Highway Cowboy

Hicks and hillbillies ahoy! Straight away from the rhythmically joyous title song serenade, you just know this will become a glorious Southern-flavored cheesy mix of wild shooting farmers, indecent yokels and a whole lot of horse-lovers! The whole point and raison d'être of "Texas Detour" is a complete mystery to me, but I sure do love this typically 70's trend of "Hicksploitation". Every couple of sequences, there's a primitive musical interlude while you can look at images of pick-up trucks in the desert, Yi-Ha! Three hippie siblings are held up in a little Texan hick town when their A-Team van gets stolen by fugitive criminals. They find shelter and temporary jobs with the town's patriarch John Hunter, his beautiful daughter Claudia and his obnoxiously spoiled brat son Beau. The son is interested in the girl hippie Sugar, but she's a liberated woman and thus chooses to date a simple town's mechanic instead. Obviously the one thing you shouldn't do in rural Texas is turn down a spoiled redneck son. Beau takes what he wants anyway and rapes Sugar, upsetting not only her brothers but also his own sister who fell in love with the oldest brother Clay. When Beau is then stabbed to death in a banal bar fight, the blame naturally falls on Clay and the whole posse has to go on the lam (insert banjo music here)

"Texas Detour" is a fun time-waster without too many high ambitions. The deliberately clichéd situations and jokes are reasonably effective, like the shy music-obsessed sibling experiencing his first sexual contact with a willing local girl and the obligatory "get-your-hands-off-my-woman" bar fight scene. Halfway through, the film shifts into a higher gear and finally also dares to show some action and sleaze. Personally I feel a movie like this should have been much sleazier and more violent, but writer/director Howard Avedis ("Mortuary") clearly opted to retain the light-headed tone and atmosphere throughout the film. Several lines in the screenplay are fantastically offensive ("Oh come on, she probably has been raped before…") and that typical southern hospitality gets more claustrophobic with every minute that passes. "Texas Detour" is amusing but totally harmless. I still feel convinced we should have seen more boobs, pitch-fork truck chases, male backwoods rape, incestuous undertones, farm animals, chewing tobacco and perhaps maybe some rodeo footage!

The Dukes' handsome son Patrick ("Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger", "Young Guns") headlines this amiable, if routine drive-in / hicksploitation action picture. Patrick plays the part of Clay McCarthy, movie stuntman making a long distance drive from California to Nashville. Along for the ride are his brother Dale (Mitch Vogel, "The Reivers", 'Bonanza') and sister Sugar (Lindsay Bloom, "Sixpack Annie", 'Mike Hammer'). While driving through Texas, they have their van and belongings stolen by escaped convicts. Stuck in this place for a while, they agree to work as ranch hands for arrogant local fat cat John Hunter (Cameron Mitchell, 'The High Chaparral', "Without Warning") while waiting for the sheriff (R.G. Armstrong, "Evilspeak", "The Beast Within") to locate their vehicle. Things turn dramatic in a hurry thanks to Hunters' lowlife son Beau (Anthony James, "In the Heat of the Night", "Unforgiven").

You pretty much get what you pay for with this kind of diversion. It's all entertaining enough to watch, complete with stunts, lovely scenery, an even lovelier Priscilla Barnes ('Three's Company', "The Devil's Rejects") as Hunters' daughter, somewhat thin but still well defined characters, with villains you enjoy booing and heroes you enjoy rooting for. The soundtrack is full of good tunes (especially the opening one, which Vogel performs himself), but on the Blu-ray they're too loud in the mix and become somewhat overbearing. The likable Wayne gets to ride a motorbike, ride a horse, romance Ms. Barnes, and scrap with excellent screen villain James, whose character doesn't take too much time to reveal himself as pure creep. Armstrong is great value as always, even if he's essaying the stereotypical Southern lawman who generally loathes outsiders. He's also easy to manipulate for the boorish Mitchell, who doesn't get much to do at first. For those who are interested, Barnes parades around a room topless for a few minutes.

The story (concocted by writer / producer / director Hikmet "Howard" Avedis, a familiar name to fans of 70s and 80s exploitation), refreshingly, is not 100% predictable, throwing an interesting twist along the way. While things do get rather sordid (there's one unfortunate incidence of rape), the movie refrains from becoming too melodramatic.

If you're a devotee of this genre, you will want to see this one for completions' sake.

Seven out of 10.