Have a Bradley Whitford Halloween, sort of

In Microtones, our newsletter-first column.

It’s Halloween in Madison. We kicked around the idea of filling this week’s Microtones column Madison-centric costume ideas. We came up with some good ones, too (Glassy generic condo building! Scott Walker’s third term! A couple’s costume of Paul Soglin berating a homeless person! Jazzcat!), but in the end decided that there wasn’t quite enough gas in the tank to get that one across the finish line.

Instead, let’s dig into the seasonally appropriate big-screen debut of Madison’s own Bradley Whitford (East High class of ’77!) whom you may know as White House Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman on The West Wing. The film I am referring to is the 1986 horror flick Dead As A Doorman. Directed by Gary Youngman (the son of yiddish comedy legend Henny Youngman), Doorman follows novelist and unwilling amateur sleuth Terry Reilly (Whitford, at the tender young age of 25) as he tries to track down whoever it is that’s going around Atlanta snapping the necks of concierges, which begs the question: were doorman even that big of a thing in Atlanta? Seems like a limited pool of victims, but add that to the list of dubious plot decisions here I suppose.

Now, to be honest, I’ve never seen this movie, and most likely neither have you. It’s not on any streaming service I can find. The only place to get it on DVD that I’m aware of is  through Amazon Deutschland, where it’s three reviewers each gave it a single star. Ebay has a couple of VHS copies available, but how many of us hung on to their VCRs? Not me. For now, all that exists within our immediate reach is the trailer, preserved digitally on YouTube. As of press time it has been viewed 849 times.

Yes, this movie looks bad, almost irredeemably so. It looks to dull to get points for campy fun, but despite the thin soup of a script Whitford’s clearly got the goods, even under such a horrifically dated lighting design. Check out how he sells a line like “Listen, If you hurt her I’m gonna flush your damn diamonds down the toilet,” wringing out every bit of that alliterative punch. How do diamonds end up playing a part in this movie? Your guess is as good as mine, but it’s chops like those that would eventually earn him two Primetime Emmy Awards.

If you’re looking to spice up your Hallow’s Eve party with more Whitford and understandably have trouble locking in a copy of Dead As A Doorman, I can’t recommend two other horror films he had a hand in, Cabin In The Woods and Get Out, highly enough. And in the event that you do venture out into the shit-show that is Madison on Halloween, dressing up as Whitford’s Adventures In Babysitting character, Mike, would be about as easy as it gets.