Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (1974)

Pretty Good

best movie i've ever seen.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Larry Rayder (Peter Fonda) is an aspiring NASCAR driver, Deke Sommers (Adam Roarke) his mechanic. As they feel they collectively are the best, the only thing that is holding them back is money to build the best vehicle possible. As such, they decide to rob a supermarket's office of the money in its safe to pursue their dream.Roddy McDowall appears in an uncredited cameo, presumably as a favor to director John Hough who had him starring the year before in "Legend of Hell House". (Indeed, Hough's career is largely built on horror films and this is a bit outside of the norm.) I expected this film to be a lot of fun, especially now that Quentin Tarantino has championed it and Shout Factory felt the need to give it a Blu-ray release. Indeed, it is fun, but I am not sure if it was everything I hoped it would be.

Dirty Mary Crazy Larry isn't a deep film. You aren't going to learn a lot about people watching this. The dialog is sophomoric and simple and the first 30 minutes tend to crawl. However, as the film progress' there is an anticipation, a desire to see it to the end. In my opinion the film wouldn't be much if it hadn't been for Susan George. By her own admission one doesn't have to dig too deep to perform in this role but she gave it all she had and she did indeed dig deep to fill out her character to the fullest. And it shows. And she's robust enough to handle anything Peter Fonda could dish out while driving on these open roads.The interesting fact is that the film is directed a British man who captured the American heartland perfectly. The film is beautifully shot and the abrupt ending will leave you stunned and speechless, sitting in your seat staring at the screen.Nothing profound here but it was good to see this again after so many years.

Larry and Deke(Peter Fonda & Adam Roarke) steal money from a grocery store owner(temporarily using his daughter and wife as bait to get the cash)to fund their dreams of racing in Nascar. Mr. Stanton(Roddy McDowell, in a cameo appearance)will provide the proper funds by emptying his safe. Mary(Susan George), a parolee with her own small record of petty crime, comes along to accompany Larry(she could threaten to turn him in, but is a thrill-seeker and just wants to tag along). What proceeds is a country chase with Captain Franklin(Vic Morrow)riding high in the sky(in a chopper) coordinating road blocks and orders to his troopers on standby hoping to catch the trio who do not make it easy for them.Larry, the balls(the driver, yearning to be a racecar star), Deke, the brains(the master mechanic who is loyal to Larry despite having plenty of reasons leave him), Mary, the looks(Larry enjoys sparring with her). The unnecessary ending is a real drag and seems to be included just so that the trio couldn't be allowed to succeed at their escape. I think, besides the ending, the film's real liability(it was a minor one for me, though)is the obnoxious childishness of Mary and Larry. I found Rourke's Deke a blessing in disguise because he's the one who, for most of the picture, keeps the screws mostly tight even if Larry orchestrates hot-rod antics that nearly get them killed countless times. Cop and civilian cars are destroyed on a regular basis. My favorite scene involves a daredevil deputy, with a souped up police car, following in hot pursuit as Larry attempts to evade him. Most of the movie has our trio motoring through country roads playing a chess match with Captain Franklin, who hovers overhead looking for them in a helicopter. Larry and Mary spend most of the movie having immature spats over innocuous things. Screen veteran Kenneth Tobey shows up as policeman Carl, always at odds with Franklin over his unwillingness to adhere to the appropriations committee regarding proper police protocol(he doesn't wear a uniform, badge, or gun)..Carl wants new patrol cars and is having a hard time convincing the committee to give them to his office. Could be looked at as a precursor to the SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT series.

I hadn’t intended to watch this just now but a couple of coincidences made it inevitable – once again, Vic Morrow has a featured role (it’s chilling how the actor feared that, having to spend about half the running-time inside a chopper in this case, would be the end of him!) and it re-united director Hough and co-star Susan George from EYEWITNESS (1970). This is among the most popular road movies from an era full of such efforts, complete with a memorable title and matching theme tune; Peter Fonda and Adam Roarke, both of whom had flourished in biker movies during the late 1960s, here exchange their typical vehicle for a racing car. In this respect, it resembles most closely VANISHING POINT (1971) – as per one of the trailers on the Anchor Bay SE DVD, the two were even re-issued as a double-bill! – though largely eschewing that film’s philosophical overtones.As can be expected, it’s generally fast-paced, tyre-screeching and stunt-heavy fun; the film (Englishman Hough’s first in the U.S. and which manages to capture that peculiar mid-American flavor), however, provides more than just the obvious kind of thrills. To begin with, the narrative opens with a supermarket caper (the one scene in which an uncredited Roddy McDowall, fresh from the same director’s scary ghost story THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE [1973], appears) but we also get plenty of confrontation scenes (and not just between fugitives and law enforcers, but within each individual group). This occasions some hilarious dialogue exchanges, such as when George rejects Fonda’s advances – he quips that the night before she had no qualms about it and, in fact, kept begging for more…but she retorts that that ought to have clued him in about just how little she was actually getting! Similarly, veteran cops Morrow and Kenneth Tobey often clash about how to approach the manhunt: at one point, the former argues that the latter’s obsession with apprehending the fugitives is merely a middle-aged man’s grasping to hold on to his job but he’ll only be physically worn-out by the experience (Morrow, then, believes that Tobey doesn’t want to put all he’s got into the chase simply because he’s been promised a new set of police cars – which, most likely, won’t be forthcoming if he proves overly efficient!).As a matter of fact, one of the reasons the film (which, according to the accompanying featurette, was partly improvised) works so well is because each of the principal roles is perfectly cast – thus ensuring that characterization isn’t lost amid all the hair-raising action; incidentally, the IMDb lists additional footage (extending a couple of scenes) that was utilized for the film’s network showings. Among the most notable stunts are: the one in which an impulsive young police officer’s car (which he has “souped up” – after the original engine overheated – in order to keep up with Fonda et al) is crushed by a falling telephone pole; another flies through a billboard; one more runs off the road backwards and ends up in a stream; the fugitive’s own ‘classic’ Dodge Charger (which they exchange midway through the chase) leaping across a drawbridge; and, of course, its climactic crash into a speeding train – giving the whole a fashionable, yet appropriately sobering, downbeat ending (ominously, Morrow’s relentless chopper itself often looms perilously close to its quarry before ultimately running out of gas!).I haven’t listened to Hough’s full-length Audio Commentary, but the half-hour documentary was nonetheless a pretty solid affair which covered most of the bases; highlights included Fonda’s declaration that he idolized former sci-fi/B-movie hero Tobey (despite sharing no scenes with him in the actual film!), as well as the star’s surprised admission that DIRTY MARY CRAZY LARRY out-grossed even his signature effort EASY RIDER (1969), not to mention the expected (albeit brief) but well-deserved tribute to Morrow – of the three titles I’ve watched with him over the past week or so, his contribution in this one was clearly the most substantial and satisfactory (definitely proving him worthier of greater attention than merely for his acclaimed debut performance as the disaffected punk in BLACKBOARD JUNGLE [1955] and his ill-fated swan song). Finally, having enjoyed this so much, I was reminded that I’ve probably got scores of other films from the iconoclastic and eclectic 1970s in my collection which I’ve yet to go through…