NIGHT OF THE DRIBBLER

 1990/88m

Director: Jack Bravman / Writer: Maurice Thevenet / Cast: Fred Travalena, Gregory Calpakis, Flavia Carrozzi, Bill Saddler, Cynthia Mantel, Michael Sullivan, Glenn Scott, Brigitte-Anne Pelletier, Georges Thomas.

Body Count: 2

Laughter Lines:  “Last time I saw faces like that was on the court 51 seconds ago.”

About as misleading as anything could be, this Canadian ‘comedy’ may look like it’s about a masked loon doing in basketball players, but this takes up about 8% of the runtime. There’s a reason the film was not released in the US for almost twenty years.

Essentially a vehicle for late comedian Fred Travalena, he plays three roles: The basketball coach, a commentator named Dick Airhead, and the detective investigating attacks on the revolving captains of the Watergate High Plumbers – only two of which are fatal – a crappy team who haven’t won a game in decades.

Waterboy Stan wants a chance to play – is he the one is the basketball mask rigging equipment? Probably not. But who cares when the film is so exhaustively painful? Slasher parodies were already worn out by 1982 and Night of the Dribbler brings nothing to the table, earning that extra half-star for non-awful production values and maybe two jokes I quietly smirked at.

Blurb-of-shame: Bravman also directed the almost-as-bad Zombie Nightmare.