For those too young to remember, there was a time before movies lived on streaming services following a fleeting theatrical release (or none at all). In the early ‘70s, the theater was the only place to see a movie until it turned up on television years later. Films would hang around for months in their first run, and many would resurface later as part of a drive-in double bill. But the drive-in wasn’t exclusively the home of recycled Hollywood hits; American independents were churning out exploitation films specifically geared for rural, often Southern, audiences.
Very often, these “hixploitation” flicks shared a handful of ingredients: fast cars, good ol’ boys gone bad, the Daisy Dukes-clad women who love them, and the redneck sheriffs determined to catch them. Some of these movies featured just enough excitement to fill a two-minute trailer, while others toyed with the formula enough to be memorable.
The year 1974 was a particularly fertile one for this type of entertainment. Though it boasts name actors in Peter Fonda, Susan George, and Vic Morrow, the true stars of Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry are the vehicles, in particular the 1969 Dodge Charger our outlaw anti-heroes use to flee the cops after extorting $150,000 from a supermarket manager. The film has little going for it besides automotive mayhem; the script is mostly witless banter as Fonda and George exchange insults that sound like placeholders for the real dialogue that was never written. Its most memorable moments come in the last reel. Those who recall how Morrow met his end on the set of Twilight Zone: The Movie will find the scene in which he rides shotgun in a dangerously low-flying helicopter more than a little queasy-making, while the nihilistic final shot feels like the hammer coming down on whatever remains of the ‘60s counterculture.
A much more polished outing the same vein, The Sugarland Express suggests an alternate path for ‘70s cinema had its director stuck with the highway-bound thrills of this film and the TV-movie that preceded it, Duel, rather than inventing the modern blockbuster with Jaws. Goldie Hawn and William Atherton star as the Poplins, an outlaw couple who take a patrol officer hostage as they race across Texas to spring their child from foster care. Spielberg populates the movie with authentic Lone Star faces and locations and wrings a great deal of humor out of the premise before things turn dark in the end. He subverts the expectations of a chase picture as the pursuit turns into a slow crawl toward its final destination.