Starring Robert Carradine, Michael Winslow, Malcolm McDowell, Lise Cutter, Randall ‘Tex’ Cobb, Ben Vereen, Tony Plana, Roddy Piper, Michael Goodwin, Fred Travalena, Mickey Knox, West Buchanan, Tony Carroll
Directed by Robert Boris
Expectations: Low.
On the general scale:
On the B-movie scale:
When a comedy opens with a suicide and it plays the scene for laughs, you know you have a tonally strange film on your hands. Buy & Cell is a hard film to get into, but once it finds its footing and kicks into the plot proper, it’s a pretty fun “Let’s stick it to the rich assholes” ’80s movie. I’d say this one is strictly for those that consider themselves ’80s aficionados, as just about everyone else will be left wondering why there’s crazy ideas like a schizophrenic character that thinks he’s a VCR (complete with rewinding himself) or how these prisoners could have an entire dance club and hot tub squirreled away in their rec room. It’s not so much a matter of “Why?” in an ’80s film, but “Why Not?”
Robert Carradine, the quintessential ’80s nerd thanks to Revenge of the Nerds, plays Herbie, an employee at a stock brokerage firm who’s been set up as a fall guy for the owner’s embezzlement of company funds. Herbie is sentenced to 13 years of hard time in the federal penitentiary, but he doesn’t go in scared or all that nervous. He knows he’s innocent, so he instead chooses to bide his time. The warden (Malcolm McDowell) is another shady asshole, asking Herbie to work for him on the side, trading stocks. Herbie refuses, but when his cellmate Sly (Michael Winslow) needs some fast cash to get out of some major debts, Herbie decides to give investment banking one more shot for the good of the prisoners. Like I said, why not?