There once was a time when Hollywood would assemble a huge all-star cast and let them go absolutely nuts in a madcap comedy adventure. But while everyone can recall 1963’s It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World and 1981’s Cannonball Run, few seem to recall a very funny film that fell between the two, chronologically, and boasted an amazing cast in its own right, 1979’s Scavenger Hunt.

When the will of recently deceased game inventor, Milton Parker, is read, his friends, family and hired help learn that his $200 million fortune is up for grabs to the first person who can emerge victorious from one final game he has concocted – a scavenger hunt, the likes of which has never been seen before. With dollar signs in their eyes, the mob sets out in various groups to gather an assortment of oddball items so they can claim the prize.

This isn’t a game for the weak and weary, stiff competition abounds and the obstacles aren’t for the faint of heart. Servants Henri, Jackson, Jenkens and Babette have to contend with a flood of suds from a local lab, while the unscrupulous Stuart Selson, Mildred and George Carruthers are doing their best to steal a safe from a high-rise office building. Trendy teens Jeff and Kenny Stevens work at decapitating the local Jack in the Box mascot, while a cabbie named Marvin Dummitz is busy disguising himself as a mummy in an attempt to steal a full set of armor. Henry Motley and his family are working to lift a medicine ball from an Austrian bodybuilder, while the local zoo keeps reporting that their ostriches are MIA. These  are but a mere few of the perilous adventures the various groups must face to inch one step closer to the vast fortune that awaits at the end of the finish line.

With a cast that boasted the likes of Scatman Crothers, James Coco, Ruth Gordon, Richard Benjamin, Cloris Leachman, Richard Mulligan, Meatloaf and Tony Randall, to name but a few, this was truly a laugh-a-minute comedy that couldn’t have squeezed in one more gag if it tried. And yet, even with such a stellar cast of performers, recollections of this truly funny film are few and far between. And after Cannonball Run (and its sequels) finally ran their course, the huge-ensemble-comedy genre sort of fizzled out. As for Scavenger Hunt, although it was released on VHS in 1984, it never quite made its way to DVD and remains all but a memory to those that had the opportunity to experience it. Of course, in the crazy world of remakes in which we live, perhaps someday, someone will take the challenge and give one of these madcap adventures another chance.