Honky

"Honky" is about the inter-racial relationship between two high school kids, sliding off the rails in Middle America. Sheila (Brenda Sykes) is seventeen, black and some would say "a wild card". Her carefree attitude is, in part, defiance against her wealthy middle-class background.

At a high school football rally, she meets a white boy, Wayne (John Neilson) and the two hit it off. Wayne's mother is played by Marion Ross from TV's "Happy Days"- perhaps a spur for Sheila's attraction towards Wayne.

After a few sequences highlighting long lost daisy-age dialogue, Sheila asks for Wayne's help in dealing grass. After doing a drug run, the two get high and smash their wheels into another car. On this, the two pack their bags and flee west to California. On their way they encounter a doubtful group of rednecks, with a brutal plan in mind for the couple.

I don't know how accurate such films from the early '70s reflected racial attitudes of middle America- but ending this film on such a pessimistic note was a cop out. Why do so many films depicting Black and white relationships head towards an inevitable tragic outcome? It's also unfortunate that a character such as Sheila, living life with a rebellious sense of fun, should have to reach such a brutal comeuppance.

Still, there's much appeal for those wishing to dig up this 1971 time capsule. I'll even double this films rating thanks to Brenda Sykes- who is absolutely gorgeous. Someone should track her down for "Honky 2000", hopefully with an update on its racial comment.

I loved this movie for several reasons. It has a great cast of supporting actors, and the lovely Brenda Sykes. It has a plot and storyline that kept me "glued" throughout the film. I usually fast forward through sex scenes these days, but I was fascinated with what there was here. But if you think this is just a love story, you're mistaken. This couple goes through many changes together, including those that take them into extremely dangerous waters. The movie was made in the cherished "exploitation" times of the great National General Film Corporation, where I and many others were in "Drive-In Heaven" every time we saw one of these independent films that had a message, which was told in a style of visuals that often shocked, engrossed, or at the least entertained us throughout the movie. This was one of those films. MGM should be commended for giving us this film, which I don't recall ever seeing when it came out, but thanks to wwmovies for making available. I see a lot of free play movies on Netflix, and one benefit has been to get me interested in the films that have fallen through the cracks, out of sight to our current DVD releases. I also read Psychotronic books, which review titles that many of us have never heard of. If you ever see a title that falls into this lost category, I urge you to Google the title under the heading "Watch ....(title)or "(title DVD)". You may be amazed at the fact that someone has a copy on DVD R. Ioffer is another great source for obscure titles. Good luck.

In a more enlightened age when interracial relationships are widely accepted, films like HONKY are pretty much abandoned by relevance and exist primarily as a time capsule. Still and all, it's an important hindsight, and HONKY presents a fairly decent romantic tragedy wherein an all-American blond-haired white boy finds true love in the arms of a spirited young black girl. Predictable tensions ensue, and culminate in a bitterly dispiriting final curtain.

Being that this film was made in a time of social tumult and radical change in America, it probably appealed chiefly to a younger liberal audience(there is quite a bit of a "flower child" element here...in one scene, a boy on a bridge pelts swimming ducks with rocks. Our leading lady touches him softly, saying "you'd better learn how to love, boy-child". We then see him tossing picked flowers into the water- LOL!). It's not at all a "blaxploitation" item, as its title and time-period might lead some to believe, but it's a modestly engaging low-budget effort, and though it was somewhat exploitative in its time, it approaches its sensitive subject matter with rectitude and purpose.

4.5/10...see also the largely neglected but groundbreaking 60s picture "ONE POTATO, TWO POTATO" which demonstrates a far more proficient handling of similar issues.