Written by Mr. Mouseburger 22nd Apr 2006
Kindly submitted by The Doctor
Walter Deaney is a trade union lawyer with ties to mob boss Tony Gallano and his heroin smuggling operation. Deaney also has ties to James Arthur Cummings, a millionaire investor in the smuggling operation and has the services of drunk, hard-living, hard-breathing cop Mitchell. Mitchell plans to bust both Deaney and Cummings for their respective crimes: Deaney, for shooting an unarmed burglar and trying to make it look like self-defence, and Cummings for the heroin smuggling.
Cummings lures Mitchell to a dune buggy course with the intention of killing him. After Cummings and his butler, Benton, relieve Mitchell of his revolver, Mitchell tries to leave but gets his car stuck in a mud hole. As he gets out, he is almost mown down by a dune buggy. Soon after, he is pursued by a pair of dune buggies, Deaney behind the wheel of one. A chase between an on-foot Mitchell and the dune buggies ensues.
After Deaney's friend gets his buggy stuck, Mitchell smashes him in the face with a rock and steals his dune buggy. Evenly matched now, Mitchell chases Deaney in his buggy. When the two go over a particularly bumpy stretch of road, Deaney's buggy lightly flips over and implausibly explodes in a huge fireball.
Mitchell gets out of his buggy, looks at the burning remains of Deaney, and lights a cigarette, cursing inside that he could never take Deaney to court.
I think it should be mentioned that this entire sequence was cut from the TV version of the film. In fact, the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version lacks Deaney's death scene. Tom Servo even goes, "Um, guys, wasn't John Saxon in this movie?" towards the end because Deaney simply disappears (and apparently neither Joel nor Tom and Crow caught the brief mention of his dune buggy accident heard over the radio as Mitchell arrives outside Cummings' house).
I recently had the pleasure of seeing Deaney's death scene thanks to someone who uploaded the cut scene to YouTube, and I gotta say, that was some impressive dune buggy action. Deaney was a slimeball and it's definitely a shame he died such a passe death with Mitchell being unable to pummel him a bit, although I did like the fact the movie acknowledged this with the fact that Mitchell doesn't actually really celebrate the guy's death.