Strange Brew (1983) on Netflix
Unemployed brothers Bob and Doug McKenzie get hired on the Elsinore Brewery bottling line after trying to score free beer. Pam Elsinore has inherited the brewery and its castle from her father.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb6.6/1020,339 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes75%
Trailer
Plot summary
Bob and Doug McKenzie are unemployed brothers who screen a film of their own making for a paying crowd. When the audience turns hostile, the brothers let moths loose in the theater and slip out without refunds. They next put a live mouse inside an empty beer bottle and take it to the beer store, hoping to blackmail the clerk into free Elsinore beer. The clerk sends them to the brewery, where management hires them to inspect bottles on the bottling line. There they learn that owner John Elsinore has died and that his daughter Pam now controls the brewery.
Cast
- Tom Harveyas The Inspector
- J. Winston Carrollas Fire Chief
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Strange Brew (1983)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- When Moranis and Thomas were informed that Mel Blanc charged $10,000 an hour for his services, they paid him $10,000 and had him record all the dialogue for his character within that single hour.
- Molson Brewery had promised to back the film, but once the brewery found out there was a joke about putting a mouse in a beer bottle it distanced itself; the filmmakers were also banned from filming in a Brewers Retail store, so they built a replica for more than $45,000 and called it "The Beer Store".
- In December 1981 Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas released the Bob and Doug McKenzie comedy album The Great White North, which sold a million copies, and the characters' success led SCTV to center an entire 90-minute episode on them in April 1982.
- Thomas wanted the story based on Hamlet, but De Jarnatt's draft was too faithful to the play and he was told to be more creative with the parallels.
- A sequel called Home Brew was planned for production in 1999, co-written by Dave Thomas and Paul Flaherty, to be directed by Flaherty, with Dan Aykroyd on board as the friend Rick Ripple, but financing fell through at the last minute.
- The soundtrack won the Canadian Juno Award for Best Comedy Album in 1984, and Moranis and Thomas accepted it in character at the ceremony on 5 December 1984, which was hosted by Joe Flaherty and SCTV alum Andrea Martin.
