Macon County Line

This is a great 1950's period piece movie. Similar in some ways to "The Last Picture Show". Unfortunately, Macon County Line never received any hype, and therefore has largely been forgotten. Too bad only 21 people have bothered to vote for this movie.

If you would like to time travel back to the 50's, and get a feel for the rural South, this is an enjoyable movie to watch.

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.

70's gritnik cinema doesn't get much better. Pure tautness. Imagine Sam Peckinpah had done this, or John Boorman, or that it starred one of the many young upstarts of New Hollywood; it would've been one of the classic movies we referenced from this era, that's for sure.

Alas it had none of those things. But it wasn't a drive-in smash hit for no reason either and as much as high brow critics would dismiss the regular love-pit crowd as easily pleased or what have you, the truth is Macon County Line is an all around accomplished movie that is almost too good to be classified as exploitation. Or the kind of hicksploitation you find in movies like Gator Bait.

What starts as an amusing "boys just wanna have fun" road movie soon turns into a tight, gripping thriller but not without stopping to sample some of the local Lousiana colour first. The economy in the story is incredible, there's no frame wasted, nothing that doesn't propel the story forward or build mood or characters. The direction is confident, without highfallutin auteur-ism but with an efficiency and energy that suits the material.

What really elevates Macon is the superb cast. Names and faces I've never seen before but they're all perfect in their roles, understated and emotional in just the right measure and true to the characters they're supposed to be playing without becoming self-conscious caricatures of themselves. Even the backwoods mechanic carries an authenticity, a sense that you're watching a real person and that such people do exist.

Which brings me to another major success for the movie. It presents and inhabits a real world with real characters that have lived their lives there. The real locations and unknown cast sure help a great deal but so does the story, dialogues and actor interplay. We get a vision of the graphic South without the self-conscious quirks the Coens used in Raising Arizona or Oliver Stone in U-Turn, both great movies but still "artificial" in how they depict life.

Tightly edited, beautifully photographed, with cool music and a fine-tuned screenplay, memorable performances and an unexpected ending, Macon County Line justifies its cult status and drive-in success 30 years down the line and belongs in the very elite company of gritnik gems like Two-Lane Blacktop and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia.

Despite what previous posters have been saying this movie was a big hit when it came out. There was even a sequel a few years later. But it was only a hit at drive-ins and (like other drive-in hits) has been largely forgotten. That's a shame because it's a really great movie.

It's not based on a true story (despite what they say at the beginning and end). It's bloody, violent and made on virtually no budget. It all works though because you get four believable characters--the two brothers (real life brothers Alan and Jesse Vint), the hitchhiker (Cheryl Waters) and the sheriff (Max Baer Jr.). They all give natural, unforced performances and through the dialogue you get to know them and understand them. The script is very well-written. Still, this IS a drive-in movie so it opens with a sex scene including flashes of male and female nudity. And the last half hour is frightening and includes a neat twist at the end.

A very good film that deserves to be rediscovered. See it!

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.