Hey man! Guess what man? I watched "Dirty Mary/Crazy Larry" and "Race with the Devil" last night! Whoaaaa, double feature man! It was pretty hip, Peter Fonda man, he's so frickin' cool man. He's also really FAST.
Okay, now that I'm done killing brain-cells. Yeah, double-feature. A double-feature that's fulfilled my 70's cinema quota for the next little while. Don't get me wrong, I love Peter Fonda...and the Seventies..but man, that was too much last- Oh gawd, there I go saying "man" again. I can't stop man! I CAN'T FUCKING STOP!
"Dirty Mary/Crazy Larry" follows the exploits of the titular heroes of the film. Mary's the local trampy trailer-trash girl and Larry's a fallen Nascar racer who's turned to crime to secure funding for building his dream car. For reasons beyond me, his mechanic also aids him in his criminal enterprises. After a fairly easy supermarket heist, Mary forces herself upon them, effectively joining their "gang" and thus ensues a cross-country chase between them and local law enforcement and- Okay. Easier way to sum this up- "Vanishing Point: Hillbilly Edition".
That's pretty much the whole movie in a nutshell. Sure they're a few cool stunts and fun chases here and there, but the parts where cars aren't smashing into one another feature Susan George (Mary) and Fonda bitching at one another like grade school children. While this is amusing in it's own right, it does tend to grate on the nerves when it doesn't abate. I mean, in the movies defense, it doesn't aspire to be anything greater than it is, but dammmmmn son. Hell, I fell asleep for 20 minutes or so about halfway through, and when I awoke, they were still pretty much up to the same things on the very same stretch of road. Not much happening there, nah much at t'all.
Now "Race With the Devil" while hardly a masterpiece definitely trumps the aforementioned trailer-trash epic. A group of good 'ol Southern peeps (Seeing a pattern here!) go out camping in the woods only to stumble upon a Satanic sacrifice. They manage to barely escape in their trailer-home only to be pursued across the countryside by ornery redneck devil-worshippers.
Something that aids this against "Dirty Mary/Crazy Larry"? Warren fucking Oates. I swear, you can put the man in the schlockiest movies imaginable and he'll still redeem it by sheer virtue of who he is. He and Peter Fonda play the two buddies who save up their rubles in order to go camping with their wives in tow.
Another respect "RwtD" whups "DM/CL" (Goddamn refuse to type out these titles anymore) is in terms of car combat. "RwtD" actually features a sequence of car carnage that was apparently a major influence on "Mad Max" and "The Road Warrior". Even by today's "Standards" it's a pretty intense chase.
The film's also downright creepy at times, in that paranoid "Everyone's out to get ya!" kinda way. While not outright scary and in fact sometimes downright cheese-ariffic, it may cause you to think twice about writing off people's stares as anything other than downright sinister and hostile.
Unfortunately, while, like "DM/CL" it's sole purpose is entertaining and thrilling it's audience, "RwtD" is woefully misinformed as to it's subject matter. From bogus info such as Runes being "The Satanic Alphabet" and the Aztec's worship being dedicated to Lucifer himself, the film pretty much relies on it's drive-in audiences ignorance of the subject in favor of simply being Devil-sploitational. The fact that the heroes of this film seem about just as ignorant as your average suburbanite doesn't exactly make them sympathetic either. In fact, if anything it's Oates charisma that makes you hope he doesn't wind up a sacrifice, rather than the actual writing.
Overall, watching these two pictures in a row (Which I can't really recommend) is like eating a sack fulla bacon and eggs followed by a couple of Krispy Kreme donuts. In other words, if you're under the influence. They both have redeeming features (Okay, vaguely redeeming features in the case of "DM/CL") but they're definitely entrenched in their times and...dare I say it..hokey. Still, if you're looking for cheap thrills and something to chuckle at, you could do far far worse.
By the by, I'm working on a review for "Blow Out". It's a long time coming at this point (Considering I watched it Saturday) but it's coming dammit! Patience I say! PATIENCE!
No comments:
Post a Comment