Kingpin (1996)

‘You’re on a gravy train with biscuit wheels.’

Roy Munson (Woody Harrelson), the 1979 Odor Eaters Ten-Pin Bowling Champion, falls in with his arch-rival, fright-wigged con artist Ernie McCracken (a gleefully camp Bill Murray), who teaches him how to make money hustling ten-pin.

But Ernie abandons Roy to a bunch of rednecks when the ruse is discovered, and they feed his arm into the ball-return, slashing off his bowling hand. McCracken, meanwhile, goes on to become a bowling hero.

Seventeen years later, Roy is on the skids and paying off the grotesque, sexually rapacious landlady of his verminous flophouse (Lin Shaye) with vomit-inducing bouts of sex.

And then he happens upon 40-year-old Ishmael Boorg (Randy Quaid), an innocent Amish farmhand and bowling natural.

Roy coaches and mentors Ishmael, and they take off for the National Championships in Reno for a shot at the £1 million prize money (competing against Roy’s old nemesis, Big Ernie McCracken), pausing only to pick up mini-skirted street-smart ‘personal companion’ Claudia (Vanessa Angel).

There’s something arresting in the sheer commitment the Farrelly brothers (fresh from their success with 1994’s Dumb and Dumber) bring to the naff gags, pratfalls and ritual humiliations these three go through, with Ishmael learning the temptations of the secular world along the way.

More beguiling still is their warts-and-all depiction of low life, which is so upfront that it ends up quite affectionate.

Roy Munson
Woody Harrelson
Ishmael Boorg
Randy Quaid
Claudia
Vanessa Angel
Ernie McCracken
Bill Murray
The Gambler
Chris Elliott
Owner Of Stiffy’s
Richard Tyson
Landlady
Lin Shaye
Thomas
Zen Gesner
Mr Boorg
William Jordan
Mrs Boorg
Prudence Wright Holmes
Sarah Boorg
Nancy Frey-Jarecki
Lucas Boorg
Robby Thibeau
Grandma Boorg
Helen Manfull
Stanley Osmanski
Rob Moran
Calvert Munson
Daniel Greene
Rebecca
Michele Matheson
Young Roy
Will Rothhaar
Fatima
Sayed Badreya
Skidmark
Roger Clemens

Director
Bobby Farrelly
Peter Farrelly

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