Herbie Goes to East Berlin (1981)

D. Vincent McEveety
Colour

I’m not sure a knockabout farce involving an anthropomorphic Volkswagen Beetle is the best way to tackle the rights and wrongs of communism. But then on the flip-side I’m equally not sure that a knockabout farce involving an anthropomorphic Volkswagen Beetle is the best way to advertise Reagan-era American capitalism. From top to bottom there’s something amazingly off-kilter about ‘Herbie Goes to East Berlin’. It’s bright and gaudy, empty headed and crass, and amazingly untroubled by any doubts about its own brilliance.

In the days before Gorbachov and Glastnost, it probably seemed that the best way to take on the communist East was with a cute Volkswagen beetle. After all the grey, stiffness of communist bureaucrats was something which had never been done by Hollywood before and some broad satire was long overdue. So to begin with we have Madeline Khan doing her best German accent, with a performance that’s like a softer Rosa Krebb. I say softer in the sense that her clothes are more fetching and she doesn’t actually kill anyone. We have Christopher Lee’s stern eyebrows. Sir Chris is an actor I like a great deal, but it’s noticeable that in that long stretch where he couldn’t get work which matched his talent, he often let his eyebrows do the heavy-lifting. And below them we have numerous young men and women ground down by the drudge of work, when all they really want to do is listen to rock’n’roll. East Berlin a place of greyness, a city of repression, a haven of stern and no  fun adults – and what it really needs is some Americans to arrive who’ll shake things up.

The inevitable culture clash comes by way of the East Germans trying to show off their superiority. They invite the winner of The Coast to Coast race in the States to take on their champion car, a black Trabant – which no amount of camera tricks can make look fast or intimidating. So out go Larry Wilcox, from TV’s ‘CHiPS’, playing the nephew of Dean Jones’s character from The Love Bug (but obviously a different nephew from the one in ‘Herbie Goes Bananas’), and girlfriend Catherine Bach, from TV’s ‘The Duke of Hazards’. They arrive in East Berlin as honoured guests with the challenge to race Lee and comedy sidekick Dom Deluise. At stake is not only cultural honour, but which system is better – communism or capitalism.

You just know the kind of Wacky Races style high jinks which will follow.

The problem is that although in the context of the film, the US of A is proved to be best – the good guys are just so brash and bellicose, that they’re much more unbearable than the communists. Herbie and his team’s arrival is loud to the point of boorish and interrupts a rather sombre parade – this is seen as the bright fun of the Americans destroying the grey dullness of the Russians (yes, it’s actually Germans, but I think we can all see the real targets). But if you think about it, wouldn’t just crashing in and destroying all the hard work your hosts have clearly put into a party to greet you, be the pinnacle of bad manners? Surely people who do that are not really people to admire.

Then (unusual for a film in 1981, but perhaps not so unusual for a Disney film), there is – what can only be described – as a shit-load of product placement: Coca-Cola, Hershey, Atari and even Budweiser all have lovingly long shots. These shiny things are supposed to be envied, but come off looking the height of crass consumerism. The girls in their dowdy grey dresses are contrasted with Catherine Bach in her tight racing leathers, somehow looking even more voluptuous and naked than she did in her Daisy Dukes. But because these girls appear so modest and demure next to her, she can’t help but resemble a corn-fed stripper. Our heroes fly a stars and stripes behind their car, tell their hotel manager ‘Fritz’ to take a hike and demand that the local bar plays Chuck Berry records (because that’s really down with the kids in 1981). As such they look like the most obnoxious brats, jumped-up bullies who’ll slap the face of anyone who disagrees with them.

And that’s really what I like about this film. Ostensibly it’s dull and repressive commie-land = bad; free and capitalist America = good. Yet it’s done with such an alarming lack of subtlety, such an amazing over confidence that it almost makes the opposite point. The East Germans are restrained people who get on with their jobs and live their lives (what kind of message is it really that it’s better to dance to rock’n’roll than work in a factory? Okay, the kids in question seem to be working in a very grey looking factory – but even so…); while the Americans are loud, self-absorbed and intolerant of other people’s points of view. This myopia is there to such an extent that the film has East German locals marvelling at the American wonder that is Herbie. The Volkswagen Beetle, lest we forget, is a German car.

I like to think that behind the scenes there was someone, perhaps the director or the screenwriter, who decided to add another layer of satire to the very broad front satire. Much like Gore Vidal being told not to let Chuck Heston into the secret of the gay subtext in ‘Ben Hur’, the cast weren’t to know, the studio weren’t to know and most of the audience would never realise – but there it is, peeking out from behind Herbie and smirking.