“They don’t teach Prostitution 101 at Vassar,” prim Beverly Hills housewife Cathy (Cindy Williams) huffs to streetwise hooker Marla (Markie Post) in Tricks of the Trade, a saucy 1988 telefilm. This very dated buddy comedy serves as her crash course. When stockbroker Donald (John Ritter), Cathy’s husband, is gunned down at Marla’s seedy apartment by a mystery assailant, the women are plunged into zany criminal intrigue — a milieu more comfortable to the lady of the evening than the staid suburban spouse.
They first spot each other at the police station, where there’s an obligatory scene of Marla snapping “Are you gonna charge me with something? Because if you’re not gonna charge me with something, I’m outta here.” But it’s not until Cathy’s therapist encourages her to get in touch with her anger that she finally knocks on the other woman’s door, interrupting a date with a kinky john to ask how long Donald was a client. “What is this, female bonding?” Marla asks, admitting it was a years-long arrangement.
A deflated Cathy leaves and endures a string of comedically flat indignities in Marla’s crime-riddled neighborhood. After her $50,000 car is stolen and her designer purse snatched, she’s offered help by hoodlums posing as Good Samaritans. They menacingly reveal that Donald had something they want and give her two days to hand it over. The detectives in charge of Donald’s case (Chris Mulkey and James Whitmore Jr.) are unsympathetic to his widow’s material losses but vow to catch his killer.
When Marla, too, is harassed and threatened, she begins a parallel investigation with Cathy’s help. Neither woman has any clue what Donald might’ve been hiding. Tensions immediately flare in their unlikely alliance. “By the way, what is this you’re wearing?” Cathy asks of bondage gear in one exchange. “A business suit,” Marla answers. Their first meeting concludes with a client summoning her to the bedroom. “I have to get back to work,” Marla says. “Unless, of course, you care to join us,” she adds, looking Cathy up and down.
In another scene, a grieving Marla is visited by her best friend and fellow hooker, Beverly (Tanya Boyd), who dresses as a naughty nurse for a date. Marla doesn’t feel like going out and asks “Can you take Arnie alone?” implying they sometimes entertain johns together. Besides those allusions to Marla’s heteroflexibility, we’re treated to a few more crumbs of gay content. There’s a brief exchange with a friendly female impersonator and a glimpse of one leather daddy helping another wrap himself in chains at an adult novelty store.
As Cathy’s underworld tour guide, Marla introduces her to other colorful characters, including a tattoo artist, a biker gang, young punks, streetwalkers, and a masseuse at a squalid parlor. She even not-so-subtly handles a snake and demonstrates how to saunter through a pool hall (to the tune of “You Can Leave Your Hat On,” which is good for a titter if you’ve seen 9½ Weeks). This is the moderately fun bonding section of Tricks of the Trade, where Marla’s character develops beyond snide remarks and Cathy reluctantly trades her country club attire for a street makeover.
Sitcom titans Williams and Post are in cruise-control for most of the lighthearted, empty-headed film. The flimsy particulars of Donald’s financial schemes don’t hold much interest, nor do the cartoonish villains. Much is made of Cathy anxiously snacking as compulsively as Marla chain-smokes, and of their contrasting fashions (Post’s wardrobe is a garish visual feast), but Noreen Stone’s screenplay wisely refrains from pitting them against each other. As the action builds to a shootout at a sex shop, with inflatable dolls and pornographic videotapes caught in the crossfire, the actors understandably loosen up.
It’s a little odd for those of us who grew up with Laverne & Shirley and Night Court to see Williams poke at what appears to be a rubber phallus (the lighting is low as we survey some of the store’s more explicit inventory), and for Post to toss beads on the stairs to thwart an escape, but what the hell — by then they’ve already stolen a car and bought a gun from David Lynch regular Jack Nance. Directed by Jack Bender (of Valerie Bertinelli’s nunfest Shattered Vows), Tricks of the Trade is a cheerfully off-kilter, only sporadically satisfying curiosity best reserved for a rained-out weekend when you have a mountain of laundry to fold.
Additional screen caps will be posted on Instagram later today.
Streaming and DVD availability
Tricks of the Trade hasn’t been released on DVD. It currently streams at Tubi. Four years later, Post and Ritter reunited for the short-lived sitcom Hearts Afire, which streams at both Amazon and Tubi.
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Cranky Lesbian is a disgruntled homosexual with too much time on her hands. Click for film reviews or to follow on Instagram.
Michael
An excellent review of a fun but flawed TV movie for which I’ll readily admit I have a major soft spot. As undercooked as the movie can be at times, Markie and Cindy are never anything less than fun to watch. I was quite crushed when Markie died a year or so ago, as I adored her in everything I ever saw her in. I love that you’re shining a spotlight on mostly forgotten TV movies like this.
Cranky Lesbian
Thanks, Michael. Markie Post was arguably the most underrated sitcom “straight man” of her era. The telefilms of hers that I remember my mom watching tended to be serious, so I was thrilled to find this on Tubi. It’s always refreshing when women get to cut loose in a TV movie rather than suffer endlessly. I’d rewatch this over something like “Fear Stalk” any day.