Hard Country

I found this movie very entertaining. Vincent is great, as well as Kim Basinger, I would even say awesome. The intensity through the whole picture, both regarding chemistry between actors and events, makes this 100 minutes well worth watching. Thanks to the intensity, even some of the more or less over the top Texas clichés becomes very interesting. And the environment is great as well. If I would say a couple of things about the minor good things, it would be the returning scenes with performances. They're great, but they're too many. Tanya Tucker even sings two full songs, making it partly look more like a musical than a motion picture. These are minor flaws though, and they're easily overlooked.

This is one of the best movies I've had the pleasure of watching. It sorta reminds me of "Urban Cowboy" because a lot of the movie takes place at a honky tonk and the main characters in the movie likes to go there a lot. I liked the part where they pulled Johnny Bob's mobile home/worm farm out onto the highway and left it. Later on Johnny Bob does a belly whopper off the barroom table and winds up hurt. And that was one heckuva fight that Vicent got into with his mobile home selling brother. Vincent sure did have one sleazy brother when he was sitting in his office watching porno and then tried to seduce Vincent's girlfriend played by Kim Basinger. I don't know if Vincent got into that fight with his brother cause he was jealous of all the money that his brother had, or because he was messing with his girlfriend. I think Vincent's brother musta been greedy or something because his wife sure was gorgeous. So why woulda he wanta hit on Jodie(Basinger)? If this movie was made today and Vincent woulda tried to run outta on the runway to beg his girlfriend from leaving, he mighta got shot! Seriously, this was a good movie and I hope to get it on DVD!

This over-long Texas flick tries hard but unfortunately is rather dull in stretches. Very predictable ending. Basinger acquits herself well in her debut. There are a few nice moments and the Texas backdrop is pleasant enough. A lack of strong direction and drive and not enough charisma on the part of Jan-Michael Vincent are what cause the film to suffer.

This was filmed in Bakersfield. I was a cowboy extra in the bar scenes. We drank Lone Star beer until they ran out and would only let us pretend to drink when film was in the camera LOL. A good friend was the stand in for Kim Basinger. Made $70/day and had a ball. Because of this I have a Kevin Bacon number of 2! How many can say that? When not in the scene we all played poker in a tent and got pretty wasted on that Lone Star. They fed us if we worked over 6 hours I think. Good sack lunches. One take was at night and was a blast. They used the Basque Club on South Union to film in. They had it all decorated like a Texas honky tonk bar which was the setting of the movie. One scene was shot in a small restaurant in town. I went to see it but discovered I was on the cutting room floor.

Telephone operator in small Texas town has dreams of being a stewardess and training in California, but her live-in boyfriend from down at the wire-producing factory hasn't any ambitions other than getting a raise. One might be tempted to call this fake-mercurial, fake-country-&-western drama an "Urban Cowboy" knock-off, though both films were in production at about the same time ("Hard Country" was shelved for a year before finally seeing a release in April 1981). The exaggerated Texas accents and segues to the local watering hole (where Tanya Tucker performs as a hometown girl who made good) are excruciating, though the picture did give us the feature film debut of fresh-faced Kim Basinger and she's attractive (and shares a funny scene with newcomer Daryl Hannah as her younger sister). Jan-Michael Vincent, on the other hand, is a washout; the actor no longer possesses the boyish appeal from just a few years prior, now looking dazed and ragged (nine years older than Basinger, Vincent doesn't convince as the kind of man she'd want to settle down with). Director David Greene has a good sense of how fast scenes should play, and his opening at the factory is surprisingly detailed, but this screenplay by Michael Martin Murphey (who also sings) and Michael Kane is just not that interesting. *1/2 from ****