Crime Wave is a 1985

1985 in film

-Events:* 3 December - Roger Moore steps down from the role of James Bond after twelve years and seven films. He is replaced by Timothy Dalton.* The Academy Award for Best Picture was won by Out Of Africa, while the highest grossing film was Back to the Future.* Bliss wins AFI Award for best Movie...

 film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

 made by Winnipeg

Winnipeg

Winnipeg is the capital and largest city of Manitoba, Canada, and is the primary municipality of the Winnipeg Capital Region, with more than half of Manitoba's population. It is located near the longitudinal centre of North America, at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers .The name...

-based filmmaker John Paizs

John Paizs

John Paizs is a director, writer and actor from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. In 1985 his much-celebrated independent comedy Crime Wave was presented at the Toronto International Film Festival. He was the male lead and also wrote and directed the film...

 shot between 1984 and 1986. The film is an homage to late 1940s-early 1950s "color crime pictures". Paizs plays Steven Penny, a struggling screenwriter

Screenwriter

Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...

 who lives above the garage

Garage (house)

A residential garage is part of a home, or an associated building, designed or used for storing a vehicle or vehicles. In some places the term is used synonymously with "carport", though that term normally describes a structure that is not completely enclosed.- British residential garages:Those...

 of a suburban family, and begins typing

Typing

Typing is the process of inputting text into a device, such as a typewriter, cell phone, computer, or a calculator, by pressing keys on a keyboard. It can be distinguished from other means of input, such as the use of pointing devices like the computer mouse, and text input via speech...

 each night from the moment the street lamp comes on. Everything we learn about the character comes from Kim (Eva Kovacs), the family's daughter, who has a schoolgirl crush on him, as Penny never utters a word in the entire film.

Steven is able to write beginnings and endings, but not middles, and we are treated to some of these amusing endings and rather repetitive beginnings that introduce several characters from various geographic regions to settle upon the film's hero "from the North".

The film is designed to emulate the look and feel of educational films from the period. Randolph Peters

Randolph Peters

Randolph Peters is a Canadian composer who is particularly known for his output of roughly 100 film scores made mostly for Canadian films. A graduate of the University of Winnipeg and the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, Peters has also written a large amount of music for Canadian...

 includes a flute

Flute

The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...

 and glockenspiel

Glockenspiel

A glockenspiel is a percussion instrument composed of a set of tuned keys arranged in the fashion of the keyboard of a piano. In this way, it is similar to the xylophone; however, the xylophone's bars are made of wood, while the glockenspiel's are metal plates or tubes, and making it a metallophone...

-based score emulating such films (the film concludes with a song based on this theme that discusses the possibility of Steven and Kim getting married sung by a small 1950s-style pop chorus). When Steven Penny is brought into some shady deals, the film takes on more of a neo noir

Film noir

Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...

 look and sound, inflected with surrealism

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....

. In one of the film's signature images is of the street lamp smashed over Steven's head, which he wears home.

Because of Sam Raimi

Sam Raimi

Samuel Marshall "Sam" Raimi is an American film director, producer, actor and writer. He is best known for directing cult horror films like the Evil Dead series, Darkman and Drag Me to Hell, as well as the blockbuster Spider-Man films and the producer of the successful TV series Hercules: The...

's similarly titled Crimewave

Crimewave

Crimewave is a 1985 comedy film directed by Sam Raimi, an unusual slapstick mix of film noir, black comedy and several eras, starring Reed Birney, Paul L. Smith, Louise Lasser, Brion James, Bruce Campbell, and Sheree J. Wilson. It was Raimi's first studio film following the success of The Evil Dead...

released around the same time, the film's period-style title cards are spoiled by "THE BIG" chyron

Character generator

A character generator, often abbreviated as CG, is a device or software that produces static or animated text for keying into a video stream. Modern character generators are computer-based, and can generate graphics as well as text...

ed-in over the title to match Cinema Group Home Video's videocassette covers proclaiming the film The Big Crimewave. The film has more in common with Paizs's friend and associate Guy Maddin

Guy Maddin

Guy Maddin, OM is a Canadian screenwriter, director, cinematographer and film editor of both features and short films from Winnipeg, Manitoba...

than it does with Raimi's faster-paced and nearly as surreal film.