NOTE- this article has adult themes and language.
A backyard movie night with one of those Blu-rays that are courteous enough to program a drive-in style evening, featuring two movies with an intermission.
The first film, PSYCHO FROM TEXAS (1975), was new to me. It’s about a criminal drifter named Wheeler who arrives in small town Arkansas to take on a kidnap/ransom job. The victim turns out to be the very same kindly old man who treated Wheeler earlier that day to a free Coke *and* a cup of coffee.
But we immediately find out that Wheeler is as cold as they come, and he doesn’t care what the old man did for him, he is actually looking forward to killing him once the money comes through. It turns out Wheeler’s Texas psychopathy stems from having a shitty mom who would beat him in between getting fucked by random dudes who pay her in stockings.
Filmmaking-wise, this is total amateur hour, featuring clumsy transitions and mostly bad acting, even the music suddenly changes back & forth between scenes. After the first half-hour, it meanders with an endless foot chase that is alternately funny and tiresome.
There are also whiplash-inducing shifts in tone, going from dumb good ‘ol boy comedy (complete with country bumpkin music) to ultra-grimy sleaze (Linnea Quigley appears in this, and I don’t think her visual discomfort is all acting, either).
But I can’t deny that I found the overall story kinda intriguing, and the filmmakers sure as hell knew how to end a movie on a high note. I’ve been re-reading the Parker novels recently, and Wheeler reminded me of one of those despicable sadists that Parker occasionally worked with (and who usually ended up fucking over Parker and his partners).
Plus, I’m a sucker for regional drive-in fare; I always felt these movies were better representations of their time & place than bigger budget fare. Probably because they couldn’t afford sets and back-lots. There’s a scene where a sheriff is explaining how a young boy found a very important piece of evidence; the boy is Black, and the sheriff begins to say “You know that young n-” and the print suddenly jump-cuts a couple seconds ahead to “…boy from so-and-so found…”, sparing us that very real Arkansas-in-the-1970s moment. I had to laugh.
Also, Wheeler drives a pretty sweet Dodge Dart Swinger 340, which is something I thought you would appreciate, if you were me.
There was a 13-minute intermission with classic snack bar ads and trailers for movies like COP KILLERS and THE GRIM REAPER (U.S. cut of ANTHROPOPHAGOUS), before moving on to the second feature, THE GATES OF HELL (1980) which is the U.S. cut of Fulci’s CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD. There are much better-looking versions available under the original title, but I appreciated the grind house charm of this scratched up print (I’m pretty sure this was the same print I’ve seen at various all-night marathons).
I’ve rambled about this one before; it’s not my favorite Fulci, but it’s good times all the same and it was fun to watch it outside at night, wondering if the creepy sounds I heard behind me were possums, gatos, or some evil zombie priest who wants to bring about the end of the world. (And yet, despite the bleeding eyeballs and puked-up entrails and living dead walking around, that priest *still* refuses to acknowledge his colleagues molesting the altar boys behind closed doors.) For the Silo, E.F. Contentment.