Directed by
Duke Mitchell
83 minutes
Rated MA
Reviewed by
Bernard Hemingway
Gone With The Pope
Synopsis. Paul (Duke Mitchell), a small-time criminal and ex-con comes up with a scheme to kidnap the Pope and thereby extract $1 from every Catholic in the world/ When he finds out how many Catholics there are he drops it to 50c but he hadn’t counted on the miraculous ways of God.Originally shot in 1976, Duke Mitchell’s film was not finished until 2009, not by Mitchell himself, who by this time had died, but by Bob Murawski (editor on The Hurt Locker) and Sage Stallone. They discovered the negative and an unfinished 5 hour long work print in Mitchell's parking garage several years after his death. Piecing the film together was a challenge as there was no existing script.and five reels of the rough cut were missing and never found. As a result the version of the film we are seeing, although only 83 minutes long, took 15 years to complete.
Perhaps then not all the credit for the outcome can go to Mitchell, who also wrote the script and plays the central character, but whichever way you cut it, Gone With The Pope, wittily renamed from the cruder original title, "Kiss The Ring". is a triumph of B-movie parody, ripe with black humour, low budget production values and sub-standard acting (Paul’s girlfriend, played by Jeanne Hibbard is a standout in this department). It is certainly a front-runner for the funniest film of the year, if not a good deal longer.
Unlike another film currently doing the rounds and trying to pass itself off as a glorious catastrophe, Tommy Wiseau’s The Room, Gone With The Pope makes no pretence to being anything other than ribald good fun. Not only is it deliciously tongue-in-cheek as it goes about taking the mickey out of exploitation films but its checkered production history (it was only shot on weekends using 35mm short ends with Mitchell constantly trying to raise money to continue the shoot) gives the film the kind of makeshift quality that simply cannot be bought. The pricelessly authentic 70s kitsch décor, including performances from an incorrigibly tacky Las Vegas show band, Frankie Carr & The Novelites just adds another dimension of bad taste to Mitchell’s already well-developed flair for such things (a scene involving an obese naked woman gives John Waters a run for his money)..
Mitchell’s only other film was Massacre Mafia Style, aka The Executioner (1978), which I have not seen but Gone With The Pope will ensure that he is counted amongst the greats of cult film-making.
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