Robert Downey Sr.'s GREASER'S PALACE (1973)

Behold GREASER’S PALACE (1973), legendary underground filmmaker Robert Downey, Sr.’s (PUTNEY SWOPE, POUND) stoney, languidly zany and lysergic Western! GREASER’S finds Downey, Sr. (“a prince”) at his most trippy, pastoral, and introspective – all qualities that blend with his anarchic style to produce a most lionhearted work. Imagine El Topo meets Life of Brian and…well, you’re still nowhere close to what adds up to one of the weirdest Westerns, and religious allegories, of the 70s.

Dig this: we open on a dusty desert town ruled over by one Seaweedhead Greaser (Albert Henderson, looking quite a lot like Robert Altman) – a tyrannical, bowel-blocked baron who keeps his mother and his favorite mariachi band in cages, collects taxes from the oddball locals, and runs the titular saloon. One fateful day, Jesse (Allan Arbus of M*A*S*H* fame), a modest and mysterious young man sporting a 1940s Zoot suit, parachutes into a nearby field, stirring the curiosity of the townsfolk. He comes bearing warning of a demon, named (ready?) Bingo Gas Station Motel Cheeseburger With A Side Of Aircraft Noise And You’ll Be Gary Indiana, who stalks the town, but he’s a man on a mission.

With “the boogie on his fingers and the hubba-hubba in his soul,” he’s on his way to Jerusalem to become a star – "It's written," he says, "that the agent Morris awaits me." Along the way he amasses a bit of a following when he performs a string of miracles – somersaulting on water, raising Greaser’s dimwitted son from the dead with his trademark phrase “If ya feel, ya heal,” curing a man on crutches who promptly falls to the ground, shouting “It’s a miracle! I can crawl!,” and wowing with a nightclub act punctuated by stigmata-soaked jazz hands. He encounters a peculiar cast of characters as he goes, played by the likes of Toni Basil and Hervé Villachaize, before learning of his intended fate from a bed sheet and bowler hat sporting holy ghost. As it goes with saviors, it’s not long until the locals turn on him and, well...

Armed with his trademark platoon of offbeat character actors and willing amateurs mixed together in a lunatic stew, Downey’s weaves his weirdo Western New Testament allegory, gliding along with its own unique cadence complete with graceful extended takes, fuzzy arcs and the fearless subversion of audience norms.

Subversive, silly, and (potentially?) profound, Greaser’s Palace is a one-of-a-kind oddity that only Downey could deliver.

Special thanks to Bret Berg of American Genre Film Archive.

Dir. Robert Downey, 1973, 91 mins, Unrated (Adult Audiences Only), Color, English, Digital.

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