Thunder and Lightning

Thunder and Lightning is an interesting movie, it's an action movie with a plot! The characters actually have reasons to do what they do. David Carradine stars as a bootlegger and Kate Jackson is his fiancee. Her father is a soft-drink manufacturer who is secretly making and distributing large quantities of moonshine. The conflict starts when her father's goons decide to close down Carradine's operation. It is pretty much an adventure comedy from then on, with lots of car chases, fights, banjo music, rednecks, hillbillies and moonshine. Watch for the gator-wrestling church!

2 out of 10

Contrived good ol' boy, yahoo nonsense that is taken into overdrive. There really is no need to talk about the story since it is very derivative and just an excuse to put in a lot of smash up car chases.

The filmmakers seem compelled to come up with every southern stereotype they can think of. There is the grizzled, uneducated, overall wearing, backwoods moonshiners. There is also the grubby, beer swilling, uneducated, pick up truck driving rednecks with names like Bubba and Scooter. Then there's the virtuous, but spunky southern daughter with a accent that is really annoying. There is even a scene where a couple of down home boys jump into a car and shout "yahoo!" as it takes off. It's all a very one dimensional, uninspired mess that makes you feel completely brain dead after about ten minutes.

The production values aren't too good. The sound is muffled and there are too many quick cuts making some of the action hard to follow. The whole thing looks rushed and haphazard and simply done to cash in on the success of SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT.

Carradine's performance is much too subdued. He seems to have no energy and is just mouthing his lines. Jackson is pretty, but her personality is much too strong. The only fun piece of casting is Holloway. He plays the main moonshiner and is probably best known as the voice of Winnie the Pooh. This was to be his last film appearance.

The film has a few good moments that are worth mentioning. One is a unique speed boat chase done on a large swamp. There is a segment where a minister preaches his sermon while wrestling with a alligator. There are also hit men who like in PULP FICTION have unusual conversations. Some of the strange topics include too much violence on TV, Captain Kangaroo, and even Norman Vincent Peale. There is also one really good inside joke. Napier is having a fight with Carradine and yells out "Hey as----- knock off the Kung Fu sh--."

The only point that seems worth adding here is that the writer William Hjortsberg later wrote the screenplay for Angel Heart filmed by Alan Parker in 1978 with Robert De Niro and Mickey Rourke, based on Hjortsberg's novel Falling Angel.

Aside from this and the aforementioned air boat race and gator-wrestling church it was pretty much business as usual for David Carradine and Kate Jackson at the time.

I enjoyed it when it first came out, when there seemed to be car chase movies every week at the local flea pit (recently I was surprised to see just how few Carradine actually appeared in!)

Fatuous, witless, disappointing Southern moonshine adventure, with Kate Jackson as the daughter of a soda pop king and manufacturer of poisoned whiskey; she and thrill-seeking boyfriend David Carradine attempt to stop of shipment of the bad booze but run afoul of both the law and the moonshiner's shotgun-toting stooges. The redneck histrionics are shrill and labored, and the comedy relief is rather obvious (one of the better scenes has two hired killers bemoaning all the violence on TV, though it doesn't have the punch that better writing and directing might have given it). There are car crashes galore, two geezer brothers making whiskey in a swamp-land shack, an alligator wrasslin' preacher, and an ear-splitting soundtrack filled with hick music and squealing tires. Jackson and Carradine aren't bad, but they have next to nothing to work with; supporting cast includes some fine character actors, including a bearded, shaggy-haired Charles Napier, but they get stuck playing unfunny goons. Some of the best lines are delivered by the bit players, such as a garbage collector who points when he talks and a foreign delivery man who sings to himself on the job. *1/2 from ****

Another silly Roger Corman car chase movie, but it actually works thanks to its picturesque setting of the Florida Everglades. David Carradine again plays the heroic character who tries to stop a moonshining operation led by his girlfriend's father (Roger C. Carmel, who was wonderful in The Mothers-in-Law TV series) who's using the ruse to market it under the Honey Dew soda pop brand, apparently a favorite soft drink in the regional south. Of course, a series of car chases between the heroes, the crooks, as well as the local police eventually follow.

I've been in contact with William Hjortsberg (R. I. P), the writer of this film on Facebook a couple years ago and he admitted he was pretty proud of the finished film, as well as his first produced screenplay. It's just a shame most of the numerous scripts he wrote were never produced or sold.