The made-for-TV film stars Jack Warden, Lou Diamond Phillips and Stan Shaw as three patients in a Los Angeles-area mental institution. Dressed as the Three Wise Men for a Christmas pageant, the trio is suddenly struck with the delusion that they are really their Biblical counterparts on a quest to find the Baby Jesus. As TV cameras grind away, the three ersatz Kings surreptitiously ride out of the gates of the asylum—on camels—and into the mean streets of LA. As the story draws to its conclusion, the three escapees find themselves providing a Christmas miracle (but not in the form of rap) for a group of homeless people on the outskirts of the city.
Acting
Lou Diamond Phillips commits to camel-riding madness
Practical Effects
Actual camels. In 1987 Los Angeles traffic. No CGI.
Production
Made-for-TV budget achieving biblical-scale delusion
Director
Mel Damski
Tiana Alexandra
Jan DuLong
Jane Kaczmarek
Dr. Paula Bolet
Lou Diamond Phillips
Tag
Art LaFleur
Police Officer
Kavi Raz
Falafel Stand Worker
Charles Nelson Reilly
Clerk
Pepe Serna
Alex Sweetwood
Stan Shaw
Paul
Tori Spelling
Girl at Falafel Stand
Vic Tayback
Harold
Jack Warden
David
Aaron Mendelsohn
Trendy Boy
Joey Aresco
H. Richard Greene
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
This was Mel Damski's second TV movie that year; he'd later direct episodes of Psych and Major Crimes.
The film walks a bizarre tightrope between laughing AT and WITH its mentally ill protagonists—very 1987, very uncomfortable now. Lou Diamond Phillips reportedly took the role pre-La Bamba, when 'guy on camel' was still a viable career move.
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