Macon County Line

It just takes to long to get getting. Nothing, I mean nothing, happens for the first hour. It's only only an hour and a half long movie. The actors all give strong performances and the movie looks great. It's never really that boring (with the exception of maybe the most boring sex scene in movie history). But waiting an hour before you can figure out where the story is going is a bit too long. It does have a strong last twenty minutes or so.

When you've played hillbilly hunk Jethro Bodeine for almost a decade it's kind of hard for folks to take you seriously in the casting department. So Max Baer, Jr. decided to take charge of his own future by writing a screenplay and selling it with him in a juicy role. He's so good in the role of the Deputy Sheriff that not for one minute will you think of The Beverly Hillbillies while you watch Macon County Line.

The film is set back 20 years before Macon County Line's debut in 1974 and it's a picture without any nostalgic longing for Dixie before the Brown vs. Board of Education decision. Two good old boy brothers are having a road trip to kill time before one has to go into the Air Force. Real life brothers Alan and Jesse Vint play our rover boys and they pick up Cheryl Waters for a bit of amusement.

These two aren't choirboys that's pretty clear. When their car breaks down they take shelter in a barn not knowing it belongs to Max Baer, Jr. They also don't know that a pair of psychopathic drifters are at the house terrorizing Baer's wife Joan Blackman.

The conjunction of these happenings lead to some horrible conclusion and god awful tragedy.

A few familiar faces you will spot in the cast, some old names and some who hadn't quite made it yet. A really stand out scene is with Baer and young Leif Garrett before he became a bubblegum pop star as Baer tries to tell his son that he shouldn't be playing basketball with a black kid he's become acquainted with that this violates social taboos.

The film has become a deserved cult classic and Max Baer, Jr. must thank God that it is as associated with him as Jethro Bodeine.

You can always be guaranteed a good time with seventies American exploitation flicks; and Macon County Line is not only no exception to that rule; it stands tall as one of the best films of its type! Macon County Line was apparently a big hit in its day and then promptly forgotten - which is a shame. The film is a winner thanks to some easy to like characters, a constant stream of entertainment, some witty dialogue and a serviceable helping of gritty violence - you really couldn't ask for much more from a film like this! The film takes place in the fifties and the plot focuses on two brothers driving through the Deep South. They cause a bit of trouble and end up picking up a female hitcher along the way before their car dies thanks to a dodgy fuel pump. They manage to get it to a garage but can't afford to get it fixed properly and so go for a bodge instead. While waiting for their car to be fixed, they run into the local sheriff, who takes an instant and unfair dislike to the group...

Unlike many films of its type, this one is not overly sleazy and if anything the tone of the film is light and breezy for most of the duration. The pace of the film is very relaxed for the first hour, although it remains entertaining thanks to the characters. Real life brothers Alan and Jesse Vint provide standout performances that bolster the film. The film does take a bit of a turn for the final third when the real antagonists turn up; we get a rape and murder scene and from there the tone of the film becomes rather darker, although the violence featured is never excessive. The pace of the film heats up too and the climax is fast and furious; and means more since we already like all the main characters by then. This film really does come highly recommended. It might not have a great deal of substance and the production values are not great (though certainly very good considering the obvious low budget) but it's good fun throughout and I'm sure that everyone who goes to the trouble of seeing this film will not be disappointed!

I had heard of this film, but never had the chance to see it. Knowing that Max Baer wrote and starred in it really didn't mean much to me either way. Although I often identify actors with their TV roles, I've seen a lot of them who got famous by playing goofy characters in phenomenal roles, so I don't usually judge them by their other work. And in this case, that's a good thing. Stumbled onto the Anchor Bay release of this at Wal-Mart for $3, so I figured I'd check it out. Not my usual style of movie, I prefer comedy, horror or camp, but I'm a movie buff and for the price, I figured what-the-hell. And I wasn't disappointed.

The acting is solid. Usually in low budget films there's at least one actor who simply can't act, but not here. Everyone in the film is believable enough to hold your attention and make you forget how unlikely the string of coincidences that happen near the end would be. Baer, who in his first scene seems reminiscent of Jethro Clampett, soon shows that he does have acting abilities. And the other three leads are exceptional. Although it seems like it takes forever for something to happen (it's an hour into the 90 min film before the "shocking" part begins to unfold), the beginning is enjoyable. You forget for a while that there's a point and get swept up in the antics of these (real-life) brothers who are joyriding when their car breaks down in Macon County. Back in the good old days when character development was more important than special fx, a lot of time was spent on doing just that, developing the characters. You start to care about the three leads, which makes it much more disturbing when Baer goes after them near the end for a crime they didn't commit. And what's revealed at the end is a total mind blower that slaps you across the face and shoots you between the eyes. Just for the twist ending, the film is well worth your time. Too bad the videos didn't sell well and are now in the bargain bins, but it's a bargain-bin-classic that I'd recommend to anyone.

Macon County Line was apparently a huge hit at the drive-ins when it came out in the seventies but since I seldom went to drive-ins I missed it. A few years ago I caught it on television, and was very impressed, not so much by the story but by the way it's told. The film concerns a couple of out-of-town brothers caught up in violent crime and mistaken identity in the Deep South, where, in movie terms anyway, it's never a good place to be a Yankee without a road map, or worse, have your car break down. The story unfolds at a decent clip, and the actors are all good, some much better than than that. It's interesting seeing an old-timer like Emile Meyer in a movie with an up-and-comer like Leif Garret. The real surprise in the film is the strong, silent performance of Max Baer, Jr. in the key role of the deputy sheriff. Like most viewers, I tend to think of Baer as the gentle, simple giant, Jethro, on the long-running television series The Beverly Hillbillies. As the lawman in this movie Baer actually gives a serious performance. As a dramatic actor he comes off a little like James Garner, a little like Clint Eastwood, but he has a distinctive style of his own. There's something rock solid about Baer. He has real screen presence, and he comes off as alternately heroic and frightening, depending on what he's up to at the moment. Baer also produced the movie, and made a fortune from it. Baer may in real life be a gentle giant, but he sure ain't a simple one.

This is at times a very dark movie, violent and forbidding, and at times almost painfully tense. It may be a product of the Burt Reynolds good old boy era of movie-making, but it plays very differently from the kinds of films Reynolds made, closer in style to Sam Fuller or Phil Karlson.