Strange Brew is a 1983 Canadian comedy film starring the popular SCTV characters Bob and Doug McKenzie, portrayed by Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis, who also served as co-directors. Loosely based on elements of Hamlet, most of the film was shot in Toronto, and Hamilton, Ontario.
Two unemployed brothers, Bob and Doug McKenzie, screen a poorly-made film they have produced to a theater audience. When the disappointed patrons become hostile, they release a jar of moths into the theater, which disrupts the showing and allows them to escape without issuing refunds. The next day, the two place a live mouse in an empty beer bottle in an attempt to blackmail the local beer store into giving them free Elsinore beer, but they are told to take their complaint to Elsinore brewery’s management; when they do so, they are given jobs on the bottling line inspecting for mice in bottles.
Meanwhile, the evil Brewmeister Smith is developing a plan to take over the world by adulterating Elsinore beer with a mind control drug which, while rendering the consumer docile, also makes them vulnerable to mind control when certain tones are played. Smith tests this spiked beer on patients of the neighbouring Royal Canadian Institute for the Mentally Insane, which is connected to the brewery by tunnels. Bob and Doug learn that the brewery’s former owner, John Elsinore, has recently died under mysterious circumstances and his daughter Pam has been given full control of the Elsinore brewery. While exploring the massive complex, they find a shuttered cafeteria containing an old Galactic Border Patrol video game, which supernaturally reveals that Brewmeister Smith murdered John Elsinore and that Pam’s bumbling Uncle Claude was involved. Bob recognizes a brewery employee as former hockey great Jean “Rosie” LeRose, who suffered a career-ending nervous breakdown and has fallen under Smith’s control.
Eventually, Bob and Doug wander into the Brewmeister’s operations room while he is away, and Doug takes a floppy disk containing a video of John Elsinore’s murder (thinking it is a “new wave EP bootleg” and not realizing the importance of its contents). Smith and Claude tranquilize the brothers and arrange to frame them for murder, concealing Pam and her father’s friend, Henry Green, in beer kegs in the back of their sabotaged van, and instruct the brothers to deliver the kegs to a party. Unable to stop, the brothers careen into Lake Ontario. All survive (Pam with apparent memory loss), and the brothers are arrested.
The brothers’ bizarre antics at their trial cause the judge to declare them insane and put them under Brewmeister Smith’s care at the asylum. Rosie soon finds them and helps them escape, and they find and rescue Pam. Having figured out the Brewmeister’s plan, Rosie foments an uprising among the brainwashed mental-patient test subjects. The brothers separate for the first time in their lives. Doug and a group of asylum inmates help capture Claude, while Rosie and another group overpower Brewmeister Smith. The spirit of John Elsinore, possessing the brewery’s electrical system, electrocutes Smith when he is shoved against his light-up world map. Meanwhile, Smith has locked Pam and Bob in a brewery tank and begins filling it with beer; they escape when Bob consumes all the beer, expanding to a cartoonish size.
John Elsinore’s ghost warns them that Smith has already shipped tainted beer to Oktoberfest and urges them to prevent the beer from being consumed. The police accompany the brothers back to their house to retrieve their dog, Hosehead, to invade the party. Enticed by promises of free beer and sausages, Hosehead leaps into the air and flies over the city like Superman. He crashes into the tent at the celebration and, mistaken for a skunk, frightens people away from the tainted beer. In the end, the McKenzie Brothers are heroes and Pam and Rosie find true love. Bob and Doug are allowed to haul away the contaminated beer, apparently to try to drink it all. The movie ends with an over-the-credits commentary by Bob and Doug about the movie and select crew members as their names scroll by in the credits.
