Southern Comforts

The legendary Bethel Buckalew, director of Country Cuzzins, Midnight Plowboy, and countless other Novak-produced, soft-core, corn-ball, hick-porn epics, brings us yet another reason to be eternally grateful to Something Weird Video, for all they've done for us who dig the B-entertainment. Southern Comforts is just an old fashion good time. That is, if you're partial to pointless, Drive-in Exploitation. I'm sorry, did I say pointless? A movie which can't go more than 5 minutes without showing full-frontal nudity obviously has a point. So, this time, a flesh-peddlin' con-artist, along with his best girls, are stranded in Hicksville. The gang set up shop in the barn of some old hayseed and his half-wit son, Junior (John Tull). What follows is a typically questionable story, involving plenty of dumb hicks, dumb chicks, not-so-well-thought-out humor, shine-drinkin, skinny-dippin', barnyard orgies, and other backwoods tomfoolery to entertain those of us who clearly have bad taste in cinema. As usual, the actual story almost seems to serve as the filler, as the "love scenes" make up about 2/3 of the run-time. An authentic backwoods charm is evident, despite the California shooting location. I don't know why they didn't just make these ridiculous little movies full-blown hardcore. That would have been pretty rad in my opinion, which is really the only gripe I could think of off the top of my head. Tobacco Roody is the only other one of these I've seen, and I can honestly say Southern Comforts is no better, or no worse. For some Hixploitation with a point, you might want to go for something like Herschell Gordon Lewis's This Stuff'll Kill Ya. Although, if soft-core is your thing, then I guess you've already found what you're looking for. 6/10