Short Cuts – Guilty Pleasures: Ragin’ Cajun (1991)

Vietnam veteran Cage Diamate is in trouble. He’s indebted to the mob, required to fight in illegal kickboxing matches. He is also tormented by a pretty severe case of post-traumatic overacting stress syndrome. Every time he’s about to score a KO, he sees images of that Asian Hell and he slumps over like a ragdoll sans stuffing. His gangster boss is incredibly pissed by his losing streak, and gets even angrier when Cage skips town to “find his way”. Apparently, said destination was a VA hospital, where he befriends a freaked out hop head named Legs who suffers from agoraphobia. Eventually released by his doctor even though he is not quite cured, Cage heads over to the local nightclub where his old job as a dishwasher is waiting for him. So is his ex-gal pal, a little flaxen-haired honey who worships the ground he walks on.

As he gets back to his pruny fingered/soiled serving platter life, Cage also reconnects with his rural bayou roots. He begins writing songs in secret, hoping to restart a previous path toward musical superstardom. When his girlfriend hears his tunes, she tries to convince him to join her on stage. When he won’t, she goes on and wows the crowd with his claptrap anyway. In the meanwhile, our unhappy hoodlums want Cage back, and plan one final death match for the marked man. In addition, the club where Cage and his sweetie work is about to go under, and they decide to stage a benefit to save it. Naturally, it’s scheduled for the night of the big fight. When he refuses to brawl, his crooning companion is kidnapped! It will take a miracle for this Ragin’ Cajun to win the day.

Like a stand-up comic recognizing that he is just a few fatal moments away from completely bombing, Ragin’ Cajun is shameless. This movie tosses in everything but the My Lai massacre in order to avoid some manner of formulaic flop sweat. It’s an action adventure drama carved completely out of clichés. However the way in which actor David Heavener and his main muse, writer/director William Byron Hillman combine the standard cinematic archetypes becomes a sheer jaundiced joy to behold. They don’t care if it’s all been done before. This crazy combo just wants to entertain, to tell a standard tale of vengeance and redemption that hits all the right beats. So what if every section is beaten with a sledgehammer full of hokum – they’re still striking, aren’t they? As a result, Ragin’ Cajun is an impossible film to dismiss, no matter how hard it tries to circumvent your expectations with inane, worn-out hogwash.

Heavener has to be one of the bravest performers in all of the business called show. He is not beyond looking bare-chested and broken (that’s how he ends up most of the time, even when he’s NOT fighting), weepy-eyed and wimpy (dude cries A LOT in this movie) and sexually celibate to the point of near sainthood (he and main squeeze Charlene “Dallas” Tilton share a single, stunted kiss). Add to that his inner rock star (Heavener wrote and performed almost all the music for this film) and the typical psychosomatic licks that come from being a flashback prone ‘Nam casualty, and you’ve got the most completely complex character an actor could ever want. That Heavener attempts to portray EVERY SINGLE facet of this persona in each line reading causes him to resemble a tone-deaf Sybil. If there were an Oscar for most bald-faced bellyaching by an actor, Heavener would have no immediate equal.

And then there is the music. That’s right, Ragin’ Cajun is a kind a musical, in the way that Triumph of the Will is a song and dance extravaganza. Every time an emotion needs to be over-emphasized, whenever the action is getting a little too energetic – Heck, whenever the Hell Heavener feels like it – someone breaks out in semi-melodious mawkishness. Supposedly selling himself in the country and/or western genre, Diamond Dave is all over the map with his harmonious hooey. There are a couple of power ballads, some inspirational singalongs, and lyrics of such lunatic fringe fearlessness that you have to wonder why Heavener’s not a constant on The Doctor Demento Show. Titles like “I Slipped on My Best Friend (and Fell in Love)”, or the classic “I L.U.V.Y.O.U.” just resonate with cornball creativity, and as delivered by Heavener you can’t help but smile with saccharine satisfaction. Perhaps the best bits are when Dave tunes up and sings solo. The minute his fingers hit the guitar, entire orchestras and bands blare behind him in a whacked out wall of sound.

All of this adds up to a movie that can do nothing but amuse. There are barrelfuls of badness here, umpteen ugly moments that make no sense within the standard cinematic showcase. But Heavener and Hillman don’t care – they just keep shoveling the substance, hoping no one notices how impractical and illogical it is. In a sense, Ragin’ Cajun is like a compendium of old Hollywood storytelling. It’s not enough to have the suffering hero with a bad brain and criminal ties. We need the gentle girlfriend, the floundering nightclub, and the owner desperate to bring in some bucks. In addition, there has to be a well meaning mental patient, a mobster with his back to the wall, a couple of hired goons, and a selection of set-pieces – both musical and muscle based – to give us the necessary emotional uplift. Add in minor nods to religion, gun violence, the American policy in Southeast Asia, and a single sequence of narrative invention that’s so surreal it sticks out like a strange sore thumb, and you’ve got a cult classic just waiting to be embraced. Ragin’ Cajun has nothing new to offer at the core of its creation. But how it shamelessly puts those moldy old ideas together is the stuff of B-movie magnificence.