STINKOUT

STAKEOUT (1987)
dir: John Badham

STINKOUT
MAD #278, April 1988
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Angelo Torres

At the beginning, to establish how bumbling Chris Leece (Richard Dreyfuss) and Bill Reimers (Emilio Estevez) are, it shows them going through a fish processing plant wile they pursue a criminal while on duty in Seattle.

Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks of the Dragnet remake are shown in this opening panel.

Richard Montgomery (Aidan Quinn) has escaped from prison and Leece and Reimers have been assigned to watch his ex-wife Maria McGuire (Madeleine Stowe), since officer Lusk of the FBI (Jackson Davies) has briefed them, informing them he may come back to her, They have rented an apartment across the street to watch her and Chris Leece poses as a telephone repairman so he can bug her phones.

Dreyfuss' lechery in this parody and his later accusations of sexual harrassment in real life are only a coinidence. Nuts was a movie he has been in a year earlier.

Det. Leece later meets Maria at a supermarket and starts dating her.

The movie they are watching through the binoculars is No Way Out, which features a scene with Kevin Costner as Lt. Farrell making love to Sean Young in the back of a limousine.

After Chris spends the night at Maria's home, he wakes up late, and has to run out before he's seen by detectives on the next shift. She still thinks he's the telephone repairman and has no idea she's being watched. He wears her clothes so they can't see who he is and as he's running down the street, Det. Reimers saves him. It's thought that Richard Montgomery has drowned trying to outrun the police and the stakeout is over.

Before packing up their things, in this they watch Jim Belushi at Brandel High in The Principal (in the background is Lou Gossett Jr.) and Lou Diamond Phillips in La Bamba. Leece goes to Maria's house to tell her who she really is and she's too angry for him to tell her he's actually fallen in love with her.

Richard didn't die after all and has come for Maria and the money he has hidden in the house. Chris must come back to rescue her but must lie again, this time she is saying he's an ex-con. A chase ensues with Richard taking the two of them hostage in a lumber mill until the police finally defeat him.