This Rick Moranis Cult Classic Comedy Was Accidentally Based On A Shakespeare Play

"Saturday Night Live" undoubtedly revolutionized network television variety shows through its collision of boundary-pushing sketch comedy and booking of cutting-edge musical guests like Gil-Scott Heron, Devo, and Talking Heads. But those with a taste for more cerebrally silly spoofery knew "SCTV" was a far more reliable generator of belly laughs. 

With its knockout original cast of John Candy, Catherine O'Hara, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Dave Thomas, Joe Flaherty, and Harold Ramis (the great Rick Moranis joined in season 3), the Canadian show took absurdist aim at popular screen titles like "Fantasy Island," "Chinatown," and "The Godfather" while creating such endearingly zany recurring characters as Johnny LaRue, Lola Heatherton, Bobby Bittman, Edith Prickley and scheming station director Guy Caballero. I wouldn't say that the "SCTV" gang was more versatile, but they did have a lot more leeway to mess around because, until they moved to NBC in 1981, they weren't under a mainstream media microscope.

One thing that set "SCTV" apart from "SNL" was that its writers and performers never drove recurring bits into the ground. While a part of me wishes the "Farm Film Report" (where Candy and Joe Flaherty played rednecks who informed viewers of pork belly prices while discussing European cinema) hadn't turned into "Farm Film Celebrity Blow-Up," the hosts' penchant for causing stars like Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep, and Brooke Shields to literally explode was inspired buffoonery.

Of the show's recurring characters, though, none figuratively exploded like Moranis and Thomas' Bob & Doug McKenzie. The Canadian brothers who called each other hosers while swilling Molsons were a catch-phrase phenomenon. They became so popular that MGM brought the siblings to the big screen with 1983's "Strange Brew." The result was inspired clownery that, somewhat accidentally, drew its inspiration from no less a literary masterpiece than William Shakespeare's "Hamlet."

MGM had no idea if Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas could carry a movie, but when the duo's comedy LP "The Great White North" went platinum in 1981, the studio gave them a $4 million budget to find out.

Thomas and Moranis hooked up with first-time Steve De Jarnatt (who later wrote and directed the terrifying all-nighter "Miracle Mile") and asked him to pen a script that riffed on "Hamlet." "That's at least a story that works," as Thomas explained to IGN in 2000. When De Jarnatt delivered a draft that hewed too closely to "Hamlet," Thomas encouraged him to play around with the play's elements. As he told IGN, "I said, 'Bend this around a little bit. Have some fun with it. There's a lot of structural stuff that could be fun. We're Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and make the girl Hamlet, whose father is killed. See what you can do with that.'"

De Jarnatt, Thomas and Moranis ultimately wound up with a hilarious hybrid of "Hamlet" and Tom Stoppard's absurdist tragedy "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead." Lynne Griffin plays Pam Elsinore, a decidedly sane, despair-free Hamlet who's inherited the Elsinore family brewery after the suspicious death of her father. Max von Sydow is a quasi-Claudius as Brewmeister Smith, who plans to rule not just Elsinore Brewery but the entire world (via a mind-control device that makes drinkers crave his beer). There's also Paul Dooley's Uncle Claude, who performs the Claudius duty of taking up with Pam's mother Gertrude (Jill Frappier). Some of the basic plot elements are there, but if you're looking to use "Strange Brew" as a "Hamlet" cheat sheet, you're going to look as ridiculous as Bob and Doug.

Aside from Bob and Doug's aforementioned plot function as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, "Strange Brew" gradually departs from "Hamlet" and turns into a blitzed Abbott & Costello movie. Hamlet triumphs, the Claudii die, and Rosencrantz/Bob saves the day by guzzling an entire vat of beer (leaving him cartoonishly bloated and desperately needing to "throw a whizz"). As for the heroic role played by Hosehead the dog at the end of the film, Shakespeare could never.

While Thomas is flattered that people consider his cult classic a smart-silly comedy, he admitted to IGN that this was all accidental:

"Again, people give the thing credit for being smarter in its writing than it ever could be, because it was more of a collision of ideas trying to find a voice. I think we found a 'tone' in the performing, and I found more of it in the editing. Rick went off to do something else, and I edited the picture, but there was no master plan for the screenplay. It was a true comedy of errors."

"Strange Brew" broke a little over even with an $8.5 million box office gross. It's not an all-time great "Hamlet" adaptation, but it is a highly rewatchable romp that pairs perfectly with a Molson or six. And if you don't agree, take off, eh?