Le fermier

I noticed that some reviews complained about the quality of the print on YouTube for "The Farmer". Well, I found it on the Tubi app and it's near perfect in quality...crisp, and looking like new.

The story begins just after WWII...though you cannot tell this by hairstyles (especially of the women), cars (most are 1950s vintage), some of the fashions (particular shoes) and a 1970s style train that you see about ten minutes into the story. Trust me...it IS supposed to be 1945 or 1946 at the latest. I think I noticed this stuff because I am an ex-history teacher and I often notice what the average person might not. My aunt thinks I'm a nut about this...and she's probably right. Regardless, either they didn't have the money to get it right or they just didn't care.

Aboard a train, a returning soldier, Kyle (Gary Conway of "Land of the Giants" fame), intervenes when a nasty group of bigots are harassing a black man (with 70s hair). For his troubles, Kyle's tossed off the train and must walk a long way to his farm. However, when he arrives he learns from his hired hand that the place is in foreclosure and is a mess. Kyle tries to re-negotiate the loan with the bank with no success. He just can't seem to catch a break.

Soon after this, there's a car wreck near Kyle's farm. He and his hired hand save the guy in the car just before it explodes...and the guy turns out to be a gambler. Soon after this, the gambler is kidnapped by local mobsters and deliberately blinded with acid! He tries to hire Kyle to kill them, as he himself doing it would be problematic (but NOT unheard of...see "Master of the Flying Guillotine" if you don't believe me). But Kyle isn't THAT desperate for money. However, later, after his hired hand is murdered and a woman Kyle cares about is violently raped, he decides he could use the $50,000 bounty the gambler has put on the hoods.

What follows is quite violent by 1970s movie standards. In addition to the rape and acid attack, there are a lot of murders (such as by using a garrote, putting a gun to a man's mouth and pulling the trigger and a lot of other bloody methods) and a bit of nudity. It clearly is NOT a family movie and you might want to consider this before you show it to your kids or Father O'Malley if he stops by for a visit.

So despite the violence and terrible attention to 1940s details, is it any good? Well, the story actually isn't bad...and I loved the way the movie ended. The acting also isn't bad considering most of the actors are relatively smalltime. But it's also unpleasant and something you may find too much so. It all just depends on you and your tastes. I think it's a movie crying out for a bigger budget remake. I was shocked that despite its problems and cheapness it's STILL a very good movie.

By the way, the ballistics in the film are nutty. You cannot blow a man across a road about 10 feet with a shotgun blast. Heck, a tank would have a hard time doing that! In fact, if hit by a shotgun blast, you'd probably just fall down...not go flying.

I saw The Farmer (Aka "Blazing Revenge") at a theater in Tokyo, Japan with my Japanese girlfriend back then. I was stationed at NAF Atsugi. The movie was great. I remember the beginning of the movie with the returning WWII hero (Kiel Martin) on a train. There was a black soldier who was being given a hard time over a drink because of his race. Kiel Marin stepped in, big fight, etc....from that point you knew he was an honorable, courageous and no nonsense kind of guy. After they take his land, burn his house, attack his girlfriend, killed his friend...it is time to go kick some ass. And he does big time. I have searched high and low for this movie the better part of 30 years. Still searching. I imagine if I got to see it today...it would possibly appear corny by today's standards for revenge flicks. Not sure, but maybe I am better off with the memories. Lastly, the star, Mr. Gary Conway is still going strong at 80 plus and owns a winery in CA. Why this movie is locked away is beyond me.

If action packed violent movies is your thing then this movie is the one for you, unfortunately it was never released in video or dvd or even beta format. Yes the originals are still locked up in Columbia pics movie vaults. I saw this movie in the theatres in 1977 when I was 17 years old, and loved it. Kyle Martin played by Gary Conway is a retired war veteran turned Farmer, who finds out that money is short to pay the mortage on the farm. He turns to the mafia boss,Michael Dante, I believe, who pays Conway money to rid himself of a few rival enemies. Which Conway does just that with plenty of bullets blood and gore. The fact that this movie just missed an X rating from all the graphic violence is not odd, but that of the one liners that Conway spits out each time he offs a bad guy. One seen Conway is under a car waiting for a bad guy and when he walks up to get in has his feet blown completly off by a sawed-off shot gun. Conway comments "you won't be going any where soon" as he wastes him yet again at point blank range sending the body flying across the parking garage. Every thing is rare about this movie, from the movie posters to the LP sound track. It probably won't ever be released in video due to the graphic violent content contained therein. America is just not ready for such action as this one dishes out. David Berlatsky directs and Gary Conway helped produced. It make me wonder where they thought this film would eventually go to as obscure as it is. Still is and always will be one of my favorite action in its genre of all time. Write me if you know of where a copy may exist! ;^)

So it was not until later that I realized what an testosterone packed, ultra-violent film it was, (I just assumed "all" American movies had taken the lead from Sam Peckinpah, since I'd been overseas...Wrong!:0) yet "The Farmer" was well done and you cared about his mission and survival. I'd shave all the hair off my left one to have this movie on DVD!!! It is an overlooked gem of it's genre' and "rules" on the viceral level (i.e., you want to see the Farmer take out the bad guys, similar to the buzz engendered in the original Bronson's "Death Wish", but much less repellent). It even has some historical accuracy in reference to the treatment of returning war veterans (I remember respecting that touch at the time). Not to be missed by action fans...

I recently watched The Farmer after it was, very briefly, posted on YouTube. I had been wanting to see the film since I read a negative review for it twenty some years ago. The print was rather poor, but beggars can't be choosy.

I have seen all six Death Wish movies, both Exterminator films, both Get Carter movies, plus about a dozen other revenge films. My favorites are Rolling Thunder and the original Get Carter, the ending of which The Farmer borrows (with admittedly a slightly different outcome). I like revenge movies, but The Farmer was just so-so.

The plot has Kyle Martin (Gary Conway), a Silver Star winning WWII veteran, returning from the war to find his family farm about to be auctioned. He needs money fast. The farmer's life changes after he rescues a gambler (Michael Dante) from a car wreck. The two men take a shine to each other. Later, when the gambler is blinded by the local (Atlanta?) criminal machine, the gambler offers the farmer a deal. He will give Martin enough money to save his farm if the farmer kills the goons.

The shootouts and revenge scenes were grim, bloody, and exciting, but those were almost all in the last half-hour. What wore me down was the first half of the movie with its arty montages of farm life as Gene Clark plays in the background. Plus, in spite of having four writers, the film did not do that good of job at setting things up. All the bonding time the farmer and the gambler apparently had to justify the latter calling on the former to become a hitman is not in the film. Also missing is all of the set-up for the romance between the farmer and the gangster's moll (the lovely Angel Thompkins), who seems all too happy to give up her fast life to chase chickens around a farmyard.

The filmmakers seem unsure of what kind of movie they are making. The Gene Clark songs and much of the opening suggests a period rural drama. It is also a gangster film and, at the end, a revenge film. Its odd structure reminds me a little of another film, Framed with Joe Don Baker, which begins as a movie about gamblers, becomes a prison flick, and also ends a revenge movie. However, the structure of Framed seems deliberate while The Farmer feels a bit confused about what it wants to be.

Is The Farmer worth watching? Yes, providing one has reasonable expectations. However, had the film been released on VHS tape by Columbia in the early 1980's, I don't think its cult would have been as strong. Had I saw The Farmer as a young man, around the same time I saw Young Warriors (a revenge film I champion), I might have more nostalgia for it, but I think I still would have preferred Young Warriors. Regardless, The Farmer has come a little late in my film viewing life for it to stand out.