Texas Lightning

Maureen McCormick from "The Brady Bunch" is actually a pretty good actress (I recall seeing her on an episode of TV's "Vegas" in the late '70s doing solid work). It's easy to see why she took on this low-budget project, but, alas, it is a film constructed by filmmakers who have little idea how to construct a film. McCormick plays a honkytonk waitress who befriends a backwards young man in town on a hunting trip with his "macho" dad and the dad's sniggering pals. Songbird Maureen, peppy and possibly flirting, takes the kid back to her room to make out (I think) but the other guys burst in and try to rape her (from what I could see through the production murk, 'rape' would be difficult for these lousy Lotharios). The star likely accepted this acting job because hers is a sympathetic part and she gets to sing and play her guitar. She probably had no idea how it was going to turn out. How did it turn out? It's so bad that when I searched the credits for a director--it wasn't to see who he was but if the movie even had one. NO STARS from ****

This movie is baaaaaaaaaaaaad. It is also inadvertently hilarious at times. I mean, Marcia from the Brady Bunch has a part in it, so how good can it be? The video box for this flick says this film is the "warm, funny story of a boy growing up." Actually, it's the story of a wuss with an overbearing dad who wants "to make a man" out of his loser son. The son meets Marcia from the Brady Bunch at a bar when he's out on a hunting trip with his dad and his dad's two friends. Marcia and the son go to a hotel for some lovin' and then the dad's friends bust in, throw the son out and force themselves on Marcia. The next day the son begins to go psycho. He gets so angry at one of his dad's friends the director does a hysterical slow motion shot of the son throwing a plate of food in the face of one of his dad's friends. I guess the director thought it would be a more impressive shot that way. You get the idea...rent this if you like really bad, bad, BAD movies. Later gator.

Hillbilly trash from the early 1980s that should have been thrown out the truck windows along with all the beers cans and newspapers the characters toss while heading to their hunting destination. What was that? The characters are repeatedly shown throwing piles of trash out the windows - was that just part of what being a Good Ole Boy was about? Littering enough to make up for all the non-littering sissies with full mouths of teeth? There is a wet t shirt boob dunking contest that occurs in a roadhouse while a drunken brawl spills across the room and out into the parking lot. The coverage goes back and forth between these two things happening. They're about as exciting as they sound. Peter Jason is really annoying as the perfectly cast loud and annoying life of the party dirtbag, who is an optometrist during the work week. Cameron Mitchell gets beat in an arm wrestling contest by somebody who looks like Bocephus. Marcia Brady is the roadhouse bartender. The roadhouse scene goes on for a long time. Peter Jason is more and more annoying. Their friend whose dentures break in the sink at the beginning of the movie, he's annoyingly lousy through out the movie as well. Maureen McCormick questions "who knows what's good?" when told smoking is bad for her. The answer certainly isn't this moronically lousy excuse for a... father son comedy? Coming of age comedy? Buddy dramedy? Oh yeah, there's a rape scene, too. Classic Good Ole Boys.

A misguided father (Cameron Mitchell) wants to make his shy, sensitive son "into a man" (and it's about damn time since the young character, played by Mitchell's real-life son, looks to be about twenty five). He decides to take him on a hunting trip with his buddies, two of the sorriest excuses for "men" around. (Even in Texas this pair would be regarded as fat, dumb, redneck losers). The hunting trip/rite-of-passage involves getting drunk and driving into the 120 degree Texas summer heat to shoot at beer bottles and bunny rabbits (if this makes one a "man", then my friends in Wyoming and I would have achieved manhood at about ten). Later they go to a honky-tonk bar where the most pathetic wet t-shirt contest you ever saw is taking place, and a Hal Needham/Burt Reynolds-style bloodless brawl breaks out every five minutes. There the boy meets a pretty young barmaid and aspiring prostitute (Maureen "Marcia Brady" McCormick)and takes her back to the hotel room. They suffer some traumatic coitus interruptus, however, when the two redneck friends bust in a force themselves on "Marcia", I mean Maureen. The movie then turns into a REALLY tame and bloodless (in every sense of the word) rape-revenge flick.

This movie started out as a more serious "Macon County Line" type of a film, a labor-of-love by talented cinematographer and not-so-talented director Gary Graver based on his own script called "The boys" (which certainly must have, given the title, recognized the irony of a group of immature middle-aged butt-wipes who everyone still refers to as "boys" trying to initiate ANYONE into manhood). The distributors renamed it "Texas Lightning" possibly to fit with the wretched country-music theme song (or vice versa)and re-edited it into a sub-"Smokey and the Bandit", sub-"Dukes of Hazzard" redneck-athon with a lot of alleged comic relief and an implausibly happy ending. The uneven (to say the least) tone will give you cinematic whiplash. Cameron Mitchell, who was the only really good actor in this, refused to participate in the re-shooting and just disappears entirely near the end. It's rumored that in the original Graver cut, still floating out there somewhere in terminal litigation, the two rednecks meet a much more unpleasant, if deserving, fate. (In MY cut they would receive shotgun enemas in the first five minutes and be left rotting in a shallow grave in the desert along with the "good ole boys" responsible for the crappy theme song). You'll have to take Graver's word for it that his cut is any kind of masterpiece, but the one under consideration here is certainly worthless dreck regardless.

Most people today will no doubt see this for Maureen McCormick's brief "nude scene", but frankly you'd have better luck spotting subliminal ads for hot dogs and soft drinks from back when this played the drive ins. The only remotely sexy aspect of this movie involves a scene with the implausibly attractive young girlfriend of one of the rednecks dressed in a see-through teddy. McCormick is OK as an actress here, but she's pretty miscast as a tough honky-tonk Southern girl. She also "sings" at point, which will invoke, for those of us Americans of a certain age, traumatic and previously deeply repressed memories of the notoriously ill-advised "Brady Bunch Variety Hour" TV show (shudder!). Not recommended--at least until when (or if) the Graver cut is ever released.

This is the WORST MADE film I EVER SAW!!!!!! My Jr. High Film class did a better job when WE wrote our own script and shot with an 8mm Camera and B&W FILM!!!

I couldn't understand why such a successful actor as Cameron Mitchell would be involved with such a poorly written, poorly produced, poorly directed, poorly shot, and poorly edited production (If you even DARE call it that...) until I saw that it was the first film that his son Channing was in. I'll bet the producer said that his son would get the part ONLY if his DAD would star in the film!!! You can tell that Cameron Mitchell was a REAL PRO as even with this piece of SH*T script and lack of directing, he did a fairly decent job, as Maureen McCormick did as well. Boy, she must have been WAY DOWN ON HER LUCK or been bamboozled into taking the part. You can see that she really tried to act the part well, but with the GOD AWFUL direction and shooting, what should have been her best dramatic scene (The Motel Room) turned into an unintended (at least by the director) hilarious comedy (This was the FIRST TIME I ever laughed at a RAPE SCENE...).

I even wonder if the director's credit was a phony name, as I can't believe that any director worth a damn would put their own name on this piece of CRAP (unless of course they were too stupid to realize that this film was actually that BAD)!!!

First of all, The opening sequence looks like it was shot either with very fast (ASA 1600) film or 8mm film at around ASA 800. It is SO GRAINY that you can't even make out most of the signs!!!

I would go on, but there is a 1000 word limit on what I can say here, and I would use that up just describing all the bad production in the first five minutes of the film.

I RECOMMEND this film for use in film classes as a PERFECT Example of how N O T to make a film!!!