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Found this on a message board, and am copying it in its entirety because, though it reads like an article, it's just a chat board post (but an interesting one) from someone named "Ano-Genitus." Ano seems to get a few facts wrong, but the movie itself, which I've never heard of, sounds kind of fascinating:
THE FINAL PANTS
1986 was a banner year for many reasons, not all of them connected to the Challenger disaster. This was the year that David Cronenberg made The Fly and James Cameron made Aliens, and the year that, about a month after these two talented Brits' movies were released to cinemas, they returned as a double bill. It was the year Ronald Reagan was overheard practicing how to say the word "mayonnaise" by a member of the White House Press Corps. This was never reported, because there were no blogs then and it wasn't yet fashionable to report how Ray-Gun had become a doddering, dementia-ridden caricature of his "amiable dunce" persona.
And of course, this was the year that notorious, studio-breaking flop The Final Pants was unleashed upon the world. While it's true that Orion Pictures would manage to burp up a last few obscure pictures before finally giving up the ghost in 1988, it's commonly accepted that the disastrous box-office performance of The Final Pants provided the initial gutshot that was to spell that venerable company's demise.
Oh, studios have been crippled and even killed by films before. Look at Michael Ciminos legendary debut, "Heaven's Gate," which in 1976 managed to put United Artists into a coma from which it has yet to emerge. (Proof of the studios Terry Schiavo-level brain patterns is evident in their willingness to bankroll Cimino’s second film, the notorious Russian gangster flick Year of the Dragon, two years after the "Heaven’s Gate" disaster.) And there's the story of the misbegotten 1956 3D gorilla-at-large picture, "Gorilla At Large," which brought its studio, Monogram, from its comfortable niche in the Olympian heights of Hollywood studio royalty to the back alleys behind that unforgiving town's infamous Poverty Row in only three days.
These cases were out there for all to see and learn from, as plain as the Bible's admonishments to stay away from pork. And yet, for reasons thoroughly yet somehow still inadequately described in Jake Eberts' and Terry Ilott's tell-all tale "My Indecision Is Final: The Rise and Fall of Goldcrest Films," the executives at Orion gave an enthusiastic green light to the funding and production of Joseph Zitos' "The Final Pants," based on an original script by former actor and later director Bruce Robinson (who would later almost redeem himself with the uproarious slapstick comedy of "Withnail & I").
Robinson's original script was, by all accounts, as different from what ultimately appeared on screen as George Cukor's musical version of Annie was from the graphic novel that had inspired it. Robinson had conceived of a dark detective tale, evidently a "Chinatown" for the 80s, in which the line between sleuth and criminal is blurred to the point of reversal, while in the meantime a virus causing total and irreparable deafness is running rampant through the films alternate-universe 50s Los Angeles setting. The whole was meant to work as a potent metaphor for the McCarthy witch hunts, an event Robinson felt might break out at any moment again given the political climate of the times.
Joseph Zitos was not a director given to such heady allegorical meanderings. With a filmography vast and multitudinous enough to encompass both "Friday the 13th part 4" and the Chuck Norris vehicle "Invasion U.S.A.," he was clearly talented, but, like the current President Bush, also a guy not given to nuance. Why the executives at Orion chose him to direct Robinsons script over the many other directors vying for the job - including Stanley Kubrick, Sidney Lumet, Canada's Claude Jutra and even Robinson himself - is a tidbit unrecorded by history. The fact remains that they did, and in so doing cooled the ardour of the many bankable stars willing to take pay cuts if necessary to play the films protagonist, Jake Larry. This roster of talent included Jack Nicholson, naturally, along with Warren Beatty, Clint Eastwood (both of whom were interested in directing) and Burt Reynolds, who would go off in a snit and, in retribution, deliberately ruin another Orion production, "Heat," by performing his gambler/bodyguard role in a silent, self-created combination of mime and Japanese Noh techniques.
Zitos, apparently unfazed by the 8.2 shockwaves his hiring had sent through Hollywood, went ahead and did exactly what Zitos-watchers had expected and feared he would do: he cast Chuck Norris as Jake Larry, and (perhaps in a tip of the hat to his friend and mentor, J. Lee Thompson) further startled a Hollywood that had thought itself past any capability for surprise by casting Charles Bronson as Larry's arch-nemesis, the renegade occupational therapist F. E. O. Amante, who has managed to invent a hearing aid powerful enough to counteract the effects of the hearing-impairment virus.
The unprecedented teaming of Norris and Bronson ("Chuck Meets Charlie In A Battle To The Doom!" the one-sheets blared hysterically) was intended to put viewers in mind of another historic pairing, Eastwood and Reynolds in Blake Edward's action classic "City Heat." Perhaps it was the memories of this money-spinner that had hypnotized Orion into going along with Zitos' plan as far as they did – which proved to be all the way. But they little counted on Zitos' thus-far latent ability to un-weave and otherwise dull an elegant and complex narrative; to stub out any talent his thespians might have as one might the cherry on a cigarette; to stage his action scenes with less finesse than all those kids who remade "Raiders of the Lost Ark" in their back yards; and, each and every time a directorial decision was to be made at any level, to unfailingly make the wrongest choice possible.
Some of the stories behind the making of "The Final Pants" have been woven into the tapestry of legend, such as Zitos' insistence on firing live rounds at random intervals to keep his actors perpetually on edge. (It worked, and the technique was adapted by David Cronenberg for his adaptation of Stephen King's "The Dead Zone.") Other aspects have been little commented on, such as the bizarre, faceless Greek Chorus that tunefully burbles out plot details on the soundtrack for those who might have missed them. (Here is another Zito idea which later appeared in another, better-known directors work, in this case Martin Scorsese's "Casino" in 1992.) Altogether, the movie is a mess of odd moments, failed ideas, nervous performances (no wonder, if Norris and Bronson were being shot at!) and head-scratchingly pointless nudity from almost every cast member.
But while Zitos would never show evidence of this kind of ambition again, Orion would end up on the trash heap, and both Norris and Bronson would spiral down into oblivion on the melting wax wings of increasingly low-grade action franchises, we, the viewers, are left with the undecipherable result of their collective plunge into insanity. "The Final Pants" offers rewards to the faithful few who have braved it more than once, but no way of decoding those rewards for un-initiates. It's a film for which the DVD format seems made (providing Zitos was brave enough to attempt a commentary track which might provide some perspective or insight into the bafflement), but which I for one am secretly grateful has not shown its face in any form since that apocalyptic two week run twenty-one years ago this month.
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