Fighting Mad

Having been curious the last 45 years about this revenge pic starring Peter Fonda, I finally got to watch this on the Putlocker site. Having split from his wife from the city (she's only mentioned, never seen), he takes his pre-teen son with him back to his farm that his father still owns. But a corporation wants to take that land and the surrounding acres of other neighbors to build some development and will go to any lengths to get them off the property. Needless to say, Fonda's character is no pushover, that's for sure! This was one of Jonathan Demme's early movies he made for King of the Bs, Roger Corman, before doing more important work that got him Oscar nominations. So there's plenty of action and some sex with some nudity but the drama is also pretty good so on that note, I say Fighting Mad is worth a look.

Peter Fonda and his son (Gino Franco) return to his dad's (John Doucette) horse ranch in rural Texas after a divorce. He finds that a mining company owned by Philip Carey have been buying up all the land and are harassing all the holdouts, including Doucette and Fonda's brother Scott Glenn. The campaign of terror escalates with beatings, Glenn's murder and finally Doucette's death in an intentionally set fire. Since local sheriff Henry Northrup has proved useless, Fonda takes matters into his own hands.

Demme's third and final film for Roger Corman really shines. It's another formula picture, but this time it transcends the formulaic elements and comes close to feeling like a personal expression. It's got some serious flaws, including a really long, dead section leading up to the final climax, but you can see why Demme moved on after this one and started making films on his own.

Lynn Lowry has a significant role as Fonda's new girlfriend and fellow director George Armitage pops up as Man Playing Tennis.

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-

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.

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"!