Moonshine County Express

When I started watching "Moonshine County Express" I was expecting a low budget 1970s T&A comedy. While it is low budget, there aren't that many jokes. This is a pretty straight crime drama. This movies moves fast and doesn't wear out its welcome. However, I have to admit that I found myself getting a little confused from time to time. The cast is good/not too bad. Overall, "Moonshine County Express" is an okay movie. Honorable mention: a dreamy Marcia Brady (Maureen McCormick).

As soon as the first banjo tunes start playing, which is after mere seconds already, you can tell "Moonshine County Express" will become a jolly good and very entertaining slice of hixploitation cinema! Coming from the great Roger Corman's inexhaustible production shed, this obviously isn't a very artistic or intellectual film, but it more than delivers in terms of excitement, kicks, and pure old-fashioned fun.

Modest moonshiner "Pa" Hammer is put out of business - quite brutally, I may add - by his ruthless competitor Jack Starkey and his sadist henchman Sweetwater. Pa left a neat little inheritance for his ravishing three daughters, however, namely a secret stash of authentic and highly qualitative prohibition whiskey. When the girls gradually take over more and more of Starkey's terrain, they need the protection of macho racecar driver JB Johnson.

First of all, have you seen the phenomenal cast "Moonshine County Express" brings together?!? Seeing all these names together in one film must be every avid B-movie fanatic's wet dream. Susan Howard, Claudia Jennings, and Maureen McCormick star as the Hammer sisters. With three multi-talented and feistily ravishing actresses like these, director Gus Trikonis naturally needed an extended male cast to keep a proper balance! Mission accomplished, though, with John Saxon, William Conrad, Len Lesser, Albert Salmi, and Dub Taylor. Furthermore, there are exhilarating car chases aplenty, brutal kills, and effective hillbilly-humor (like when Saxon messes with the Sheriff's costume)

After their moonshiner "pa" is killed by a rival bootlegging outfit, three sexy sisters (Susan Howard, Claudia Jennings, and Maureen McCormick) band together to continue his business, which quickly brings them into conflict with same group of thugs. So they team up with a local good 'ole boy and stock-car driver/rum-runner (Jon Saxon) to fight back.

This is yet another Roger Corman produced "hicksploitation" film from the 1970's, but actually a pretty good one (despite its PG rating). Most people today will probably seek it out to see Maureen "Marcia Brady" McCormick, but I personally find it more interesting in that it features two of my favorite 1970's drive-in queens, Claudia Jennings and Candice Rialson. The PG-rating, of course, precludes both actresses' usual gratuitous nude scenes, but Jennings was actually a genuinely talented actress (a veritable Meryl Streep for someone who was once a Playboy Playmate) and she's pretty good here as the feisty, shotgun-totin' middle sister. Rialson has a smaller role as the local tart, but she's just sexy as hell even with her clothes on. The main stars though are Jon Saxon and Susan Howard, both of whom are a little too old for these kind of roles (Saxon especially), but they're both pretty good (again Saxon especially). There's also some very decent character actors in the cast including Dub Taylor as the girls' drunken and treacherous uncle and Les "Uncle Leo" Lesser as a very near-sighted store owner. Which, of course, brings us to Marcia, I mean Maureen McCormick. She's definitely cute and appealing as youngest, animal-loving sister, and the scene were she gets bound to a column and (very mildly) tortured by the bad guys might fulfill some people's more perverted "Brady Bunch"-related fantasies, but others might prefer her later film "Texas Lightning" where she has nude scenes (sort of). She does basically hold her here as an actress against thespians a little more talented than Robert Reed, Florence Henderson or Ann B. Davis.

This movie certainly has an interesting cast, and I found it to overall be a pretty decent flick.

This is directed by Gus Trikonis, well known for directing so many series. This flick here is still unavailable on DVD and is only to catch on NTSC ex-rental VHS. It's made in an era were car chasing was the big thing and coppers were the stupid ones. Smokey And The Bandit (1977) was also a perfect example and the series The Dukes Of Hazard (1979) also picked in on that success.

But it's strange that a flick with this cast and a good director still is collector to find. It's also one of those many flicks that involved John Saxon and is still unreleased on DVD. Further it also has William Conrad famous from Jake And The Fatman series as main lead. Claudia Jennings is also here to see and we all know how sadly see died two years later. Too many faces to recognize in this well made flick.

If you like coppers hunting fast cars and flicks about rednecks than this is surely one to pick up. Don't be mislead by the fact that it was said that the nudity had to left out, it do has one shower scene but it was told about the nudity because many females here in this flick were known to go nude in their flicks.

Gore 0/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 3/5 Story 3/5 Comedy 0/5

I have seen a John Saxon Film recently, was not MSCE (Moonshine County Express), but kept thinking about this film that I foundly remember from the 70s when I seen him recently. I came to IMDB to do a search to see if I could find the name of the film(found it here) to see about buying it on DVD, but to no avail, not even on VHS! That is awful :-( Couple fun things about the film, Three pretty sisters, One of them always using dynamite to blow up things, I think it was Maureen McCormick, and Claudia Jennnings being the brains of the three I think. John Saxon drives a muscle car, a cherry red Dodge Challenger, a real sweet car. A buddy of mine used to own one down the street from me at the time I seen this back in the late 70s. Hopefully, this gem will come out on DVD soon. If you like this film, you may also like "Duel", Steven Spielbergs first film.