The setting is a struggling private ambulance company, and the film's story is largely anecdotal. Understaffed and overworked, the drivers of the F&B Ambulance Company face fierce competition from Unity, their cross town rivals. Mother (Bill Cosby) is F&B's best driver, despite drinking on the job and frightening nuns with his sirens. Partnered with pot-smoking Leroy (Bruce Davidson), Mother resorts to bribing cops and sabotaging Unity's ambulances for that $42.50 fare (plus $.50/mile). Theirs is a thankless job, picking up the bodies of dead addicts, shuttling unkempt seniors stroked out in their own shit, and keeping the social aberrations of co-workers like pervert Murdoch (Larry Hagman) in check.

Early in the film Tony (Harvey Keitel), a cop accused of trafficking drugs to kids and on unpaid suspension, takes a job with F&B. Though not yet convicted, the accusations don't endear him to the rest of the staff: dispatcher Jennifer/Jugs (Welch), unrepentantly crude owner Harry Fishbine (Allen Garfield), and his wife, Peaches (Valerie Curtin).

The film is like both the movie and the TV series of M*A*S*H in that its cast of characters use drugs/alcohol and humor to shield themselves from the horrors and absurdities of their job. It's like Paddy Chayefsky's The Hospital (1971) in its condemnation of a health care and welfare system gone mad, only without that overrated film's pretentiousness.

In an era where political correctness has nearly killed screen comedy, Mother, Jugs & Speed is downright refreshing in its resolute churlishness. Nothing is sacred. An old, fat woman breaks her hip trying to change a lightbulb, giving Murdoch and his partner (Michael McManus) a problem not unlike Laurel and Hardy's struggle with The Music Box, only in the ghetto on a staircase full of rats. Despite the presence of massage parlors, a sexual assault, and Welch herself, the film is not at all sexist, though many of its characters are.

The picture's darker side is played mostly through Cosby's character. He's very good in this, playing dramatic moments in a quietly cynical, deadpan manner, and comic scenes in his more familiar style. Watching this you wonder why his film career wasn't more lasting. Top-billed Raquel Welch is also quite good as an assertive woman who wants to bigger responsibilities, but faces incredible sexism from her boss and several co-workers. She carries on a romance with Harvey Keitel, the kind of casting that could only occur during this weird wrinkle in cinema history called 1976.

Video & Audio

Fox has done a fine job with Mother, Jugs & Speed, presenting the film in its original Panavision 2.35:1 aspect ratio, in 16:9 anamorphic format. Although the film is a tad grainy at times (and during one key scene inside an ambulance the color gets funky), this seems mostly inherent to the film stock of the period rather than the transfer. Generally the image is sharp with good color for its age. The stereo mix plays to the picture's soundtrack, one packed with great '70s music. Mono tracks in English, French, and Spanish are also offered, as well as subtitles in all three languages.

Extras

The only real extras are 16:9 trailers for this (in 1.85:1 format) and other Fox-owned Welch films.

Parting Thoughts

Though Raquel Welch only really stars in about 1 1/2 of the four movies Fox has newly packaged, all four are worth seeking out. (The others are Bandolero!, One Million Years, B.C., and Myra Breckinridge). Though lacking Breckinridge's plentiful extras, Fox has otherwise done a nice job with Mother, Jugs & Speed.

If only they hadn't botched the dinosaur picture so badly....

Stuart Galbraith IV is a Los Angeles and Kyoto-based film historian whose work includes The Emperor and the Wolf -- The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune. He is presently writing a new book on Japanese cinema for Taschen.