Texas Lightning
(1981)
To see the poster art and read the tag lines for Texas Lightning is to
prepare for a good ol' boy romp in the best Hal Needham tradition of fast
pick-up trucks, easy women, brawling, beer drinking, hound dogs, dumb-ass
lawmen and
firearms. The cover of the DVD shows a young guy in blue jeans sitting
on a giant cowboy hat, raising a Budweiser and surrounded by girls in cowboy
boots, halters, and short shorts. The promo reads, "they're stormin' on the taverns,
thunderin' over the roads, and just plain havin' a good ol' time."
Now try to reconcile that with this plot summary:
A burly, manly bully of a country dad (Cameron Mitchell) wants his son
(Cameron's real-life son, Channing Mitchell) to stop bein' such a pussy and
momma's boy and start actin' like a real man, so he forces the kid to go
rabbit hunting with him and his two pudgy, ign'rant redneck friends. It will
be the boy's rite of passage into manhood, a chance for the older generation
to teach him to shoot and drink and chase poontang. The boy
tries to be a good sport as the three assholes rag mercilessly on his ass,
so the first day of hunting goes fairly well, but that night turns into a
disaster. At the local honky-tonk, the young man scores with a pretty
barmaid (Maureen McCormick of the Brady Bunch), probably because she's never
seen anyone act all shy and polite in a shitkicker bar. The kid gets Marcia
Brady back to his room and is making love to her when dad and his
dentally-challenged cronies show up and decide to throw the kids a proper
shivoree. Their idea of a good time is to knock the kid unconscious and rape
the living daylights out of Marcia.
The next day, the older guys act as if nothing improper had happened, but
the kid goes ballistic during the hunting expedition. Instead of shooting at
rabbits and lizards, he stars blasting away at the older men. Finally he
takes their truck, strands them in the desert, drives back to the
honky-tonk, listens to Marcia Brady sing a sad-ass country lament (slash)
love song, and apologizes to her. They kiss and make up. While the closing
music plays, the film shows a couple of minutes of ... er ... "highlights"
from scenes we have watched throughout the film, presumably to fill out a
contractually obligated running time.
Yup, just a good ol' Burt Reynolds, Jerry Reed, Dukes of Hazzard kind of premise -
"just plain havin' a good ol' time," like a dad
participating in the rape of his son's first love, and the son in turn
attempting patricide, then stranding his dad in the desert.
WTF happened here?
Well, it seems that the film was not originally designed to be a "good ol' boy" movie.
Writer/director Gary Graver originally created a serious drama called "The
Boys," which would have been a sensationalistic shocker in the manner
of I Spit on Your Grave. Producer Edward
L. Montoro said that was not what he was paying for, and forced the director to
re-cut what he had and to shoot additional comedic footage to turn the film
into a proper Needhamesque drive-in flick. The final cut includes a zany wet t-shirt contest
which occupies substantial running time, for
example, and most of the action is accompanied by hard-drivin', feel-good bluegrass
guitar and banjo music in the general toe-tappin' style of the Foggy Mountain Boys.
According to IMDb, "The new version was released to the theaters as Texas
Lightning, while the original cut of The Boys remains officially unreleased
to this day. An illegitimate video was released in Finland in the early
90's. There might also be other European bootleg editions."
The net result of the re-cut was what you have probably already deduced,
a film with an inappropriately casual attitude toward very serious and tragic
matters which would be better suited for a drama,
as originally planned. One thinks that the ultimate fate of dad and his
rapist cronies, unresolved in the theatrical cut, must have been far more
gruesome in the director's original cut. Ultimately, one concludes that the
film's bottom-dwelling IMDb rating of 2.9 is well deserved because of its
cavalier attitude toward rape as well as its almost complete lack of any
other merit, even on the guilty pleasure level, save for some rare breast
exposure from Marcia Brady. Even that savory flesh is ruined by a DVD
transfer which is approximately VHS quality: dark and grainy and washed-out,
with poorly synched mono sound. (Marcia Brady's song is post-dubbed, and
very poorly at that, although it really is her voice.)
The film's auteur had a career just as schizophrenic as the movie itself.
As Gary Graver, he was the personal cinematographer to an aging Orson Welles
on such projects as The Orson Welles Show, The Orson Welles Magic Show and
Moby Dick. As Rob McCallum, he directed about a hundred XXX movies with
titles like
- Maverdick (1995)
(V) (as Robert McCallum)
- Wet & Slippery
(1995) (V) (as Robert McCallum)
- Hard-on Copy (1994)
(V) (as Robert McCallum)
- Tail Taggers 101
(1994) (V) (as Robert McCallum)
- Flesh and Boner
(1993) (V) (as Robert McCallum)
- Heads or Tails?
(1993) (V) (as Robert McCallum)
- The Joi Fuck Club
(1993) (V) (as Robert McCallum)
- One Million Heels B.C.
(1993) (as Akdov Telmig)
- Victoria's Secret Life
(1991) (V) (as Robert McCallum)
(If you hadn't noticed, Akdov Telmig is Vodka Gimlet spelled backwards.)
The list could go on and on, but I think you have the idea. In between
his PG career and his XXX career, he managed to sandwich an R-rated
compromise career under his real name, as the cinematographer for many
workmanlike Corman-style films like Bikini Hoe-Down, Deathsport, Chatanooga
Choo-Choo, and Grand Theft Auto. Although the strange and inappropriate
mixture of comedy and drama in Texas Lightning is not Graver's fault, it
seems somehow fitting, since it reflects the diverse range of projects he
worked on in his career.
Serious film historians will probably not devote many chapters to Gary
Graver's contribution to films, but one cannot claim he was ever unemployable.
He obviously had enough talent and professionalism that he was always in
demand. He directed more than 100 films, and worked as the cinematographer
on nearly 200. His career, which began in the mid sixties as a director and
cinematographer of drive-in movies, continued to flourish until 2006, when
he passed away from cancer in November, aged 68. He had been the
cinematographer on 29 more films in this new millennium!
The impressive endowments of Lisa De Leeuw adorned many a porno flick in the
eighties. She achieved a measure of unwanted fame as the only female porn star
to die an AIDS-related death. Ironically, the disease was not transmitted to her
by sexual contact, but by her rather casual attitude toward intravenous drug
use.
We Own the Night
(2007)
Now playing. In theaters less than a week. Crime drama starring Joaquin Phoenix
and Marky Mark.
Since this is a major release starring Oscar-nominated actors on the A-minus
list, I had planned to write a comprehensive article about it. I just couldn't
get into the movie at all, so I abandoned that plan.
Here is the brief exposure from Eva
Mendes. (Crappy, cam-style bootleg quality.)