Nostalgia Kinky

Making its stateside Blu-ray debut, Robert Altman’s O.C. and Stiggs (1987) is now available from Radiance via their once Region B locked 2023 restoration. Featuring a very nice HD transfer and extensive extras, this limited edition release about a pair of anarchic teenagers looking to get revenge on a rich uptight neighbor gives American Altman fans an opportunity to own one of his most controversial and polarizing productions in HD. Despite reservations any might have about the film, this Radiance Blu-ray is a quality release and it is hard to imagine a better one ever appearing for admirers of O.C. and Stiggs.

Before I write about some of my thoughts on Robert Altman and specifically O.C. and Stiggs, let me first get some positives out of the way. Altman was a terrific filmmaker who made some of the greatest American films and he continued making interesting films all the way up to the end of his career. His penultimate film The Company (2003) starring Neve Campbell is a real personal favorite of mine for example. As for O.C and Stiggs, the film has a wonderful soundtrack and its musical numbers based around King Sunny Adé and His African Beats are splendid. Cast wise, both leads deliver appealingly energetic turns, including my fellow Kentuckian Daniel H. Jenkins as O.C. (I’ve included some vintage KY clippings about his casting at the end of this piece, along with dozens of others I found). The film also contains some good examples of Altman-Speak with characters talking over each other despite the fact that he had no hand in the screenplay. Finally, David Gropman’s deliberately tacky visual design plays in well with the film’s satirical stance. While I find the revisionist history about some of Altman’s most catastrophic failures disappointing, O.C. and Stiggs has some good qualities but…

Robert Altman made a lot of bad films. In fact, to my eyes, Robert Altman delivered far more misguided, poor and failed films than the small handful of genuine classics in his filmography. Of his New Hollywood peers, only Francis Ford Coppola has a spottier filmography, although Altman never made anything near as good as The Conversation of The Godfather Part 2. Since Altman’s passing the lionization of his career has been all but unbearable with glowing film Bros revisionists doting on seemingly everything the man made, despite the fact that his inconsistency was a key aspect of is career.

Despite its long-standing reputation of being Robert Altman’s worst film from his worst decade, O.C. and Stiggs (1987) isn’t any poorer than absolute dogs from his classic seventies period like A Wedding (1978) or post Short Cuts dreck like Pret a Porter (1994). While it is easy to see why it literally sat on a shelf for years, O.C. and Stiggs isn’t a complete disaster and it certainly has never looked better than it does via this new Special edition Blu-ray from Radiance.

Based on two National Lampoon characters, O.C. and Stiggs is the work of sixty year old man poking fun at a teenage market he seems to have zero understanding or compassion for. Elitist and cruel, like much of Altman’s filmography, O.C. and Stiggs fails completely as a teen-comedy take-off because essentially all Altman has made here is a bad teen comedy. John Hughes gets called out a lot on the film’s supplements as a director Altman was poking fun at but unless Bob had a crystal ball when he shot this in 1984, he’d only have known Hughes from his work at…National Lampoon, where this damn thing got started at. If anything, Altman was probably more aiming for the likes of Porkys but how do you satirize works that were already satirical and how do you satirize a culture you’re too removed from to even remotely understand?

Stacked with a distracting all-star cast and a gaudy visual style headed by the sun-baked cinematography of Pierre Mignot, O.C. and Stiggs is an overlong and only sporadically interesting film, only fitfully funny thanks to some admittedly memorable lines from the Donald Cantrell and Ted Mann written script. As a teen comedy satire, O.C. and Stiggs is the disaster its reputation has always suggested but as a commentary on increasingly frightening conservative American politics it is alarmingly predicative.

Had Altman turned O.C. and Stiggs into a pointed political comedy, this might have become one of his best films. Regrettably, the film’s ferociously eyes wide open look at what was once just a corroded underbelly of American society only appears sporadically. O.C. and Stiggs works best as a warning, which is one reason it no doubt works better in 2026 than it did in 1987, when it finally briefly appeared theatrically to mostly poor reviews.

O.C. and Stiggs was indeed mostly crucified by critics upon its long-delayed release in 1987, with even the best notices falling into just mixed reviews. Despite the fact that he had nothing to do with the film’s genesis, had no hand in its scripting and wasn’t even the first director approached about the project, Robert Altman’s perceived place always as an auteur often got the most attention. Who knows what would have happened had the film been directed as originally planned by Mike Nichols? I certainly would have appreciated it much more but Altman is the one who ended up with it and O.C. and Stiggs is still very much an
‘it is what it is’ work.

The 2025 stateside region friendly edition of O.C. and Stiggs looks to be basically a straight re-release of the locked out of print 2023 UK original. Extras include a lengthy gallery and a fun interview with Altman’s son (who is wearing an amazing Long Goodbye shirt and 3 Women hat). The main extra is the mammoth 130 minute documentary, The Water is Finally Blue – The Untold Story of Robert Altman’s O.C. and Stiggs:, that consists of new and vintage audio interviews with photos. It’s a unique and rewarding watch that didn’t improve my feelings about O.C and Stiggs, but it made me appreciate the history around it even more.

For my fellow cineastes who consider Robert Altman amongst the greatest of all American filmmakers, this re-release of O.C. and Stiggs will be an extremely celebratory one. For those, like myself, who have always side-eyed much of his filmography, this release won’t do much to change our minds. Barely a shadow on his legitimate masterpieces like McCabe and Mrs. Miller or even widely fascinating lesser films like Kansas City, O.C. and Stiggs remains a bafflingly off production. While I can’t recommended the film, this Radiance release is a valuable piece of American film history with a backstory more interesting than the film itself.

-Jeremy Richey, January 2026-

Here is a huge batch of vintage clippings I uncovered while researching this ranging from 1983 to 1989. I have broken each gallery down by year.

1983:

1984:

1985:

1986:

1987:

1988:

1989: