Smokey and the Good Time Outlaws (1978)

          Here’s a peculiar one. About one-third of Smokey and the Good Time Outlaws is exactly what viewers might expect, a shameless riff on a certain Burt Reynolds blockbuster. There’s even a subplot about a woman running from the son of a vulgar sheriff. Yet the other two-thirds of Smokey and the Good Time Outlaws comprise an inept but sincere music-industry saga told from the perspective of someone with real-world experience. Jesse Lee Turner—the executive producer, cowriter, and star of this flick—enjoyed a minor novelty hit with the 1959 song “Little Space Girl” before his recording career sputtered. Presumably the goal of this enterprise was to get things going again, so the film features Turner performing several original songs.
          The picture opens in a tiny Texas town where ne’er-do-wells J.D. (Turner) and the Salt Flat Kid (Dennis Fimple) dream of showbiz success. J.D. is a singer-songwriter while the Kid is both J.D.’s accompanist and a ventriloquist. In jail after a bar brawl, the guys meet a fellow inmate who claims to be a music manager. Before he skips town, the “manager” scams cash from the guys and offers a business card they believe is their ticket to success. Off to Music City they go. Along the way they meet two ladies, one of whom is being pursued by Sheriff Leddy (Slim Pickens). The movie makes quick work of the ensuing Burt Reynolds-style high jinks before devoting much more screen time to the rigors of pursuing fame in Nashville. The guys hook up with a real manger, albeit a sketchy one, and they find allies in empathetic locals. Inevitably, the story climaxes with a make-or-break concert.
          Even though Smokey and the Good Time Outlaws is amateurish, the story is coherent, the leading actors are as enthusiastic as their characters, and the content is more or less family-friendly. In other words, the picture is wholly innocuous—except for some iffy flourishes. We’re talking a chase scene featuring “The William Tell Overture,” a major subplot (the girls and the sheriff) that completely disappears, and the truly bizarre spectacle of J.D.’s stage persona. While singing, Turner crouches and gyrates and twists as if he’s being electrocuted. Naturally, on-camera audiences pretend to be driven wild by his antics. Yet Smokey and the Good Time Outlaws—which has also been exhibited as Smokey and the Outlaw Women and J.D. and the Salt Flat Kid—is more of a curiosity than anything else inasmuch as it documents a stage in Turner’s odd trajectory. At some point after the movie faded from view, he shifted from entertainment to evangelism, though he eventually blended his interests by recording Christian albums. More recently, Turner has proselytized for the MAGA movement. 

Smokey and the Good Time Outlaws: FUNKY

The Sweet Creek County War (1979)

          While the threadbare premise of The Sweet Creek County War was never to be the foundation for singular entertainment, the script’s colorful dialogue and earnest characterizations could have become the building blocks for something highly watchable. Alas, J. Frank James elected to direct his own script instead of entrusting it to more capable hands, thus ensuring the end of a screen career that began just a few years earlier with the other low-budget Western that he wrote and directed, The Legend of Earl Durand (1974). James was not without skill as a screenwriter, but he was hopelessly inept as a director, so both of his films squandered their potential. Even the title of The Sweet Creek County War indicates how badly this piece suffers for anemic execution—although the title suggests a sweeping story about frontier conflict, the picture largely depicts varmints laying siege to a single cabin occupied by the three main characters. More like The Sweet Creek County Skirmish.
          As for those characters, they are retired lawman Judd (Richard Egan), aging outlaw George (Albert Salmi), and past-her-prime prostitute Firetop Alice (Nita Talbot). After Judd rescues George from a lynch mob, the men pool their resources to buy a ranch. Later, George drunkenly marries Firetop Alice and brings her back to the ranch, upsetting the dynamic of his friendship with Judd. Meanwhile, vicious developer Lucas (Robert J. Wilke), who wants the land on which the ranch is located, unleashes gunmen to intimidate  Judd and George. Also drifting through the story, somewhat inconsequentially, is a stuttering dope named “Jitters Pippen,” played by Slim Pickens. (Presumably Dub Taylor was unavailable and Strother Martin was too expensive.)
          The basic premise of The Sweet Creek County War appeared in countless previous Western movies and TV shows, so the picture’s only moderately individualistic elements are characterizations and the dialogue—and what these elements lack in originality, they offer in sincerity. James seems committed to exploring both an unusual friendship and the conflicted emotions of people who carry deep regrets. Accordingly, had James worked with a proper director, one imagines he could have minimized the script’s formulaic components and leaned into the poignant ones. In turn, improvements to the script and the participation of a competent filmmaker might have attracted relevant performers, no offence to the blandly competent Egan, Salmi, and Talbot. After all, acting isn’t the problem here. The most amateurish aspect of The Sweet Creek County War is unquestionably James’s artless shooting style.

The Sweet Creek County War: FUNKY

The Legend of Earl Durand (1974)

          This low-budget rural adventure is based upon a real-life 1930s fugitive named Earl Durand, a mountain man who was arrested for poaching, made a brazen escape from jail, and led authorities on a manhunt lasting nearly two weeks. Before committing suicide, Durand killed four law-enforcement officers. The Legend of Earl Durand portrays the title character as a backwoods Robin Hood who kills government elk to help feed local poor people, so his reason for evading capture is, theoretically, continuing his good deeds. Since the filmmakers never quite figure how to express that concept, The Legend of Earl Durand churns and spins through a painfully overlong 110-minute running time. One wishes for the brisk fable this could and should have been. Still, even with its considerable flaws, not least of which is an ugly visual style—flat lighting and haphazard angles—The Legend of Earl Durand is watchable more often than it isn’t. The presence of Slim Pickens, Albert Salmi, Martin Sheen, and Keenan Wynn in supporting roles helps a lot. As for fair-haired leading man Peter Haskell, he comes across as a shabby substitute for Robert Redford, clearly the sort of image the filmmakers were after.

          Awkwardly framed with cutesy spoken/sung narration, the movie gives Durand a sympathetic origin story by way of a prologue depicting his youth, then cuts to the protagonist in full robbing-from-the-rich mode. His main adversary, manhunter Jack McQueen (Salmi), is portrayed as a sadist with political ambitions, so the thematic deck is unfairly stacked. In early scenes, Durand romances a pretty librarian and occasionally brings her little brother along during adventures; throughout the first half of the picture, Durand is as menacing as Sheriff Andy Taylor. Things get a bit tougher once the manhunt begins—for instance, Wynn plays a retired Army officer who zooms over the Grand Tetons in a biplane, then commands a posse armed with primitive rocket launchers. Wynn blusters well, Pickens reliably essays a likeable idiot, and Sheen supercharges the scenes in which he plays a simple-minded Durand accomplice. So while there’s a lot to dislike here, there’s also a fair amount to appreciate.

The Legend of Earl Durand: FUNKY

The Shadow of Chikara (1977)

          A low-budget adventure/horror flick set in the American South right after the Civil War, The Shadow of Chikara is pleasant enough to watch for fans of ’70s drive-in junk, because it features a handful of familiar actors as well as a slew of wild narrative concepts. Like so many films of the same type, however, The Shadow of Chikara illustrates the gulf between conception and execution. On paper, the plot sounds creepy and eventful, but on film, the storyline is pointless and vapid. For much of the running time, nothing really happens, and the ending is so inconsequential that even calling the finale a disappointment requires exaggeration. That said, the movie avoids some obvious traps in that it’s neither punishingly stupid nor punishingly ugly. If you dig the notion of folks grimacing and growling while sporting period costumes and trudging through dirty forests, then you’ll have an acceptable experience watching this picture. If you expect more, this one’s not for you.

          During the final days of the Civil War, Confederate soldier Wishbone Cutter (Joe Don Baker) consoles a dying comrade, Virgil Caine (Slim Pickens), who shares the location of a cave in which a cache of diamonds is hidden. After returning home to discover that his wife left him for a Yankee, Wishbone becomes a nomad determined to find the diamonds, so he assembles a crew including a geologist (Ted Neeley), an Indian guide (John N. Houck Jr.), and a woman (Sondra Locke), the latter of whom Wishbone rescues from rapists. The group heads to an Arkansas mountain supposedly guarded by the spirit of a giant demon bird, and, predictably, bad things happen—causing Wishbone and his people to question whether they’re bedeviled by locals protecting a treasure or beset by supernatural forces.

          The mild allure of this piece is likely apparent in the preceding description. For instance, if hearing that Joe Don Baker plays a dude named Wishbone Cutter doesn’t pique your interest, then you and I don’t groove on the same things. Hell, Baker even plays the role with mutton-chop sideburns. Baker is best during moments of macho posturing, though the picture allows him to clumsily express sensitivity now and then. Pickens lends kitsch value, though he’s only in the movie very briefly, and it’s novel to see Neeley in his first sizable nonmusical role after scoring in the stage and screen versions of Jesus Christ Superstar.

The Shadow of Chikara: FUNKY

1980 Week: Honeysuckle Rose

          After displaying a naturalistic screen presence in his movie debut, Sydney Pollack’s romantic drama The Electric Horseman (1978), country singer Willie Nelson was given a custom-made leading role in another romantic drama, Honeysuckle Rose, which Pollack produced but did not direct. Once again, Nelson proved he was comfortable on camera, though the role of an easygoing, pot-smoking troubadour did not require him to stretch. The film surrounding Nelson is so frustrating that the best thing to come out of this project was a classic song. “On the Road Again” became a huge crossover hit, earning a Grammy award and an Oscar nomination. Some scenes in Honeysuckle Rose capture the joy of that tune, but those bits are almost always tangential to the main plot, which is trite and unseemly. The movie also suffers for the questionable casting of its two major female roles.

          Nelson plays Buck Bonham, a longhaired Texas singer-songwriter on the verge of achieving national stardom after years of being a regional favorite. (Sound familiar?) Buck is married to sexy blonde Viv (Dyan Cannon), a former singer who gave up life on the road to raise Jamie (Joey Floyd), her son with Buck. Now firmly entrenched in middle age, she’s lost her patience with Buck’s endless declarations that “one of these days” he’ll slow down his touring to spend more time on the Bonham’s sprawling Texas ranch. When Buck’s longtime guitarist, Garland Ramsey (Slim Pickens), announces his retirement, Buck scrambles for a replacement, and Viv unwisely suggests that Buck hire Garland’s seductive 22-year-old daughter, Lily (Amy Irving). To absolutely no one’s surprise, Buck and Lily become lovers on the road, causing friction in the Bonham marriage and damaging Buck’s friendship with Garland.

          There are maybe 80 minutes of real story in Honeysuckle Rose, but the movie drags on for a full two hours. The bloat stems partially from extended performance scenes, but also from such discursions as an endless family-reunion scene and snippets of life on a tour bus. Director Jerry Schtazberg shoots all this stuff beautifully, applying a photographer’s keen eye to scenes that feel casual and spontaneous, but he can’t muster similar creativity for romantic scenes. Nelson’s low-key vibe creates an inherent energy deficiency, and the fact that neither Cannon nor Irving seem remotely believable as Texans introduces falseness into a movie that otherwise boasts plentiful authenticity. Nonetheless, Honeysuckle Rose has its pleasures. Emmylou Harris shows up to sing a number with Nelson, and it’s a treat to see Pickens playing a straight dramatic character. The scenes in which he and Nelson simulate drunken revels are particularly enjoyable.

Honeysuckle Rose: FUNKY

The Deserter (1971)

          Part spaghetti Western and part Dirty Dozen ripoff, this Italy/US/Yugoslavia coproduction has a serviceable premise, then loses its way thanks to a forgettable leading performance and an overly mechanical plot. Along the way, several colorful actors are subsumed by the overall mediocrity of the piece, delivering half-hearted interpretations of underdeveloped roles. Even the action highlights are ho-hum. Those who want nothing more from adventure pictures than a steady flow of death-defying bravery and tight-lipped macho posturing will be able to consume the picture like a serving of empty calories, but those who expect anything more will get bored fairly quickly. In the Wild West, U.S. Cavalry soldier Kaleb (Bekim Fehmiu) completes a fortnight-long patrol and discovers that while he was away, Apaches raided the outpost where he lives and killed his wife. Kaleb blames the death on his superior officer, Colonel Brown (Richard Crenna), so Kaleb tries to quit the service and devote his life to killing Apaches. When Brown refuses Kaleb’s resignation, Kaleb shoots the colonel and becomes a fugitive from military justice. Two years later, blustery General Miles (John Huston) arrives on the scene, demanding that Brown illegally cross the Mexican border to slaughter a band of Apache raiders. What’s more, Miles demands that Brown’s men bring Kaleb in from the wilderness, because during the intervening period, Kaleb has made good on his vengeance pledge by slaughtering Apaches heedlessly, thereby becoming the ideal man to lead the mission into Mexico.

          Once all the narrative pieces are in place, Kaleb finds himself supervising a band of soldiers, including Kaleb, who would just as soon kill the notorious deserter as kill Apaches. Among those playing soldiers are Ian Bannen, Chuck Connors, Ricardo Montalban, Slim Pickens, and Woody Strode. (Naturally, Crenna’s character is along for the ride, too.) With this much talent at their disposal, producer Dino De Laurentiis and director Burt Kennedy should have been able to come up with something much more interesting than The Deserter, which is sometimes known as The Devil’s Backbone. Alas, the script is unrelentingly clichéd, predictable, and superficial, and the filmmakers miscalculated, badly, by casting Yugoslavian stud Fehmiu in the leading role. Just one year previous, Paramount tried to make Fehmiu into an international star by toplining him in the epic melodrama The Adventurers (1970), so this picture presumably represented the completion of a two-picture deal. A European equivalent to, say, James Franciscus, Fehmiu is suitably brooding and athletic, but he’s got the depth and range of a statue. With his performance creating a vacuum at the center of The Deserter, the movie is doomed to disappoint from its very first frames.

The Deserter: FUNKY

Rolling Man (1972)

          At first glance, the made-for-TV drama Rolling Man might seem like little more than an offbeat mediocrity with an interesting-ish cast. Prolific TV-movie guy Dennis Weaver plays a tow-truck driver who loses custody of his kids while serving a prison term for assault, then struggles to find them upon gaining his release. Supporting him are Donna Mills, Agnes Moorehead, Sheree North, Slim Pickens, Don Stroud, and country singer Jimmy Dean. The story is a bit of a mess, because the leading character tends to stumble in and out of episodes, lingering in places when he should be looking for his kids, so there’s not much in the way of forward momentum until the last 20 minutes or so. Yet the exemplary work of a behind-the-scenes player elevates Rolling Man. By dint of airing about two weeks before another 1972 telefilm, Goodnight, My Love, this picture represents the directorial debut of Peter Hyams, who later became a successful feature-film helmer known for action pictures, conspiracy thrillers, and sci-fi sagas. He does terrific work here, not only by imbuing Rolling Man with a naturalistic pictorial style but also by guiding his actors to render lived-in performances. What’s more, the picture has strong rural atmosphere, from the believable dialects of the characters to the gritty look of low-rent locations including racetracks and trailer parks.

          The movie’s unlucky protagonist is Lonnie (Weaver), a simple guy who enjoys working for mechanic Chuck (Pickens) because the lifestyle allows him to avoid heavy responsibilities. But when Lonnie discovers that his wife is two-timing him with racecar driver Harold (Stroud), Lonnie freaks out, chasing the lovers and running them off the road. After the wife dies in the crash, Lonnie beats the tar out of Harold, blaming him for the tragedy. Years later, after leaving jail, Lonnie discovers that his mother (Moorehead) sent his kids to live with a foster family, so Lonnie embarks on a quest to find the two boys, though he’s periodically derailed by dalliances with pretty women. Eventually, circumstances lead to a showdown between Lonnie and his old nemesis Harold. The script never quite clicks, partially because the bond connecting Lonnie to his sons isn’t established well at the beginning. However, nearly every scene in Rolling Man works as a stand-alone piece. Hyams knew what he was doing, as evidenced by the fact that he graduated to big-screen directing after the near-simultaneous release of his first two made-for-TV efforts.

Rolling Man: FUNKY

J.C. (1972)

          If you’ve ever felt something was missing from your life because you’ve never seen a biker movie with religious themes, then J.C. is the answer to your prayers. That is, if you’re willing to overlook the fact that beyond its periodic blending of Christian imagery and rebel-cinema iconography, J.C. (sometimes known as The Iron Horsmen) is an inept vanity piece by writer, producer, director, and star William F. McGaha, whose obscurity is entirely deserved. McGaha’s only qualifications for playing a hog-riding messiah appear to be a shaggy beard and some with-it lingo, since he lacks charisma, formidable physicality, and rhetorical style. One gets the sense that if he hadn’t put this picture together, he’d be one of the interchangeable slobs in the background instead of the main focus. Reflecting its auteur’s shortcomings, J.C. is derivative, jumbled, and sluggish. That said, the notion of a savior on a Harley is so peculiar that it’s fascinating to watch J.C. partially to see if it fulfills the promise of the premise, and partially to marvel at the myriad ways McGaha bungles the storytelling. Plus, it’s not as if J.C. totally lacks the pleasing tropes of the biker-movie genre, although these tropes are delivered clumsily and in small doses.

          The picture opens in a city, where hirsute J.C. Masters (McGaha) gets into various hassles because of, you know, society. For instance, he quits a job on a construction crew after the supervisor has the temerity to critique J.C. for smoking dope at the job site instead of working. Also tormenting J.C. are occasional visions of a “giant winking eye” that he perceives as the voice of God. Eventually, J.C. announces to the members of his gang that he’s had a holy vision and wants to spread messages of peace and love. His people dig the idea and agree to accompany J.C. on his journey. However, the journey somehow morphs into a casual trip to J.C.’s hometown in backwoods Alabama, where J.C. reunites with his sister, Miriam (Joanna Moore). The bikers hang out at Miriam’s farm for several days, but the presence among their number of a black man irks the redneck locals. Enter racist Sheriff Grady Caldwell (Slim Pickens) and his vicious deputy, Dan Martin (Burr DeBenning), who vow to run the bikers out of town.

          By now, of course, the plot has devolved into nonsense, since it’s unclear why someone out to spread peace would beeline to the most intolerant place he knows and deliberately antagonize people who already hate him because of youthful transgressions. What’s more, the bikers’ version of “spreading peace” involves trying to rape Miriam, getting into fights with townies, and threatening to tear up the town if the Man gives them any shit. Very late in the picture, McGaha provides a threadbare explanation for the religious stuff, revealing that J.C.’s father was an evangelist who trained his young son as an apprentice, thereby making a mess of the boy’s mind. Or something along those lines.

          J.C. is discombobulated right from the beginning, and it’s also weirdly casual because McGaha’s performance is easygoing to a fault. Still, there are minor compensatory values. In one scene, J.C. introduces the folks on his crew, and their names include Beaver Bud, Beverly Bellbottoms, Dick the Disciple, Happy Von Wheelie, Mr. Clean, and Shirley the Saint. Later, J.C. opines to his sister about how silly it is for adults to use made-up names, justifying the behavior under the general rubric of being “free,” whatever that means. Your guess is as good as mine whether McGaha meant to celebrate or satirize counterculture behavior, but the most interesting moments in J.C. capture . . . something.

J.C.: FREAKY

Poor Pretty Eddie (1975)

          Viewed from a rational perspective, the hard-to-classify exploitation flick Poor Pretty Eddie is pure trash, combining showbiz ennui with murder, rape, and stereotypes. Viewed from a more adventurous perspective, watching Poor Pretty Eddie is like patronizing an all-you-can-eat buffet with nothing but junk food—everything might seem tasty at first, but indigestion is sure to follow. The loopy plot begins with African-American pop singer Liz Wetherly (Leslie Uggams) taking a break from the celebrity grind. Unwisely venturing alone into the Deep South, Liz experiences car failure near a roadside motel/restaurant, so she walks onto the property—even though it looks like a junkyard—to seek help. First Liz meets hulking handyman Keno (Ted Cassidy). Then she meets handsome but smarmy Eddie (Michael Christian), the kept man of the facility's owner, Bertha (Shelley Winters). Despite many red flags, Liz sees no choice but to stay until Eddie and Keno fix her car. This draws her into a sordid situation.

          Aging and overweight, Bertha runs her place like a fiefdom and builds her life around Eddie, even though she doubts his loyalty. Sure enough, Eddie lusts after Liz and rapes her the first night she's in the motel. Liz confronts Bertha with this information the next morning. That’s when things get really ugly: Bertha’s okay with Eddie using Liz as a plaything so long as that keeps him docile. When Liz seeks help from local authorities—grotesque rednecks played by Dub Taylor and Slim Pickens—her nightmare escalates.

          Even with this potboiler of a plot, Poor Pretty Eddie wanders into tangential weirdness at regular intervals, notably Eddie’s inept, Elvis-inflected performance of a country song. Furthermore, certain scenes include trippy intercutting and superimpositions, vignettes of gruesome violence are rendered in loving slow-motion, and the overarching aesthetic is surpassingly vulgar. In the most extreme sequence, shots of Eddie raping Liz are intercut with shots of rednecks forcing pigs to have sex, all to the accompaniment of a folksy love song. Oddly, the film’s performances are not as gonzo as the storytelling. Winters does her usual share of screaming, but she also imbues her pathetic characterization with a measure of pathos. Similarly, Christian’s portrayal of Eddie has a disquieting little-boy-lost element even though Eddie is unquestionably a monster. As for Uggams, she works a straightforward exploitation-flick groove while tracking a victim-turns-violent arc, lending Poor Pretty Eddie a touch of blaxploitation attitude.

          All of this makes for a strange vibe, and not a pleasant one; Poor Pretty Eddie is fascinating in that old can't-look-away-from-a-traffic-accident sort of way. Weirder still? The film’s producers, capping what appears to have been a wild production experience, released Poor Pretty Eddie in several different versions under multiple titles, including an almost completely re-conceived and re-edited cut bearing the name Heartbreak Motel. After all, it’s better to recycle trash than to simply throw the stuff away, right?

Poor Pretty Eddie: FREAKY

Hawmps! (1976)

          After scoring a surprise box-office hit with the independently made canine adventure Benji (1974), director Joe Camp was in a position to try something different—so for his second feature, he used a little-known historical episode from the pre-Civil War era as the basis for a gentle comedic romp. Hawmps! depicts the misadventures of a U.S. Army squad tasked with testing camels as possible replacements for horses in desert outposts. Given the nature of Camp’s previous film, it’s surprising that very little of the picture is devoted to the specifics of animal behavior—in fact, only two of the camels are given memorable names and “personalities.” Instead of focusing on critters, Camp builds jokes around the broadly sketched—and unapologetically clichéd—characters populating the Army squad, including a drunken Irishman, an inexperienced lieutenant, and a stalwart drill sergeant. The only surprising character is an Arabian camel trainer named H. Jolly, played by Gino Conforti, because the character is a British-schooled dandy with a monocle.

          Hawmps! is shallow and silly, but it basically works in an undemanding sort of way. Whether Camp is staging elaborate slapstick sequences of barroom brawls or vignettes of dehydrated soldiers trudging through the desert, the director keeps things amiable and lively. Plus, the picture is billed right in the opening credits as “a family film by Joe Camp,” so the mandate clearly was to make lighthearted entertainment suitable for very young viewers. And if Hawmps! is ultimately little more than a Disney knock-off made without the glossy cinematography and lavish production values one normally associates with Disney’s live-action fare, the movie has the benefit of an offbeat historical basis, and Camp resists the sentimental excesses that make similar Disney movies (such as the Apple Dumpling Gang pictures) unnecessarily saccharine.

          James Hampton, a pleasant comic actor who costarred in the ’60s series F Troop, which was something of a stylistic precedent for this movie, plays Lt. Clemmons, a Washington, D.C., gofer who gets assigned the thankless task of supervising the camel experiment. Upon arriving at an outpost in the West, Clemmons takes command of a squad led by Sgt. Tibbs (Christopher Connelly), even though Tibbs’ men all misunderstood their orders and thought they were getting Arabian horses instead of Arabian camels. High jinks ensue as the camel-riding soldiers clash with the cantankerous sergeant (Slim Pickens) of a rival squad, and with an outlaw (Jack Elam) who commands a town filled with criminals. The movie features lots of chaotic physical comedy—people falling off camels or tripping into mud, and so on—and the dialogue is occasionally cartoonish. Still, most of the actors in Hawmps! are stone-cold pros, including those previously mentioned plus Denver Pyle, and the sight of bluecoated U.S. soldiers chasing after crooks or Indians while riding on camels is reliably amusing.

Hawmps!: FUNKY

Rancho Deluxe (1975)

          Because novelist/screenwriter Thomas McGuane’s literary voice was such an enjoyably eccentric component of ’70s cinema (his big-screen work tapered off in subsequent decades), it doesn’t really matter that ’70s films bearing his name have weak stories. What the pictures lack in narrative momentum, they make up for in personality. Rancho Deluxe, written by McGuane and directed by the adventurous Frank Perry, is an offbeat modern Western that’s a comedy by default—which is to say that while the movie has amusing elements, it’s primarily a character study. Jeff Bridges and Sam Waterston play Jack and Cecil, low-rent cattle rustlers plaguing a ranch owned by the vituperative John Brown (Clifton James). Eventually, John gets fed up with losing livestock and hires thugs to apprehend the rustlers. First come inept ranch hands Burt (Richard Bright) and Curt (Harry Dean Stanton), both of whom are too horny and lackadaisical to devote much energy toward criminal investigation. Then John brings in a thief-turned-detective, Henry (Slim Pickens), whose idiosyncratic approach mostly involves setting traps and waiting for the rustlers to stumble across his path. Also thrown into the mix are John’s short-tempered wife, Cora (Elizabeth Ashley), and Henry’s hot-to-trot daughter, Laura (Charlene Dallas).

          McGuane mostly eschews dramatic tension, opting instead for closely observed scenes of quirky characters behaving in ways that reveal their nature. There’s a great bit, for instance, when Jack and Cecil kidnap a car and shoot it full of holes, partially to make a point and partially to pass the time. In moments like this, McGuane’s script captures the slow rhythms of rural life, as well as the bedrock Western virtue of rugged individualism. In scene after scene, McGuane ensures that his characters evince surprising dimensions. Consider party girl Mary (Maggie Wellman), who reveals unexpected cultural sophistication with her comment about a dinner spread: “This is a weird mixture of yin and yang—so many animal karmas have bit the dust here.” Elsewhere, Stanton’s character tries to look macho while standing outside John’s mansion and running a vacuum over an Indian rug per instructions from the lady of the house. Virtually every minute of Rancho Deluxe is interesting in some way or another, but that’s not quite enough to compensate for the generally aimless feel of the piece. Nonetheless, there’s a lot to enjoy thanks to McGuane’s quirky writing and the generally lively performances. Pickens and Stanton are the standouts, with Pickens’ down-home bluster and Stanton’s laconic vibe suiting the material especially well, though Bridges, James, and Waterston each provide likeable characterizations.

Rancho Deluxe: FUNKY

White Line Fever (1975)

          Drive-in pulp with a smidgen of substance, this one combines all sorts of lurid elements—blue-collar rebellion, high-octane chase scenes, deadly revenge, rednecks, shootouts, smuggling, truckers, a Vietnam veteran, and, just to put the cherry atop the whole tasty treat, a colorful cast including R.G. Armstrong, Kay Lenz, Slim Pickens, Don Porter, and Jan-Michael Vincent. In other words, if White Line Fever doesn’t get your blood pumping, then the repertoire at the grindhouse of your dreams is far different than the one at mine. White Line Fever has so many cool attributes that whether the movie’s actually “good” is quasi-irrelevant—therefore, the fact that the picture is somewhat respectable as a piece of low-rent drama becomes a bonus.

          Vincent stars as Carrol Jo Hummer (seriously, that’s the character’s name), a good ol’ boy who returns from Vietnam intent on driving an independent big rig and living happily with his sexy young wife, Jerri (Lenz). In order to get the cash to buy his truck, Carrol Jo borrows money from disreputable types who expect Carrol Jo to pay off his debt by smuggling illegal goods. Once Carrol Jo realizes what he’s gotten into, he uses the court system, threats, and finally violence to declare his independence. That leads to beatings, hassles, intimidation, and, eventually, deadly results for those around Carrol Jo. The movie climaxes with Carrol Jo striking a highly symbolic blow against his enemies, because Our Hero uses his souped-up truck, which bears the name “Blue Mule,” as an instrument of working-man’s justice.

         Co-writer/director Jonathan Kaplan, who spent the ’70s making well-crafted exploitation films before venturing into topical studio pictures (notably 1989’s The Accused) and then a long career in television that continues to this day, displays his signature touch for stirring up juicy narrative conflict. Predictably, however, logic takes a backseat to slam-bang spectacle. Like Kaplan’s enjoyable blaxploitation pictures The Slams (1973) and Truck Turner (1974), White Line Fever feels like a hard-edged comic book—when Vincent struts out of his hovel with a shotgun in his hand, then hops into the cab of “Blue Mule” hell-bent for vengeance while pounding music blasts on the soundtrack, the movie rises to a plane of intoxicating macho silliness.

          I freely admit to having an inexplicable affinity for Vincent’s lackadaisical screen persona, so chances are I watch this particular B-movie through forgiving eyes. I’m also sweet on Lenz, and I can watch Armstrong and Pickens in nearly anything. So take this praise for White Line Fever with the appropriate caveat: If you don’t groove to the idea of Jan-Michael Vincent playing an avenging trucker, then there’s probably only so much White Line Fever is going to do for you. But if you’re intrigued, strap in for a trashy good time.

White Line Fever: GROOVY

Mr. Billion (1977)

Representing an unsuccessful attempt to transform spaghetti-Western star Terence Hill into an American box-office attraction, Mr. Billion is one of those unfunny comedies with so many action scenes, onscreen smiles, tarted-up visual transitions, and upbeat musical cues that its desire to please the audience seems desperate—because, ultimately, Mr. Billion offers everything an audience wants except genuine entertainment. The story is a simplistic fable in the Frank Capra mode. When an American billionaire dies, he bequeaths his fortune to his Italian nephew, Guido (Hill). After this revelation, the billionaire’s nefarious executor, John Cutler (Jackie Gleason), flies to Italy intent on bamboozling Guido out of his inheritance. And while Guido initially seems like a rube—he’s a childlike soul infatuated with American cowboy movies—Guido insists on taking time before acceding to Cutler’s demands. Thanks to an iffy plot contrivance, however, Guido must arrive in San Francisco by a specified date in order to accept his money. And since Guido is afraid of flying, he travels by boat and train, allowing the filmmakers to present a “madcap” trek, during which Guido meets such stereotypical characters as ignorant rednecks (Slim Pickens alert!) and jive-talking African-Americans. Cutler also hires a prostitute, Rosie (Valerie Perrine), to seduce Guido into signing away his money—which means, of course, that Guido falls in love with Rosie and must eventually save her from Cutler’s henchmen. There’s not a single original idea in Mr. Billion, and director/co-writer Jonathan Kaplan can’t quite muster the right tonalities. Among other dubious choices, he shoots the picture in a dark, run-and-gun style that feels more suited to an exploitation movie than a laugh riot. Plus, while Hill is incredibly likeable, he’s hamstrung by the inability to master English dialogue. Furthermore, Perrine lacks the charisma that’s necessary for this sort of piffle, and Gleason’s performance feels utterly perfunctory.

Mr. Billion: LAME

Bootleggers (1974)

          True story. I was halfway through watching Bootleggers, a low-budget adventure story about feuding moonshiners in Prohibition-era Arkansas, when it occurred to me the picture was going down more smoothly than the usual offering from schlockmeister Charles B. Pierce: The story made sense, the acting was more or less passable, and the photography exploited real locations to fill the screen with lush colors. Then I glanced at the video sleeve and discovered Bootleggers was supposed to be a comedy. Not having laughed once during the first hour, this caught me by surprise, but by the time the movie was over, it didn’t really matter. Bootleggers is pleasant drive-in fare with better storytelling and visuals than might be expected—but it ain’t no gosh-darned comedy, to put it in the backwoods vernacular of the picture’s characters. Slim Pickens, at his a-hootin’ and a-hollerin’ best, plays the patriarch of a clan of moonshiners, with Dennis Fimple and Paul Koslo (don’t worry, I’d never heard of them, either) playing his grown-up grandkids, who cook the hooch and make deliveries while Slim keeps the home fires a-burnin’.

          The movie depicts various adventures as the boys avoid the law, romance local ladies, and tussle with another bootlegging clan. When the movie actually tries to be funny, it’s excruciating simply because of the cartoony music used to accentuate “comedy” bits, but when it grinds through vignettes of rambunctious redneckery without editorial commentary, it’s innocuous fun. The sheriff is stupid and sweaty, the “bad” bootleggers are dirty and sweaty, and the heroes are exuberant and sweaty. Future Charlie’s Angels beauty Jaclyn Smith shows up for a supporting role as a pistol-packin’ hairdresser, lending loveliness and sass to the proceedings, but the real star of the picture is cinematographer Tak Fujimoto (later to become a go-to guy for directors Jonathan Demme and M. Night Shyamalan). His images make Pierce’s slight story look a lot more credible than the story probably deserves to look.

Bootleggers: FUNKY

1941 (1979)

          After scoring two ginormous hits in the mid-’70s, director Steven Spielberg fumbled with his epic World War II comedy 1941, which was considered a major commercial and critical disappointment upon its initial release. The wildly ambitious (and wildly uneven) film has since gained more public favor thanks to wider exposure on television and video, and that’s all to the good—1941 isn’t a masterpiece, but it isn’t an outright disaster, either. In fact, the picture boasts some of Spielberg’s most audacious filmmaking, from expertly handled miniature effects to outrageously ornate crowd sequences, and it’s also filled with entertaining performances. The whole thing doesn’t hang together, and the film is far too long, but 1941 overflows with beautifully executed episodes.

          Written by Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis in a madcap style that borrows from the Marx Brothers and Preston Struges, among others, 1941 tackles unique subject matter: the paranoia that gripped America’s West Coast immediately after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In the story, civilians and soldiers alike ramp up defensive efforts like placing armed lookouts in the Ferris wheel of the Santa Monica Pier and situating gigantic anti-aircraft guns on the lawns of beachside homes.
          The all-over-the-map script is stuffed with subplots and supporting characters, and some of the threads are more interesting than others. The business of a German U-boat commander (Christopher Lee) and his Japanese counterpart (Toshiro Mifune) incompetently searching for the California coast is very silly, despite the caliber of talent involved, but when the Axis duo captures and interrogates an American redneck (Slim Pickens), enjoyable lowbrow comedy ensues. A wartime romance between a fast-talking soldier (Tim Matheson) and a sexy military secretary (Nancy Allen) is amusing and spicy, especially during an elaborate seduction scene that takes place in a plane that’s still on the tarmac.
          The goofy stuff involving two Saturday Night Live comics is okay, with Dan Aykroyd playing the leader of a buffoonish tank crew and John Belushi mugging as Capt. “Wild” Bill Kelso, a pilot zooming around the West looking for targets. Some of the best material involves a patriotic family headed up by Ward Douglas (Ned Beatty), since this stuff slyly mixes domestic shtick with wartime high jinks. For sheer absurdity, however, it’s hard to beat the scenes with Robert Stack as a dopey general who cries watching the Walt Disney movie Dumbo.

          From start to finish, 1941 is unapologetically excessive, throwing explosions or hundreds of extras at the audience when simpler visuals would have sufficed, and things like narrative momentum and nuance get bludgeoned to death by the opulent production values. Still, the cast is filled with so many gifted actors (in addition to those already mentioned, look for John Candy, Eddie Deezen, Joe Flaherty, Murray Hamilton, Warren Oates, Wendie Jo Sperber, Treat Williams, and more) that even uninspired scenes are performed with consummate skill. The movie also looks amazing: Spielberg’s camerawork is intoxicatingly self-indulgent, since it feels like entire scenes were filmed simply to justify cool visuals, and peerless cinematographer William A. Fraker gives the whole thing a glamorous look. There’s even room for an energetic score by regular Spielberg collaborator John Williams.
          1941 is a mess, but it’s also a true spectacle.

1941: FUNKY

The Honkers (1972)

Unremarkable in every regard, this character study of a self-involved rodeo rider pales when compared to the similar films Junior Bonner and When the Legends Die, both of which were released in the same year. However The Honkers does feature two highly watchable stars, James Coburn and Slim Pickens, and it gets credibility points for following a bleak storyline toward an ending that’s both downbeat and restrained. Coburn stars as Lew, an aging cowpoke who spends so much time on the road that his marriage to long-suffering Linda (Lois Nettleton) is permanently endangered. When he’s away from home, dallying with married women in between bronc-riding competitions, Lew travels with a chummy rodeo clown named Clete (Pickens), who does his best to keep Lew from getting killed on the job or in the brawls Lew instigates in his downtime. When the movie begins, Lew has just returned home for a spell between rodeo tours, so he tries to pick up the pieces of his marriage and to strengthen his relationship with his teenaged son, Bobby (Ted Eccles). Meanwhile, the stable-but-boring Royce (Richard Anderson) quietly woos Linda away from her wayward husband, and a beautiful young heiress, Deborah (Anne Archer), tries to tempt Lew into her bed. The story becomes a question of whether Lew will choose the straight and narrow or remain on his destructive course, and to the filmmakers’ credit, Lew stays true to his unsympathetic colors from start to finish. Unfortunately, nothing he does is especially interesting, so the solid character work is wasted on ordinary vignettes of redneck rambunctiousness and rodeo wrangling. Additionally, Coburn doesn’t have anywhere near the depth necessary for the lead role, so he’s outshined by Nettleton’s believable angst and by Pickens’ homespun gravitas; in fact, seeing Pickens play one of his few fully developed dramatic roles is the best reason to see the movie. The Honkers isn’t bad, but it isn’t great, either.

The Honkers: FUNKY

The Apple Dumpling Gang (1975) & The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again (1979)

          Standard Disney live-action fare about cute youngsters getting into mischief, The Apple Dumpling Gang features skillful support from grown-up players Bill Bixby, Tim Conway, Don Knotts, Harry Morgan, and Slim Pickens. The Old West story concerns three young orphans whose varmint uncle dumps them into the care of an irresponsible gambler (Bill Bixby), who in turn tries to dump the kids onto someone else until the moppets discover gold in a mine belonging to their family. When assorted disreputable types try to rip off the gold, seeing the children endangered causes Bixby to grow a conscience. Television icons Conway and Knotts are the main attraction, working as a comedy duo for the first time, and they’re comfortably amusing even though their slapstick antics as a pair of inept outlaws are contrived and silly (typical bit: trying to steal a ladder from a firehouse and slamming the ladder into everything in sight). Earnest, old-fashioned, and beyond predictable, The Apple Dumpling Gang moves along at a pleasant clip, despite cloying music and rickety process shots, so the movie is innocuous entertainment for very young viewers; grown-ups should be able to swallow everything except perhaps the requisite warm fuzzies at the end and the cutesy theme song.
          Bixby and the kids were jettisoned for the sequel, The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again, in which Conway and Knotts try to go straight but end up running afoul of the army, a crazed sheriff, and a criminal gang, causing destructive mayhem along the way. The sequel’s storyline is a patchwork of Western clichés—the climax is a train robbery—so neither Conway’s deadpan delivery nor Knotts’ bug-eyed crankiness is enough to liven up the proceedings. And the less said about the scene they play in drag, the better. Harry Morgan returns in a different role than he played in the first movie, while Tim Matheson, Jack Elam, and Kenneth Mars add color to the cast. The overstuffed plot and the depiction of the “heroes” as complete morons makes the sequel far less palatable than its predecessor, but as a small mercy for those who take the plunge, The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again runs its forgettable course in a mere 88 minutes.

The Apple Dumpling Gang: FUNKY

The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again: LAME