Going Berserk is a 1983 comedy film starring John Candy, Joe Flaherty, and Eugene Levy and directed by David Steinberg.

Cast

• John Candy as John Bourgignon
• Joe Flaherty as Chick Leff
• Eugene Levy as Sal DiPasquale
• Alley Mills as Nancy Reese
• Pat Hingle as Ed Reese
• Ann Bronston as Patti Reese
• Richard Libertini as Rev. Sun Yi Day
• Dixie Carter as Angela
• Kurtwood Smith as Clarence
• Ernie Hudson as Jerome Willy Muhammed

Plot

John Bourgignon (Candy) is an amiable chauffeur and would-be drummer who is engaged to the daughter (Mills) of an extremely disapproving United States senator (Hingle). As the wedding date approaches, Bourgignon's sleazy film-director friend (Levy) blackmails the senator into allowing him to record the ceremony, while Bourgignon runs afoul of a motorcycle gang and later finds himself kicked out onto the nighttime city streets while handcuffed to a dead man (Hudson). Worst of all, a local aerobics studio has become the front for an inept religious cult which has targeted the senator for assassination, and attempts to drug and brainwash Bourgignon into killing his future father-in-law during the wedding ceremony. In the end, with the questionable help of his even more hapless friend (Flaherty), Bourgignon more or less saves the day, and more or less lives happily ever after.

Trivia

The film includes extended parodies of kung-fu films and Leave It To Beaver. The brainwashing sequence also includes references to the film The Manchurian Candidate.

Four years after making this film, Kurtwood Smith played another villain named "Clarence" in RoboCop.