La vengeance aux tripes

A Small Town In Texas is a film that I put high on the list of genre action films that were a staple at drive-in's during the '1970's and '80's. The car action is great with real stunts. A great cast of film supporting actors and the always cool directing of the late Jack Starrett. Bo Hopkins is great as the sheriff, Morgan Woodward as the corrupt rich local, John Karlen and Clay Tanner as deputies, Susan George as the girlfriend is '70's hot!,Art Hindle is always good and Buck Flower steals the show as a cussin', spittin', tough-as-nails hick who helps Timothy Bottoms against the crooked law man. I hope a DVD release will be in the near future.

These cool seventies movies, courtesy of Mr Arkoff, set a cool trend in the movie world for me. If you expect a lot of gore in this, you'll be plenty disappointed. What we have is a fatal love triangle. I like any Bottoms actor, they're all good. Timothy my favourite, makes a meal of the role, throwing in a naturalistic and lovable performance, as an ex con, Poke Jackson, framed, who's just got out of prison, now about to rub the same guy up the wrong way, small town local sheriff, the corrupt Duke (Hopkins in another nasty piece of work). Duke has been makin' it with Bottom's old lady, Mary Lee (the versatile Susan George) who you kind of get the feeling, she's wasted in this. Duke is about to give Poke a second serving of misjustice by setting him up again for a murder of important figure at a country fair, and this time properly doing the job. So the other half has Bottoms fleeing the cops, which culminates in a couple of cool car and bike chases, and god, can Bottoms ride. Bottoms is funny too: Helium voice scene, and we take guilty delight seeing both nemesis go at each other, where in the end, only one can walk away. Great action, and revenge that never gets old, plus sincere performances, make this a gem of a seventies movie, though it's not great, but definitely a golden 70's find.

Haven't seen this movie for well over 20 years, when I was only about 12. Even at such a young age, I picked up on the fact that the realism of the town depicted is extremely far-fetched; the police department in a town of this size (remember, this is a "Small" Town in Texas) would have a fleet of 6 or 8 vehicles at the most, yet in the big chase scene there are local police cars by the score, probably a hundred plus. That is my #1 memory of the film. A much better flick is "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia" with Dennis Quaid. Although the protagonist in "Georgia" is not a native of the town in which the story takes place, the basic plot of "bad-guy lawman tries to bully damsel away from our hero" is very similar to "Small Town in Texas." I recall the Dennis Quaid movie as the better of the two, and that doesn't say much!*!

This movie was a cross between BILLY JACK, DUKES OF HAZZARD and that's it. It was a fun movie. Tim Bottoms is always a good person to watch act. The ending was sudden and typical of that decade of movies.

If it's on, see it.

This obscure (to me anyway) film has a lot of problems. All the characters are either one dimensional, annoying, or cliched. It's overlong, boring, and has a script that spends the first half meandering around endlessly, then gets hopelessly predictable.

In its defence I will say that it is less dated than many films from the 1970s, and is occasionally entertaining or amusing (mainly me laughing at the dolts who populate this film). And its handful of action scenes are decent...though I suspect they may seem better than they really are because even the most inept stunts would seem exciting compared to the generally mundane tone of the film.

You could do worse, but you could do much better too.