Road Movie (1973)

          Telling the grim story of two truckers who travel across America with a tough hooker as their passenger, Road Movie epitomizes the New Hollywood aesthetic, even though its level of notoriety is infinitesimal compared to that of similar films by, say, Monte Hellman and Bob Rafelson. As cowritten and directed by the adventurous Joseph Strick, Road Movie is a dark meditation on the circumstances of unfortunate people whose pursuit of independence leads nowhere. There’s a reason the blunt title works—for the characters in Road Movie, life is all about leaving the pain of yesterday behind while chasing the possibilities of tomorrow.

          Road Movie opens by introducing Janice (Regina Baff), a jaded young woman new to the skin trade. Older hookers laugh as she hustles drivers at a truckstop, and she pathetically drops her price in half just to turn a trick. Janice quickly discovers the danger of working the trucker circuit: Since drivers feel invulnerable inside their rigs, many of them abuse Janice as she moves from town to town, one rough ride at a time. Enter Gil (Robert Drivas) and Hank (Barry Bostwick), two young partners trying to make a go of their independent trucking operation. They hire Janice, and then Gil—a cocksure bastard who rants about not wanting to pay union dues, because why should he pay to support other people’s healthcare—slaps Janice around for a thrill while screwing her. Hank has a gentler way about him, but Janice rightly calls him on his choice to align himself with a son of a bitch.

          As Road Movie trundles along, the three have experiences that can’t rightly be called adventures—more like travails. Janice punishes Gil by yanking the power cord on the refrigerator car the boys are hauling, ruining an entire load of meat. And when the guys get into a brawl with other truckers, Janice comes to the rescue by whipping out a straight razor and slashing the guys’ attackers. Gradually, we learn what pushed Janice onto the road, and what compelled Gil and Hank to start their own business. One of the film’s tricky implications is that Janice, the character who endures the most self-inflicted humiliation, might be the only one who sees the world clearly—until she goes completely insane, that is.

          It’s hard to say whether Road Movie “works” in any conventional sense, because it seems Strick was after something more than a morality tale, although Road Movie has that sort of a narrative shape. The picture achieves its greatest impact by presenting specific characters in specific situations as a means of asking difficult questions. What is ambition? What is freedom? What is human connection? Is the portrayal of Janice feminist or misogynistic? Are Gil and Hank antiheroes or merely facets of the same prism as Janice? Is the horrific finale literal or figurative? To some degree, the answers to these questions don’t matter, because sparking the viewer’s imagination is an accomplishment in and of itself.

          Aiding Strick greatly in his peculiar endeavor are the leading performers, each of whom commits to an unsympathetic character. Yet it’s Strick’s seemingly endless directorial curiosity that drives this piece: Frame after frame of Road Movie juxtaposes vignettes about three sad people with disheartening POV shots looking out truck windows at ugly commercialization littering Middle America’s thoroughfares.

Road Movie: GROOVY

Truckin’ Man (1975)

          Enjoyable garbage that plays like a cheapo version of the same year’s White Line Fever, this cheerfully mindless actioner is about a young man who takes over his father’s sole-proprietor trucking operation while exploring the mysterious circumstances of his father’s death. Shot with the ugly lighting of spot-news coverage from local television of the same era, Truckin’ Man suffers the usual blights of under-budgeted drive-in schlock. The acting is dodgy, the narrative is trite, and the stunts are laughably amateurish. Good thing the pacing is so zippy. Running just 81 minutes, Truckin’ Man (sometimes known as Trucker’s Woman) never has time to wear out its welcome. More importantly, the film never aspires to be anything more than disposable junk. The hero beats up bad guys, gets laid, and spews cocksure dialogue. Add in the requisite amount of kitschy ’70s clothing and décor, and you’ve got the ingredients for a craptastic viewing experience.

          After his father’s funeral, Mike Kelly (Michael Hawkins) starts driving the family rig while poking around the trucking scene to see what’s what. Jake Fontaine (Jack Canon) runs the local terminal like a Mafia boss, pressuring drivers into bad deals and using violence to punish those who rebel. Mike quickly identifies Jake as the bad guy. He also romances Karen (Mary Cannon), only to discover that she is Jake’s daughter. Events proceed in a predictable manner, and the closest the picture gets to idiosyncrasy is the supporting character who performs novelty songs filled with malapropisms. (Trivia Alert No. 1: That character is played by Sigourney Weaver’s uncle, Doodles Weaver. Trivia Alert No. 2: Future TV/film notable Larry Drake portrays a morally conflicted galoot named “Diesel Joe.”) Oddball elements aside,  Truckin’ Man mostly comprises a steady stream of country tunes, macho posturing, and unimpressive stage combat, served with a side of leisure suits and plaid blazers. That’s a ten-four, good buddy.

Truckin’ Man; FUNKY

C.B. Hustlers (1976)

A grungy softcore flick thinly disguised as a sex comedy about truckers, C.B. Hustlers is so tacky that a pair of hookers who communicate with potential clients via C.B. radios identify themselves as “Hot Box One” and “Hot Box Two,” advertising their services with crude come-on lines (“Can I check your dipstick?”). In fact, much of the picture comprises drab footage juxtaposed with naughty over-the-airwaves banter. The anemic plot has something to do with police and reporters trying to expose the activities of prostitutes who drive a panel van up and down rural highways, using the vehicle as a portable brothel. About the closest the picture comes to a fully realized joke is the scene during which a client remains so focused on intimate relations with a hooker that he doesn’t realize the van is engaged in a high-speed chase with a police cruiser. To be fair, there are glimmers of backwoods wit in the dialogue, as when someone insults sex workers by calling them “double-clutching degenerates.” Yet the virtues of these comic elements are mitigated by the movie’s abysmal production values (many lifeless scenes are juiced with post-production sound), by the thoroughly rotten acting, and by the preponderance of sleazy sex scenes. While tame by softcore standards, the saucy bits comprise repetitive shots of large breasts being groped by horny truckers or squished against sweaty male torsos. The cast mostly comprises unfamiliar faces, though two “notables” are portly character actor Richard Kennedy (a staple in sex flicks) and, in a small role, Russ Meyer regular Uschi Digard.

C.B. Hustlers: LAME

Smokey and the Hotwire Gang (1979)

Wretched nonsense involving criminals, hookers, and truckers, Smokey and the Hotwire Gang is passable only as the cinematic equivalent of background noise—it contains just enough action, lowbrow humor, and sex to hold the attention of undemanding viewers so long as they’re doing something else while the movie is running. The discombobulated plot seems to have two major elements. In one, amiable rednecks Filbert (Tony Lorea) and Joshua (James Keach) share criminal misadventures, mostly to do with stealing vehicles. In the other major element, a madam nicknamed “Hotwire” (Carla Ziegfeld) augments her skin-trade income by selling stolen cars. There’s also some sleazy business involving two prostitutes who prowl the countryside in a tricked-out, cowboy-themed Winnebego they call “The Westerner” while offering their services to truckers via CB radio and using the handles “Sexy Sadie” and “Sweet Cakes.” Eventually, all of these things coalesce during a shabby attempt at a madcap finale, because Smokey and the Hotwire Gang is supposed to be a comedy. No matter the genre, the picture is chaotic, disoriented, and sloppy. The movie also looks and sounds awful, thanks to grungy cinematography, jumpy editing, and a rotten soundtrack combining bad country tunes with even worse disco songs. Adding insult to injury, the flick is so tame it bears a PG rating, meaning that anyone looking for cheap thrills during the prostitution scenes will be disappointed. About the only fleetingly enjoyable things in Smokey and the Hotwire Gang are snippets of weird dialogue, as when a trucker identifies himself as “Texas Levy, the Kosher Cowboy,” or when a redneck exclaims, “I haven’t seen anything take off like that since that kid put acid on a cat’s ass.”

Smokey and the Hotwire Gang: LAME

Truck Stop Women (1974)

Difficult as it might seem to make a boring movie about mobsters fighting a madam who runs a whorehouse out of a truck stop, one should never underestimate director Mark L. Lester’s capacity for turning promising notions into terrible movies. During the ’80s, he spent wads of cash on such turkeys as Firestarter (1984) and Commando (1985), but during the early to mid-’70s, when he was just beginning his directorial reign of terror, Lester employed budgets as meager as his cinematic gifts. Lester’s third feature, Truck Stop Women, is truly abysmal thanks to this combination of brainless storytelling and yard-sale production values. The gist of the piece is that blowsy, middle-aged Anna (Lieux Dressler) operates a successful brothel along a trucking route, aided by her sexy daughters Rose (Claudia Jennings) and Tina (Jennifer Burton). Big-city gangster Smith (John Martin0) tries to muscle in on the business, eventually turning Rose against her mother. Violence ensues. The grimy nature of Truck Stop Women is made clear by the opening scene: Smith murders a naked man and women while they’re screwing in a bubble bath, to the accompaniment of an upbeat country song containing the lyrics, “if it feels good, do it.” Huh? The story unravels at regular intervals, the numerous sex scenes have the sleazy quality of no-budget porn, and the underscore is excruciatingly bad. (The music in some scenes sounds like it resulted from a concussion victim reflexively flailing fingers across a keyboard.) Even the presence of red-hot strawberry blonde Claudia Jennings, a onetime Playboy model, isn’t enough to make this bilge tolerable.

Truck Stop Women: SQUARE

Citizens Band (1977)

          While not a particularly interesting movie, the offbeat comedy Citizens Band represents the convergence of two interesting careers. For director Jonathan Demme, the movie was a breakthrough studio job after making three low-budget exploitation flicks for producer Roger Corman. For second-time screenwriter Paul Brickman, the movie provided a transition between working on existing material (Brickman debuted with the script for 1977’s The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training) and creating brand-new characters; Brickman later blossomed as the writer/director of the extraordinary Risky Business (1983). A further point of interest is that while Citizens Band tangentially belongs to the mid-’70s vogue for trucker movies, it’s much more concerned with the possibilities of a communication format to bridge distances between people. In other words, this is an earnest project from serious people, so it can’t be discounted. Nonetheless, watching all 98 minutes of the loosely plotted and sluggishly paced feature requires abundant patience.

          Since Citizens Band never even remotely approaches outright hilarity, the charms of the picture are found in small character moments and—one of Demme’s specialties—scenes that celebrate human compassion and understanding. One wonders, however, whether a shambling assortment of kind-hearted vignettes was what Brickman had in mind, since certain sequences feel as if they were conceived to become full-on comedy setpieces. While Demme’s preference for intimacy over spectacle gives Citizens Band an amiable sense of reality, this directorial approach results in a decidedly low-energy cinematic experience.

          Anyway, in lieu of a proper storyline, the movie has a number of interconnected subplots. The main character, if only by default since he has the largest number of scenes, is Spider (Paul LeMat), a small-town CB-radio operator who watches out for truckers and vainly tries to keep emergency frequencies free of outside chatter. Spider lives with his ornery father (Roberts Blossom), a former trucker, and Spider’s part of a love triangle involving his on-again/off-again girlfriend, Electra (Candy Clark), and Spider’s brother, Blood (Bruce McGill). The Spider scenes are quite sleepy except when he plays vigilante by destroying radio equipment belonging to rule-breaking CB operators. Another thread of the movie involves a long-haul trucker nicknamed “Chrome Angel” (Charles Napier), who is revealed as a secret bigamist; the first meeting of his two wives plays out with unexpected warmth. There’s also some material involving various eccentric radio enthusiasts, such as Hot Coffee (Alix Elias), a plain-Jane hooker catering to truckers. The movie toggles back and forth between various characters, presenting one inconsequential scene after another. (Don’t be fooled by the exciting opening sequence of a truck derailment; thrills are in short supply thereafter.)

          Citizens Band has a slick look, thanks to inventive cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth, though it’s questionable whether his moody style actually suits the material. Yet the presence of artful lighting is just one more random point in Citizens Band’s favor. The movie’s a collection of many things, some of which merit attention; the problem is that these things never coalesce into a worthwhile whole.

Citizens Band: FUNKY

Moonfire (1970)

Since there’s not much to discuss with relation to the content of this insipid trucker flick, let’s note something peculiar on the movie’s Internet Movie Database page. The first user review was written by the film’s director, Michael Parkhurst, who spends half his post arguing that his picture isn’t as bad as its reputation suggests (Parkhurst valiantly labels Moonfire “fair”). The filmmaker spends the other half of his review bitching that Leonard Maltin once mistakenly described the plot as having a blackmail element. Only here’s the kicker—Moonfire does indeed have a blackmail element, unless one plays a semantic game and says that a villain taking technology hostage and demanding payment for its release somehow qualifies as kidnapping instead of blackmail. Anyway, one reason we’ve gone so far down this road is to demonstrate how vehement online movie-related discussions can become, no matter how insignificant the picture in question. The other reason is to underscore that even a hair-splitting e-debate about Moonfire’s storyline is more interesting than the film itself. The problem with Moonfire is that virtually nothing happens—Parkhurst’s film comprises 107 of the dullest minutes ever committed to celluloid. The plot is confusing, but it contains enough lurid elements that Moonfire should have amounted to something. First, a manned space mission ends when the capsule falls to the ground in Mexico. Next, an ex-Nazi recovers the capsule and the pilot, triggering the blackmail/kidnapping. Then truckers are recruited to deliver ransom to the ex-Nazi, though they’re told neither what they’re hauling nor where they’re going. (Instead, the truckers stop at regular intervals to receive instructions.) As a result, most of the movie comprises endless, repetitive scenes of the truckers heading to their destination, and Moonfire has enough shots of engine maintenance and truck-stop convenience stores to qualify as a training film. Yawn. The cast includes journeyman actor Richard Egan (who’s barely in the picture), square-jawed B-movie staple Charles Napier, and boxer Sonny Liston. None does anything memorable, though Napier and Liston briefly fight a gang of bikers and both spend lots of time shirtless and sweaty. So, until Michael Parkhurst pops up on this blog to argue with what’s just been written here, that’s about all there is to say.

Moonfire: SQUARE

Flatbed Annie & Sweetiepie: Lady Truckers (1979)

To avoid any confusion later, it must be stated up front that the TV movie Flatbed Annie & Sweetiepie: Lady Truckers is exactly as awful as its title suggests, though not in the expected way—instead of being lurid or sleazy, the picture is merely dull and insipid. So why note its existence? Well, a number of notable people worked on the project, and in the case of supporting actor Harry Dean Stanton, there’s a minor connection between Flatbed Annie and a famous project that came later. Plus, Flatbed Annie features the one and only acting performance by Billy Carter (pictured), U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s beer-swilling brother. Based on the scant evidence of his one scene, Billy Carter did not miss his calling. To get the synopsis out of the way, Sweetiepie (Kim Darby) is the wife of long-haul trucker Jack (Fred Willard), who gets laid up after an accident and falls behind on truck payments. Sweetiepie decides she needs to deliver a load in Jack’s rig so she can earn money to keep the truck out of hock. In order to achieve this goal, she enlists the aid of Flatbed Annie (Annie Potts), a tough-talking driver. Meanwhile, conniving entrepreneur C.W. Douglas (Stanton) buys Jack’s loan and then tries every angle he can to repossess Jack’s truck so he can sell the rig for cash. That’s the Stanton connection, such as it is—the actor plays a repo man just a few years before portraying another character with the same job in the cult favorite Repo Man (1983). Stanton is the best thing in this terrible movie, whether he’s giving deadpan line deliveries or, in one scene, singing. It’s also (somewhat) interesting to note that Flatbed Annie was directed by Robert Greenwald, whose other accomplishments in fiction films range from the impressive (the 1984 TV movie The Burning Bed) to the mortifying (the 1980 musical flop Xanadu); today, Greenwald is known for his low-budget liberal-fringe documentaries, such as Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price (2005) and Koch Brothers Exposed (2012). As for the leading actors, neither Darby nor Potts benefits from her encounter with this material. Both are abysmal. Darby seems distracted and incompetent, while Potts’ weird performance would only make sense if it were revealed that her character was a drug casualty. Summing up, Flatbed Annie is to be avoided at all costs—except by the morbidly curious.

Flatbed Annie & Sweetiepie: Lady Truckers: LAME

High-Ballin’ (1978)

          While it’s unmistakably a drive-in action flick about truckers, High-Ballin’ has a much more serious vibe than its silly poster and title might suggest. In fact, within the confines of being a clichéd thrill ride about cartoonish villains preying upon one-dimensional heroes, the picture has a more or less credible storyline, as well as a few passages of comparatively heavy drama. So, while the movie ultimately succumbs to mediocrity, it goes down a lot smoother than the usual “10-4, good buddy” junk. Set in Ontario, the picture depicts a rapidly escalating battle between independent drivers and thugs in the employ of King Carroll (Chris Wiggins), a trucking magnate who’s trying to put competitors out of business. King Carroll’s chosen technique is hiring attractive women to feign roadside trouble as a way of luring truckers into the proximity of armed hijackers who emerge from hiding to beat the truckers and steal their rigs.

          When the story starts, amiable trucker Duke (Jerry Reed) greets old friend Rane (Peter Fonda), a former trucker now living a vagabond lifestyle as a born-t0-be-wild biker. Together with Rane’s new love interest, a tough-talking lady trucker named “Pickup” (Helen Shaver), Duke and Rane try to survive hauling a shipment through King Carroll’s territory. The highlight of the picture is an extended chase scene that’s fairly exciting—Rane climbs onto Duke’s trailer, which is full of cars, and detaches the cars to use them as projectiles. Then, after Duke gets taken out of commission, Rane declares revenge, leading to a major standoff.

          Nothing in High-Ballin’ will tax your intelligence, but even if the overall concept is trite, the scene-to-scene energy of the movie is moderately engaging. Fonda’s got a great laid-back rapport with Reed, and the love scenes between Fonda and Shaver play up his everydude charm and her take-no-guff brand of sexiness. The picture drags in the middle, big-time, with too many chatty vignettes between action scenes, and colorful supporting players including Clint Howard and Michael Ironside are underused. (Plus, despite some online listings to the contrary, Joe Don Baker isn’t in the movie—more’s the pity.) It should also be noted that the movie is quite tame in terms of language, sex, and violence, which could be interpreted as a strength or a weakness; viewed favorably, the picture exercises restraint, but viewed unfavorably, the flick is toothless. Either way, this is undemanding cinema that provides intermittent entertainment.

High-Ballin’: 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

Convoy (1978)

          A sad spectacle representing the near-end of a once-glorious career, Convoy was not director Sam Peckinpah’s final film, but it might as well have been. (He only made one more picture, the lifeless ’80s espionage flick The Osterman Weekend.) Virtually a lampoon of every theme and visual device Peckinpah used in his previous films, Convoy is as vapid as the director’s other pictures are meaningful, so watching the movie is like seeing a faded singer struggle through greatest hits he can no longer perform with the proper energy. Exacerbating its lack of artistic worth, Convoy was the production that finally destroyed Peckinpah’s fragile reputation in Hollywood, since substance abuse often left him so debilitated that his friend James Coburn had to step in and direct several scenes. Even with the extra help, Convoy came in over-budget and over-schedule, guaranteeing no reputable producer would hire Peckinpah for years.

         Providing the final insult, Convoy became Peckinpah’s biggest box-office success.

         Yes, despite making provocative classics like The Wild Bunch (1969) and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), Peckinpah wasn’t fully embraced by American moviegoers until he helmed a trucker flick that was adapted from a novelty song. The song, of course, was C.W. McCall’s “Convoy,” the 1975 hit in which McCall narrated the tale of a rebel trucker’s adventure while cheesy music composed by future Mannheim Steamroller leader Chip Davis grooved underneath. Screenwriter B.W.L. Norton translated the song quite literally, presenting the idiotic story of badass trucker Martin “Rubber Duck” Penwald (Kris Kristofferson) forming a giant convoy of 18-wheelers to battle corrupt Sheriff “Dirty Lyle” Wallace (Ernest Borgnine).

          Yet Norton should probably be held blameless for the incoherent weirdness of the final film, since Peckinpah rewrote the script before and during production, even taking the extreme of letting his cast contribute material whether or not the material actually fit the overall storyline. Worse, Peckinpah dug into the tropes of his earlier movies, layering in endless scenes of property destruction, slow-motion violence, and sweaty men stirring up trouble. Whenever Convoy enters a sloppy montage of barroom brawling or cars crashing through buildings, the movie becomes a parody of Peckinpah’s wild-man style.

         Had the filmmaker demonstrated any discipline or restraint, Convoy could easily have become a fun B-movie about outlaws fighting the man. Certainly, the casting of the lead roles pointed the way toward something unpretentiously enjoyable. Singer-turned-actor Kristofferson, at the height of his beardy handsomeness, exudes rock-star cool, so he cuts a great figure steering an 18-wheeler while wearing aviator shades and a wife-beater. Borgnine, his gap-toothed swarthiness in full bloom, personifies redneck villainy. Yet Peckinpah puts so much crap between these characters—driving montages, explosions, pointless scenes featuring Kristofferson’s love interest, played by Ali MacGraw with her usual ineptitude—that the basic story gets bludgeoned to death. Convoy ends up feeling like a fever dream instead of a narrative, so it’s fascinating for all the wrong reasons.

Convoy: FREAKY

Breaker! Breaker! (1977)

Karate champion Chuck Norris took a baby step toward movie stardom by headlining this meagerly budgeted B-movie, which awkwardly meshes the martial arts, trucker, and vigilante genres. Given this slapdash approach and the movie’s crappy production values, it’s no surprise that Breaker! Breaker! has spent decades languishing in well-deserved obscurity. In fact, had Norris not subsequently achieved cinematic fame elsewhere, the picture probably would have fallen out of distribution entirely. Having said that, the movie has a promising hook—a redneck villain gets his backwater burg incorporated as a municipality called Texas City so he and his minions can use “official” traffic stops to rip off motorists and truckers. Norris plays a trucker whose little brother was last seen in Texas City, so he struts into town to find out the truth and, if necessary, issue swift-footed justice. There’s also a thread in the story about Norris calling in his brother truckers for help, resulting in a climactic scene of 18-wheelers literally mowing down the entire city. None of this hangs together well, so even though Breaker! Breaker! zips along (it’s barely 90 minutes), everything onscreen feels fake and meaningless. The fight scenes are absurd—Norris takes on what seems like the city’s entire male population at one point—and a crudely rendered subplot about a rural simpleton is especially pointless. Plus, while Norris fights impressively and exudes an easygoing likeability, he can’t act. The movie’s only interesting-ish performance is given by character actor George Murdock, as the city’s Shakespeare-spouting overlord, but his exertions are wasted because the movie as a whole is so forgettable.

Breaker! Breaker! LAME

The Great Smokey Roadblock (1976)

          From the title and packaging, you’d think this was a brainless boobs-and-beer action flick, but buried amid the usual scenes of amiable prostitutes and crooked redneck cops is a poignant story about a dying man struggling for dignity. However, if you think 18-wheelers, hookers, and mortality seem like incompatible story elements, you’re absolutely right, based on the evidence of this incredibly erratic movie. Working from a novel titled The Last of the Cowboys (which was also this film’s original title), writer-director John Leone unsuccessfully attempts to cushion the melancholy main storyline with outrageous high jinks, and both elements suffer: The drama feels diminished by the sleazy context, and the comedy feels superfluous.

          At the center of the narrative is “Elegant” John (Henry Fonda), a trucker whose rig was repossessed while he was hospitalized and unable to pay his bills. John busts out of the hospital and steals his rig, heading down the highway to hook up with his paramour, a salty madam named Penelope (Eileen Brennan). Along the way, John picks up a Bible-quoting hitchhiker (Robert Englund) and tries to steer clear of an unscrupulous hustler (Gary Sandy) who wants to sell the stolen truck for illicit cash. For reasons that aren’t exactly clear, Penelope and her girls move into John’s trailer, turning the fugitive’s semi into a brothel on wheels–and for reasons that are even less clear, one of the prostitutes (Susan Sarandon) falls in love with the pious hitchhiker.

          Suffice it to say that the main storyline of John seeking one last adventure before death gets lost in the shuffle, despite Fonda’s valiant attempts to sell crying scenes and testy dialogue exchanges. At one low point, a redneck sheriff (Dub Taylor, of course) arrests John and the women, so the prostitutes claim their cell is too hot and strip, angling to “barter” with the corrupt lawman and his deputy. Taylor cheerfully accepts their proposal, and trust me when I say that you’ll have trouble erasing the image of grizzled old coot Taylor wearing just boxer shorts while he hops up and down and yells, “Where’s that thermostat?!!” Yet a moment later, Taylor delivers genuinely tasty dialogue: When his deputy expresses guilt over having availed himself of the women’s services, Taylor crows, “If that’s the worst thing that ever happens to you in your life, junior, then I’m gonna follow you to the ends of the world, because you’re gonna have remarkable passage.”

          It’s hard to completely dislike any movie containing chatter that colorful, to say nothing of such a robust cast, but there’s a reason this mess of a flick sat on a shelf for two years prior to its release.

The Great Smokey Roadblock: FUNKY

Smokey and the Bandit (1977)

          Probably the most popular of the innumerable trucker flicks that blazed across American movie screens in the late ’70s, this Burt Reynolds hit was the No. 2 box-office success of 1977, topped only by Star Wars. On one level, it’s not hard to see why audiences embraced the action-packed comedy, because it delivers almost nonstop juvenile amusement through car crashes, cartoonish characters, and curse words—to say nothing of rebelliousness and then-trendy CB jargon. However, laughing at Smokey and the Bandit is a bit like laughing at the bad kid in high school who shoots spitballs when the teacher isn’t looking: You know it isn’t really funny, but you can’t help smiling every so often by reflex.
          The directorial debut of veteran stuntman Hal Needham, Smokey and the Bandit tells the silly story of a quest to illegally transport a truckload of beer across state lines in the Deep South. Bandit (Reynolds) drives a hot black Firebird Trans Am as a “blocker” for his trucker pal, Snowman (Jerry Reed), meaning it’s Bandit’s job to drive so fast that cops chase him while Snowman’s rig cruises by unnoticed. When Bandit picks up a sexy runaway bride, Carrie (Sally Field), he also picks up a persistent pursuer: redneck sheriff Buford T. Justice (Jackie Gleason), father of the schnook Carrie left at the altar. Therefore most of the movie cuts between scenes of Bandit and Carrie getting frisky and scenes of Justice and his idiot son zooming down the highway in a police car that gets demolished piece by piece as the movie progresses.
          Needham’s daring auto stunts are fun for those who dig that sort of thing (cars soaring over rivers, crashing onto the backs of flatbed trucks, and so on), and Gleason aims for the cheap seats with a stereotypical performance (he shouts things like, “Nobody makes Sheriff Buford T. Justice look like a possum’s pecker!”). Gleason’s characterization would be unbearable if the actor wasn’t blessed with such meticulous timing, although it’s a bummer to see “The Great One” saddled with not-great material. Beyond Gleason’s shtick and the highway high jinks, the most appealing aspect of the movie is the easygoing dynamic between Field and Reynolds (who were an offscreen couple at the time), and the similarly loose buddy-movie vibe between Reynolds and country-singer-turned-actor Reed.
          Plus, there’s no denying that when he made this picture, Reynolds epitomized a certain ideal of über-’70s macho swagger—he’s like a never-ending party crammed into a lean, 5’ 11’ frame. After the huge success of Smokey and the Bandit, Reynolds’ comedies mostly devolved into uninspired variations on a theme (like 1980’s awful Smokey and the Bandit II), so it’s interesting to study this flick as the moment when he simultaneously perfected his good-ol’-boy act and began squandering audience goodwill by generating lackluster product that was probably more fun to make than it is to watch.

Smokey and the Bandit: FUNKY