Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 (dir. Dick Lowry, 1983)
Justice piles Junior (Mike Henry) into his car, and off they go. The film tries to get a lot of mileage out of what have now become Buford T. Justice’s catchphrases. “Tick turd” is said a lot. “There’s no way you could have come from my loins” too. Buford often threatens to punch his wife in the face because Junior is so dumb. Domestic abuse is hilarious.
Oh, and since the film does mention a Bandit right in the title, we have to have one in the movie. Burt Reynolds elected to sit this one out, so the Bandit is now Cledus (Jerry Reed) in disguise. He drives the black Trans-Am, wears a mustache and a white cowboy hat, and pursues Justice for reasons I was unable to surmise. I think it was a fit of poetic completion. Can’t have a Smokey without a Bandit. Pyramus needs his Thisbe. This Bandit is also paired with a woman on the run in the form of the unhappy Dusty Trails (Colleen Camp). Dusty and Bandit II banter a bit, but they seem to be Olympian observers to Justice’s race. They do hijack the shark Justice is supposed to be carrying, mostly just to mess with him. Bandit II and Dusty have nothing to gain in this scenario.
Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 is just as broad and cartoony as the previous film, but there are a few moments of caricatured sexiness that make it a little less kid-friendly. We’re deep into Police Academy tone at this point. At one point, Buford and Junior stop at a motel called The Come On Inn, which is actually a fetish club; shades of The Blue Oyster abound. There is brief nudity (back when breasts could appear in a PG-rated film; also, back when breasts appeared in mainstream feature films in any capacity), the Enoses are revealed to be casual transvestites (are they father and son, or are they lovers?), and there are some jokes about VD. Justice also picks up a horny, tall cowgirl. There is also a brief scene wherein Junior Justice falls in with a group of nudists.
There is a scene where a truck of Klansmen harass a pair of innocent black men. The Klansmen are summarily tarred and feathered.
The original version of this film was called Smokey IS the Bandit, and Gleason was to play both Buford Justice and a new version of Bandit. Jerry Reed wasn’t going to be in the film at all. Some last-minute shoots and re-writes (after bad test marketing) changed it into what we see; a pretty rotten and not very funny movie. There is a scene at the end where Buford finally catches up with Jerry Reed dressed as the Bandit, and Buford sees him as Burt Reynolds. Gleason and Reynolds have a conversation – in a very Batman fashion – that they need each other to survive. Reynolds clearly only appeared on set for a few hours to shoot this cameo.
11 years later, however, nostalgia would rear its ugly head, and give us four more of these things in straight-to-TV form, all starring Brian Bloom. Be sure to join me next week for my analysis of Bandit: Bandit Goes Country, Bandit: Bandit’s Silver Angel, Bandit: Beauty and the Bandit, and the final film Bandit: Bandit, Bandit. Yes, that is the real title. It’s a real movie.
Hammer down.
Witney Seibold is the head film critic for Nerdist, and a contributor on the CraveOnline Film Channel, and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. You can read his weekly articles Trolling, and The Series Project, and follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
