Texas Lightning

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!!!

There's nothing funnier (or perhaps sadder) than watching a grade D movie containing a once-famous actor who is only in it because they have come way, way down on their luck. Such is the opportunity afforded while watching Maureen McCormick (a.k.a. `Marcia' from `the Brady Bunch') doing her thing in `Texas Lightning.'

At one point in the film, Mcormick's character (a tarty, chain-smoking barmaid named `Fay') delivers the line `they don't pay me to be stupid,' which literally led me to yell back at the tube `oh, they most CERTAINLY do' (anyone who goes from a starring role in a network TV hit to this sort of grade D trash is definitely guilty of selling out).

Poorly written, directed, filmed and edited, laughing at McCormick's pathetic attempt at serious acting (including a rape scene which is so poorly done that it comes across as tasteless comedy) is just about the only entertaining thing to do while watching this boring, slow-moving `coming of age' story. None of the other principal characters in the film (who are all fat, ugly or just plain messed up) warrant any mention.

But wait - there's even more in this excursion into the realm of truly high camp: the bad performances and tiring storyline are enhanced by some of the worst production values and editing you'll EVER see. Seriously. This thing truly looks like it was shot for less than $100. The `sets' consist solely of residential dumps in drab neighborhoods, a tired roadhouse, a tacky motel and desert backwaters, and the editing feels like it was done by a drunken chimp with a machete.

And just when you think it can't get any worse, the film ends with McCormick performing a musical number, in a truly laughable preview of what would eventually become her last `career,' that of grade Z country singer.

Marcia's hot in this one. She does her own version of the "bull ride" in a trailer that would've made the Bradys' proud. Barry Williams wishes he could have had a scene like this with her in the 70's. Hell, we all wish we could have had a scene like this back in the 70's. With all the recent Brady revival, they should re-release this cheesy classic.

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 ****

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.