parts 1 through 5.” – Rita Kempley, The Washington Post, December 19, 1987.

''Leonard'' proves that even Bill Cosby makes mistakes.” – Caryn James, The New York Times, December 18, 1987.

“This weird little film of meager comic conceits doesn’t actually resemble any picture in memory…” -Variety, December 16, 1987

Widely-considered one of the worst films of the 1980s (and beyond…) and the winner of Golden Raspberry Awards for Worst Actor, Worst Screenplay, and Worst Picture, Leonard Part 6 (1987) isn’t actually all that difficult to sit through. 

In fact, the Variety review excerpted above gets the matter right to a significant extent.  The film is bad, yes, but it is bad, impressively, in a pretty original fashion.

Some moments in the picture-- if not exactly funny -- are imaginative in a goofy kind of way.  In particular, I enjoyed watching agents of Mother Nature -- trout, lobster and frogs -- wage war against mankind in ridiculous special effects sequences.  And as a former vegetarian myself, I also got a kick from the film’s subversive jibes against those who don’t eat meat.

By far, Leonard Part VI’s largest stumbling block is its star, the aforementioned Cosby, who mugs shamelessly for the camera throughout and is too old and out-of-shape to star as a fine-tuned, physically adroit secret agent…even a retired one. 

Cosby’s idea of character humor here is a weird one too.  The film’s big running gag involves his estranged wife exuberantly dumping food all over him while he grimaces and rolls his eyes in delighted close-up…as if the experience is really some weird sexual fetish.   Doing all those Jell-O Pudding Pop commercials must have finally caught up with the star….

Additionally, Leonard Part 6 pulls far too many comedic punches, especially in its family-oriented subplot about Leonard’s adult daughter planning to marry a man too old for her by half.  This subplot appears piped-in directly from Cosby’s mega-popular sitcom of the 1980s, The Cosby Show (1984 – 1992) and is both a pander to the performer’s fans and a grievous comic miscalculation.   

The decision to fuse “family values” with a nasty James Bond parody is actually the very one that sinks the movie.  Leonard Part 6 should have been a bad taste, raunchy genre picture all the way. 

But of course, a movie like that might have harmed the Cosby Product Line ^TM.

In short, the moments that authentically don’t work In Leonard Part 6 are those that feel like a self-indulgent ego trip on Cosby’s part, and allude unnecessarily to his television work and popular image as the supreme family man. 

The moments that do work -- and yes, these are relatively few and far between --  are those that feature zany flights of fancy in which homicidal animals (like frogs hopping a car into a harbor…) launch comic attacks on mankind, or those in which the James Bond spy genre is successfully mocked with bizarre gadgets, such as Leonard’s under-arm missile launchers.

So Leonard Part 6 is two schizophrenic movies: one an over-the-top James Bond/revenge of nature parody, and the other a schmaltzy, unfunny family “story.”  The first plot-line amuses while the second falls woefully flat.

“The couple that spies together…dies together.”

The five previous international adventures of spy Leonard Parker (Bill Cosby) have been held top-secret because of classified information, but his sixth adventure is recounted here in full detail.

In particular, Leonard -- estranged from his beloved wife, Allison (Pat Colbert) over an apparent dalliance some years earlier -- is called out of retirement by the CIA to battle a militant vegetarian, Medusa Johnson (Gloria Foster) who has headquartered at International Tuna and developed a tool which permits her to control the actions and thoughts of normally harmless animals such as frogs and lobsters.

While Leonard grapples with the fact that his adult daughter, an actress (Victoria Rowell), is planning to marry a senior citizen director, he also prepares for battle with Medusa. 

To this end Leonard is aided by his dedicated butler, Frayn (Tom Courtenay) and his good luck charm, a gypsy prognosticator, Nurse Carvhalo (Anna Levine).  Leonard also arms himself with the highest “tech” now available including under-arm, heat-seeking missiles, wafer-thin grenades, and a Porsche up-fitted with a tank turret.

“Clever…but dumb.”

The words excerpted above -- “clever but dumb” -- might adequately serve as the epitaph for Leonard Part 6.  The movie vacillates wildly between poles of cleverness and stupidity, and the result is a case of audience whiplash.

Some moments actually do work, to at least a modest degree.  For instance, Medusa boasts a James Bond-ian side-kick who is confined to a wheelchair, and speaks only the words “Kill him” or “Kill them” throughout the entire film.  No matter the situation, or the participants, this is his response.  He is a cranky old man, a Bond villain, and a joke on the whole spy movie format. He serves no purpose other than to be a false threat and a sounding-board for Medusa’s ridiculous plans, but the character, indeed, seems an apt parody of two-dimensional villains in Hollywood blockbusters.

Similarly, there’s a moment here after a deadly battle in which Leonard -- the ultimate Renaissance Man -- must heroically perform surgery on himself and remove a bullet.  An almost identical scene was played seriously in Ronin (1998) some ten years after Leonard Part 6 premiered, but with Robert De Niro doing the surgical honors instead.  So in some sense, this film -- as legendarily bad as it is -- understands the conventions of the action/espionage genre, and attempts to knowingly mock them.

And I can’t lie about one fact. I was amused by the film’s mean-spirited but spot-on jibes at  (some) hard-core vegetarians.  In the film’s conclusion, Leonard confronts the minions of Medusa. These minions are all perfect physical specimens who have never touched meat, and especially meat with preservatives.  Leonard defeats them by exposing their flesh to raw meat and hot dogs, and he acts as though he is brandishing a crucifix against a vampire.  

One villain gets a hot dog in the mouth…and his head explodes on screen, in full view.  This moment reveals how wicked and over-the-top Leonard Part 6 might have been had the producers been willing to take a few more risks with Cosby’s image as a nice guy.

But for every moment of imagination and modest inspiration like the exploding vegetarian minions, Leonard Part 6 features five minutes of relentless product placement (mostly for Coke), or focuses not on the action against Medusa, but on the tiresome subplot about Leonard winning back his estranged wife.  This interminable diversion away from the movie’s silly material (about mind-controlled lobsters and the like…) makes the movie feel like a pilot for a TV show that was never made, and a bad one at that.

Some time back, a reader specifically asked me to review this film, and I was happy to oblige.  I first saw this movie in the theaters with my best friend Bob back in 1987, and I remember we both laughed at elements of Leonard Part 6.   

I can see why -- as sixteen year-olds -- we found those aspects of the film amusing.

Somewhere in Leonard Part 6 -- between the evil theater dancers who look like rejects from Cats and the  minions whose skin is scalded on contact with beef patties -- wicked comic inspiration lurks.  

But it’s too bad that the shadow of The Cosby Show, and the protection of Cosby’s image prevents Leonard Part 6 from being the unfettered, balls-to-the-wall, nutty movie it could have been and should have been.  The movie should have just gone for broke.  It might still have failed, but at least it would have seemed more coherent, and in the end, might have met with more respect (if not appreciation).