“What
a man did on his own land was his business…. They fought for this country. They
did it to guarantee the basic rights of free men. They just figured that
whiskey-making was one of them.”-From the film Thunder Road.
Scott Von Doviak has done a mighty big favor for any
of us who have a soft-spot in our hearts for Gator McKlusky, Jerry Reed, Buford
Pusser, or the wild-ass ride that was Peter Fonda and Warren Oates trying to outrun
devil worshippers in an RV in the film Race
With the Devil.
Von Doviak knows these films are not art [well, in some
cases they are, such as Deliverance]
but he does not condescend to the genre either. He has viewed them as a serious
reviewer might and should and finds their relative merits within what they are
trying to be, which is usually just car-crashing cheap entertainment.
A fine volume that has led me to more than a few fun
viewings in a genre full of the less than great.
Hick flicks, or hixploitation films, or some call it
redneck cinema strikes me as a contemporary off-shoot of the Western. This exchange
from the Western film master Sam Peckinpah’s Convoy conveys that connection.
“They’re all
following you,” MacGraw monotones.
“No
they ain’t,” Kristofferson gravels. “I’m just in front.”
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