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.

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!

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.

I agree with many previous reviewers that this was an ideal drive-in thriller movie and well suited to the era with it's colorful cinematography of the picturesque South.

Max Baer better known as "Jethro", the jovial dim witted clown of the "Beverly Hillbillies" series shows how equally well he can play officious gun toting Deputy Sheriff Reed Morgan of a southern Georgia town, flaunting his obvious authority with others. When three teenagers arrive in his domain at a local service station with car trouble he immediately becomes suspicious and makes clear his anxiousness for them to leave his County as quickly as possible.

Morgan shortly after leaves with son Luke, played by Leif Garrett, on a duck shooting expedition and while away two ex cons break into his house and rob and murder his wife Carol. Returning home he notices the teenagers car broken down nearby and after discovering the fate of his wife sets out in armed pursuit of the teenagers. The teenagers take refuge on a houseboat and the tragic events which unfold give this movie a hold on to your seat electrifying finale. The excellent "Another Place Another Time" song of Bobbie Gentry in the closing credits adds vividly to the way life and events did exist and were perceived in the Fifties era.

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.