Drop dead fred1/30/2024 The tale of a depressed and anxious woman who summons up the outrageous Fred, her childhood imaginary friend, it is a strange but oddly effective mixture of outlandish physical humour and disturbing farce, seasoned with an unexpected undercurrent of anguish. In retrospect, it seems unbelievable that Ate de Jong’s film was ever made at all. As he later commented, “Mums complained that I had corrupted their sons and taught them to wipe bogeys on the furniture.” Mayall never had another starring role in an American film, and there were no further appearances on Late Night with David Letterman. Gene Siskel called it “easily one of the worst films I’ve ever seen”, and Empire magazine, aimed at a readership who were interested in Mayall’s work, moaned that “There is scarcely a laugh to be had unless you are six years old or immoderately fond of such wheezes as depositing dog poop on a white carpet.” The damning reviews that it garnered, however, saw critics on both sides of the Atlantic vie with one another to come up with hyperbole. Greeted on release with a mixture of disgust and bewilderment, the film was a modest commercial success thanks to the presence of Cates, then a big star thanks to the Gremlins films. Mayall’s self-deprecating joke that Drop Dead Fred would close the day after it opened seemed an accurate prophecy. Letterman could not even bring himself to perform his usual encomium of insincere praise about his guest’s film, instead dismissively referring to it as “this thing”. His reaction when it ended, an exaggerated expression of distaste, proved to be an accurate premonition of how it would be treated critically upon its American release two days later. And an obviously nervous Mayall, introduced incredulously as ‘one of England’s most popular comedians’, barely restrained himself from swearing, made off-colour jokes about fires in orphanages and tampons in red wine and referred to himself as a “blood-drenched sex vampire from the bowels of Hades”.Īn increasingly appalled Letterman, shifting about in his chair as if suffering from a bowel complaint, sneered at Mayall’s stories about The Young Ones (“hard to believe they only made a dozen, ladies and gentlemen!”) and, after some stilted badinage about which of them got to kiss Mayall’s co-star Phoebe Cates, showed a clip from the film. Matters soon went awry. Letterman behaved throughout as if Mayall’s presence was a tiresome obligation that he had to suffer through, playing to the audience for incredulous laughs. Mayall had been invited onto Late Night with David Letterman to promote his new film Drop Dead Fred, his attempt at cracking the American market. Their encounter made for excruciatingly embarrassing, car-crash television. He may have been a household name in his home country but Mayall was practically unknown, save to MTV viewers familiar with The Young Ones, in the United States. The chat show host David Letterman’s guest was the British comedian Rik Mayall. On May 22 1991, American television saw an unlikely meeting of two great talents.
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