Fighting Mad

This film essentially begins with a man by the name of "Tom Hunter" (Peter Fonda) returning to his old home in Arkansas after being gone for several years. With him is his young son, "Dylan Hunter" (Gino Franco), who has been given permission by his mother to accompany him. Naturally, having been gone for such a long time, Tom's father, "Jeff Hunter" (John Doucette), is delighted to welcome him back. Unfortunately, things have changed over the years, and it soon becomes apparent that a greedy land developer named "Pierce Crabtree" (Philip Carey) has become determined to possess all of the land in the area--and he will stop at nothing to get it. To that effect, he even hires some men to kill Tom's brother, "Charley Hunter" (Scott Glenn) and his wife, "Carolee Hunter" (Kathleen Miller) in order to stop a lawsuit against him. So, when Jeff Hunter and the rest of the citizens in the area continue to resist, he becomes even more dangerous from that point on. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that, although I initially had high hopes for this movie, I was somewhat disappointed with it overall as it lacked the intense drama necessary for a film of this type. I don't know, everything just seemed a bit too methodical from the beginning to the very end. Be that as it may, while I don't consider this to be a bad movie by any means, I just couldn't get all that interested in it, and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly below average.

Ah, my favorite type of 70s exploitation... Poor, hard-working farmer families in the deep South are driven to desperation and pushed to violence by ruthless jerks in yellow hardhats and the greedy corporate tycoons they work for. The brave locals barely withstand the destructions of their properties and sabotages of their crops, but when innocent relatives start to get eliminated, they fight back with a vengeance! The Hunter family, from Arkansas, and their neighbors are aggressively chased off their land by the obnoxious Mr. Crabtree's mining corporation, but then the eldest son Tom return home from the big city after a failed marriage. Tom has a stubborn personality, a constant bad temper, AND a bow and arrows!

This is, simply put, masterful exploitation from the House of Corman. Written and directed by one his most gifted acolytes (Jonathan Demme), and with an excellent cast (led by the almighty Peter Fonda), "Fighting Mad" features grim but realistic violence and more than a handful of genuinely powerful drama moments. The casting of Peter Fonda and Scott Glen as brothers is genius (though, sadly, Glen's role is small) and the beautiful Lynn Lowry is splendid as the girl unable to calm down her furious love-interest. Excellent music, great use of locations, and a lot of loathsome henchmen to make the enjoyment complete. One of the best of its kind and era, together with "The Farmer", "White Line Fever", and "Mr. Majestyk"!

Mountain justice is usually the way to keep what belongs to you. A father and son go home to be at a farm in the mountains of Oklahoma to help out family there. But along the way, he would encounter greedy land developers who to deprive the people there of their homes. They would kill his brother and his wife when a celebrate the homecoming. The development crew with their machines cruelly destroy homes, blast rocks, and send the kind hard-working people out from their native land. Kind of like the Native Americans removed from their land out west in the 1800's. Peter Fonda's character doesn't play around when they attacked his family. This movie is like "Deliverance" meets "Gator Bait" meets "Death Wish". This movie has got a lot of action. It's not a let down. 4 out of 5 stars.

Henry Fonda should have been--appalled, that is--with his counter-culture son playing the hillbilly-vigilante-avenger who goes after the eee-vill mining company in Jonathan Demme's Fighting Mad.

Peter Fonda got off to an interesting start with Easy Rider, but it didn't take a lot of acting skill to cruise around on a Harley, stoned out one's gourd, so he wound up doing junk like this for producer Roger Corman.

I'm not going to give a synopsis of this thing, lest I start thinking about the time I wasted watching it. I just wanted to warn you 70s action fans out there to steer clear of Fighting Mad the next time Fox Movie Channel shows it. For the life of me, I can't understand why they chop up other movies for broadcast, but they slapped a TV-MA on this one because . . .

Hearing a couple "f-bombs" and seeing some boobage so helped advance the story. Don't get me wrong, boobs are just fine and a couple "fungoos" don't offend me. It's the fact that having the love interest of Peter Fonda scold him not to go out there and get hisself dead while airing out her mommy parts after sex isn't worth my time.

I must be getting old. In 1976, I would have elbowed my best friend to make sure he was grooving to the boobs on screen, the orangey blood being spilled, and the bad words that the three networks would hack out for broadcast.

Now.

Now, I look for things like originality, dialogue, depth and breadth of visuals, and intellectual stimulation. You know . . . the stuff you would never find in anything like Fighting Mad.

A man returns from the big city to his traditional family ranch in northwest Arkansas (Peter Fonda), only to discover that a determined land developer (Philip Carey) is buying up land nearby for strip mining and, of course, wants his dad's ranch. When beloved citizens turn-up dead, the kid gloves are off.

"Fighting Mad" (1976) comes in the tradition of "Walking Tall" and would influence "First Blood" six years later. Car crash movies from the 70s are also comparable, like Fonda's own "Dirty Mary Crazy Larry." This is the least of 'em, however, because the dramatics are curiously boring and needed a rewrite to flush out the potential, but it's still worth catching if you like Peter and these types of flicks. The best parts are the vehicular mayhem and the closing confrontation at the castle-like manor of the tycoon.

It runs 1 hour, 30 minutes, and was shot in Washington County, Arkansas, and the corresponding town of Springdale, which are in the northwest corner of the state. The jail scenes were shot in the studio in Los Angeles.

GRADE: B-