Texas Lightning (1981)

Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Excellent but underrated film

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

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!!!

Sweet, soft and sensitive young Buddy Owen Stover (likable Channing Mitchell) goes on a hunting trip with his hearty, macho, overbearing father Karl (Cameron Mitchell at his most wild'n'woolly), jolly good ol' boy Frank Whitman (the always excellent Peter Jason), and tubby slob Leonard Simpson (portly wonder J.L. Clark). The rough'n'tumble dudes want to make a man out of Buddy. Buddy meets and falls for perky cocktail waitress Fay (a winningly sassy performance by the adorable Maureen McCormick; Marcia on "The Brady Bunch"). Things get nasty when both Frank and Leonard rape poor Fay. Writer/director Gary Graver really goes heavy on the amusingly no-brainer hayseed tomfoolery: we've got plenty of booze swilling, a tasty wet t-shirt contest, a lively s**t-kickin' country theme song, the inevitable barroom brawl, and one very ugly rape scene. Tommy Vig's jaunty score and the polished cinematography by Graver and Bruce M. Pasternack are both up to par. Nice supporting turns by Charles Dierkop as friendly gas station attendant Walt, Hope Holiday as Karl's naggy wife Ms. Stover, and Damone Camden as brassy tart Donna. This film starts out as a raucous comic romp, but halfway through takes a sudden and surprising turn and becomes a dark, probing and frankly disturbing depiction of the worst aspects of masculinity. It's the movie's very strangeness which makes it oddly effective and hence memorable.

Maureen McCormick from "The Brady Bunch" is actually a pretty good actress (I recall seeing her on TV's "The Streets Of San Francisco" in '74 or '75 convincingly playing a prostitute), and I 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. Maureen 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; peppy McCormick 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). I think Maureen took this acting job because it's 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.

This movie is baaaaaaaaaaaaad. It is also inadvertently hilarious at times. I mean, Marcia from the Brady Bunch has a part in it, so how good can it be? The video box for this flick says this film is the "warm, funny story of a boy growing up." Actually, it's the story of a wuss with an overbearing dad who wants "to make a man" out of his loser son. The son meets Marcia from the Brady Bunch at a bar when he's out on a hunting trip with his dad and his dad's two friends. Marcia and the son go to a hotel for some lovin' and then the dad's friends bust in, throw the son out and force themselves on Marcia. The next day the son begins to go psycho. He gets so angry at one of his dad's friends the director does a hysterical slow motion shot of the son throwing a plate of food in the face of one of his dad's friends. I guess the director thought it would be a more impressive shot that way. You get the idea...rent this if you like really bad, bad, BAD movies. Later gator.