(this blog was begun the night of October 2, 2019)
Tonight I watched an old favorite of mine called "Rolling Thunder" (1977). Back in the 1970s, there was a company called American International Pictures (AIP for short), which was run by a producer named Samuel Z.Arkoff. He and AIP specialized in low budget exploitation pictures, but by and large their movies were well executed and always entertaining. There was a sub-genre in those days that you could think of as "movies about small-town Texas". No one ever came out and called it a genre, or even a sub-genre, but during the 1970s - when cinematic realism came into being - you started seeing a lot of movies made in the South or Southwest, about blue-collar folks like truckers ("White Line Fever"), or right wing Sheriffs ("Walking Tall", "Macon County Line"), or rebels.......hell, one of our favorites (meaning my friends and I) was a movie about a young rebel called "A Small Town In Texas" that starred Timothy Bottoms, an excellent young actor who has since been forgotten. But yeah, I loved those southern-fried Texas-style movies, with their realistic location shoots and their "hard guy" premises, and many of them were produced by Sam Arkoff and his American International Pictures.
The script for "Rolling Thunder" was written by Paul Schrader, who also wrote "Taxi Driver", one of the greatest screenplays in all of cinema. Every line sounds real, the way the characters would really speak, and every scene moves the story forward, there is not an ounce of fat. Schrader tackles a similar theme with "Rolling Thunder" - that of a Vietnam vet who has come home traumatised and unable to adjust to civilian life - but in this case he gives it a different twist. "Taxi Driver"'s lead character Travis Bickle was restless and pro-active in his desire to "clean up" New York. He was a psychotic who planned his attacks, even though the folks he went after deserved what was coming to them. In "Rolling Thunder", the returned POW Major Charles Rane (played by William Devane) comes home dead inside. He receives a hero's welcome, but can barely muster a reaction. Then his wife, whom he hasn't seen in almost ten years, lowers the boom that she has another man in her life and wants a divorce. Devane reacts to this news with no expression. Because of his experience in the Vietnamese POW camp - where he was tortured - he can't feel anything anymore. In this way he is the opposite of Travis Bickle, who feels everything acutely.
Devane will have his emotions reawakened in due time, by a gang of Texas rednecks who carry out a home invasion on him and his family. They are after a box containing thousands of silver dollars that was given to Devane as a gift by a local car dealer. He returns home one day to find these men already in his house. They hold him at gunpoint to demand the silver, but at that moment his PTSD kicks in and he reverts to his prisoner of war mindset. In 'Nam, he was put through far worse than anything these lowlifes can dish out (or so he thinks), and so he refuses to divulge where he has hidden the silver dollars. This refusal to give in, on Devane's part, will set in motion a chain of events that will motivate him for the second half of the movie.
At the time "Rolling Thunder" was released, I was 17 and I loved what you might call "revenge movies", flicks where good guys got tortured in the first act, and then got their revenge, sometimes savagely, on the bad guys by the end of the movie. Think movies like "Death Wish" (and many other Charles Bronson flicks) or "Walking Tall" again. In the '80s I also loved "Rambo". You get the idea.
Well, "Rolling Thunder" is the Gold Medal Standard of the Revenge Movie. After what happens during the encounter with the robbers inside his home, Devane is awakened from his emotional stupor, but only in the sense that he can now feel his rage, which includes the rage at his former captors from the POW camp. All of that built up anger is ready to come out now, and it will be directed at the men who invaded his home and forever changed his life.
Accompanying him on his quest will be a new girlfriend, played by an actress named Linda Haynes. She is very good in her role as a young waitress who had worn Devane's POW bracelet (Google that term) all during the war. Haynes very nearly steals the movie with her natural onscreen persona, and it is a wonder to me that she did not go on to have a bigger career.
Also co-starring is Tommy Lee Jones, as Devane's dead-eyed young compatriot "Johnny Vohden", with whom he shared the horrific POW camp experience. Jones' character is perhaps even more emotionally impaired than William Devane, but he will stick with the Major through thick and thin, just as he did during the war. Schrader and director John Flynn explore the bonds between the two men, and it is clear that their loyalty to one another, created by their mutually endured experience, supersedes any other relationship in their lives.
This was the first time I had ever seen Tommy Lee Jones, and I can remember thinking, "wow, who is this guy"? He really made an impression in this film, especially at the end, and he also gets a few of the best lines in the movie. As with all "macho man movies" that came out during the 1970s, there were always a handful of highly memorable lines of dialogue in each one that my friends and I would repeat for months afterward. "Rolling Thunder" has some classics that I remembered to this day, and even though this was the first time I had seen the film in over 30 years, I knew when they were coming, and mouthed them to myself, haha, along with the actors on the screen.
I give "Rolling Thunder" Two Gigantic Thumbs Up, just so long as you take it for what it is, a violent movie about mistreatment and revenge. But is also has a lot of insight. Paul Schrader was at the top of his game as a writer at this time, and after "Taxi Driver" I would say that "Rolling Thunder" is the next best thing he's ever written. The movie was filmed in dirt-road locations in San Antonio and El Paso, Texas, and also in Mexico, to give it an authentic look, and the direction by John Flynn is straightforward and also without an ounce of fat. Call it a companion piece for "Taxi Driver", highly recommended. ////
It's me once again. I hope you are enjoying your afternoon. I am heading over the the Libe right now for more movies, and I will see you tonight!
Tons of love in the meantime. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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