Fighting Mad

Mountain justice is usually the way to keep what belongs to you. A father and son go home to be at a farm in the mountains of Oklahoma to help out family there. But along the way, he would encounter greedy land developers who to deprive the people there of their homes. They would kill his brother and his wife when a celebrate the homecoming. The development crew with their machines cruelly destroy homes, blast rocks, and send the kind hard-working people out from their native land. Kind of like the Native Americans removed from their land out west in the 1800's. Peter Fonda's character doesn't play around when they attacked his family. This movie is like "Deliverance" meets "Gator Bait" meets "Death Wish". This movie has got a lot of action. It's not a let down. 4 out of 5 stars.

Peter Fonda and his son (Gino Franco) return to his dad's (John Doucette) horse ranch in rural Texas after a divorce. He finds that a mining company owned by Philip Carey have been buying up all the land and are harassing all the holdouts, including Doucette and Fonda's brother Scott Glenn. The campaign of terror escalates with beatings, Glenn's murder and finally Doucette's death in an intentionally set fire. Since local sheriff Henry Northrup has proved useless, Fonda takes matters into his own hands.

Demme's third and final film for Roger Corman really shines. It's another formula picture, but this time it transcends the formulaic elements and comes close to feeling like a personal expression. It's got some serious flaws, including a really long, dead section leading up to the final climax, but you can see why Demme moved on after this one and started making films on his own.

Lynn Lowry has a significant role as Fonda's new girlfriend and fellow director George Armitage pops up as Man Playing Tennis.

A man returns from the big city to his traditional family ranch in northwest Arkansas (Peter Fonda), only to discover that a determined land developer (Philip Carey) is buying up land nearby for strip mining and, of course, wants his dad's ranch. When beloved citizens turn-up dead, the kid gloves are off.

"Fighting Mad" (1976) comes in the tradition of "Walking Tall" and would influence "First Blood" six years later. Car crash movies from the 70s are also comparable, like Fonda's own "Dirty Mary Crazy Larry." This is the least of 'em, however, because the dramatics are curiously boring and needed a rewrite to flush out the potential, but it's still worth catching if you like Peter and these types of flicks. The best parts are the vehicular mayhem and the closing confrontation at the castle-like manor of the tycoon.

It runs 1 hour, 30 minutes, and was shot in Washington County, Arkansas, and the corresponding town of Springdale, which are in the northwest corner of the state. The jail scenes were shot in the studio in Los Angeles.

GRADE: B-

This standard but reasonably diverting revenge/action drama is an early effort from writer/director Jonathan Demme, who would go on to Oscar greatness years later with "Silence Of The Lambs." The movie delivers all the ingredients one would expect from B-Movie producer Roger Corman PLUS a quietly effective performance from Peter Fonda as a family man who is pushed to the limits when a strip-mining tycoon tries to bully his way into taking over Fonda's father's stretch of farm land. It's nothing you probably haven't seen before, but it's solidly done and Fonda makes for a great low-key hero worth rooting for. *** stars

Henry Fonda should have been--appalled, that is--with his counter-culture son playing the hillbilly-vigilante-avenger who goes after the eee-vill mining company in Jonathan Demme's Fighting Mad.

Peter Fonda got off to an interesting start with Easy Rider, but it didn't take a lot of acting skill to cruise around on a Harley, stoned out one's gourd, so he wound up doing junk like this for producer Roger Corman.

I'm not going to give a synopsis of this thing, lest I start thinking about the time I wasted watching it. I just wanted to warn you 70s action fans out there to steer clear of Fighting Mad the next time Fox Movie Channel shows it. For the life of me, I can't understand why they chop up other movies for broadcast, but they slapped a TV-MA on this one because . . .

Hearing a couple "f-bombs" and seeing some boobage so helped advance the story. Don't get me wrong, boobs are just fine and a couple "fungoos" don't offend me. It's the fact that having the love interest of Peter Fonda scold him not to go out there and get hisself dead while airing out her mommy parts after sex isn't worth my time.

I must be getting old. In 1976, I would have elbowed my best friend to make sure he was grooving to the boobs on screen, the orangey blood being spilled, and the bad words that the three networks would hack out for broadcast.

Now.

Now, I look for things like originality, dialogue, depth and breadth of visuals, and intellectual stimulation. You know . . . the stuff you would never find in anything like Fighting Mad.