“Junior, you know if you lose this thing, it’s comin’ outta your pay? You know that don’t ya?”

Sitting Duck’s rating: This was a movie swap we did in June 2024, where Drake gave me this to review and I gave him The Gorgon

Sitting Duck’s review: When I got Drake as a movie swap partner, I figured there was a 97.26% chance I’d be assigned a 1970s Exploitation Schlock Flick. The only question was what flavor of 1970s Exploitation Schlock. Biker flick? Blaxploitation? Women in prison? Italian cannibal movie? Pre-Mad Max post-apocalypse? Nature bites back? Whatever you want call that stuff coming out of the Philippines at the time?

The answer was, “None of the above”. Instead, it turned out to be one of those Deep South Hixploitation flicks, known for featuring half-drunk rednecks, crooked and/or incompetent lawmen, outrageous car chases (especially if Hal Needham is involved), and lots and lots of sweat. For air conditioning was a mythical device in the Deep South at the time, where its existence was regarded as more suspect than that of the Boggy Creek Monster. Be thankful that Smell-O-Vision never caught on, as using it in movies of this genre would be sure to feature overwhelming B.O.

Our story concerns Bobby “Gator” McKlusky (a pre-mustache Burt Reynolds), who is currently residing at the Big House for his bootlegging activities. Initially resigned to serving out his sentence, this changes when a visitor tells him about how his little brother Donny was found drowned over in Bogan County. Though not provable, it was almost certainly done on the orders of crooked sheriff J.C. Connors (Ned Beatty), who cannot abide any fatuous hippie peaceniks in his county. Even if he may have been a pot-smoking pinko deviant, Donny was still family as far as Gator is concerned. And the only acceptable currency to compensate this wrong is blood.

However, there’s the little problem where Gator still has a year left in his sentence. So he cuts a deal with the Feds where he’ll infiltrate the Bogan County moonshine operation and dig up evidence linking Connors (who collects protection money) to the racket. However, Gator only puts in a token effort for this investigation, being more interested in seeing that Connors comes to a bad end.

One good thing I can say about it is that at least they cast real Southerners, as there’s not much that grates on my eardrums like a badly done Southern accent. The music selections are also effective at setting the mood.

Everything else, however, is a mixed bag.

As is the case with many Hixploitation flicks, car chases are prominently featured. But other than a couple of stunt pieces, they weren’t terribly interesting to watch. Mostly I thought of how their racing through the town should have left a trail of corpses in their wake.

Another stunt failure occurs during a fight scene near the end of the second act. The sequence is so poorly lit, you can’t figure out who is fighting who or where or why or anything else. But even worse is the dialogue, much of which consists of random and dull jawing that had me constantly checking the time bar. It was something of a relief when the commercial breaks butted in. Appropriately enough considering all the sweating going on, they were all laundry detergent ads.

But the weakest aspect has to be the film’s antagonist J.C. Connors, who is little more than a caricature. He’s allegedly based on Arkansas sheriff Marlin Hawkins. While a sketchy individual in his own right, the research I conducted indicated that the misdeeds committed by Hawkins were mostly limited to election and welfare fraud. Certainly not like this cross between a watered-down Jim Clark and a Mob boss that we see here. Really, Beatty was afforded more dignity when he was being Bill McKinney’s little piggy.

Like silent movies, Hixploitation seems to work best when it’s comedic in tone. So many things that detract from dramatic stories (including characters that are little more than broad stereotypes) work just fine in comedies. With revenge being the central motivation driving the plot, there isn’t much room for laughs and the proceedings mostly wind up as a crushing bore.