Thunder and Lightning (1977)

Waste of Money.

Perfect cast and a good story

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

The only point that seems worth adding here is that the writer William Hjortsberg later wrote the screenplay for Angel Heart filmed by Alan Parker in 1978 with Robert De Niro and Mickey Rourke, based on Hjortsberg's novel Falling Angel.Aside from this and the aforementioned air boat race and gator-wrestling church it was pretty much business as usual for David Carradine and Kate Jackson at the time. I enjoyed it when it first came out, when there seemed to be car chase movies every week at the local flea pit (recently I was surprised to see just how few Carradine actually appeared in!)

One of the cable channels ran this the other day and I sat and watched it. For a B-movie, it's pretty good, although the plot kind of meanders around before working itself out. The dialog is stereotypical and goofy in places, too. But it's mostly an excuse for a batch of stunts, first with the boats in the swamp, then mostly featuring Harley's black '57 Chevy 4-door hardtop. The stunts sometimes stretch the limits of credibility - jumping from a parking garage to crash through the roof of a car dealer across the street, landing on the showroom floor and driving through the plate glass window, without a flat tire, without a cracked window, without a scratch - while not even wearing seat belts. Also, the same '57 Chevy that outruns a '69 or so Corvette, can't get away from a '59 Ford with a six-cylinder engine (could hear it in a couple places) earlier in the movie. From the looks of things they had some trouble with a few shots, I doubt they intended to smack the side of the Volkswagen Rabbit in the one scene (which must have been just about a brand new car at the time). Another scene cuts away from the car sliding trying to make a tight turn where the car catches the edge of the road and rolls over, I'm still not sure if I'm supposed to think he made the turn like normal (and they used the footage they had to avoid re-shooting and wrecking another car), or if I'm supposed to think he rolled the car and landed on the wheels and kept going.About the only thing missing was for Kirk and Spock to show up after Hunnicutt (Carmel) - Moonshine on the side of a legit soda bottling business is entirely within character for Harcourt Fenton Mudd. "Three to beam up, Scotty, there's no intelligent life down here!" In any case, for the guy who likes these types of movies, it's worth watching, it's not exactly art, but it was never intended to be. And it's worth reading through Carmel's IMDb bio page for another ironic twist to this film.

Fatuous, witless, disappointing Southern moonshine adventure, with Kate Jackson as the daughter of a soda pop king and manufacturer of poisoned whiskey; she and thrill-seeking boyfriend David Carradine attempt to stop of shipment of the bad booze but run afoul of both the law and the moonshiner's shotgun-toting stooges. The redneck histrionics are shrill and labored, and the comedy relief is rather obvious (one of the better scenes has two hired killers bemoaning all the violence on TV, though it doesn't have the punch that better writing and directing might have given it). There are car crashes galore, two geezer brothers making whiskey in a swamp-land shack, an alligator wrasslin' preacher, and an ear-splitting soundtrack filled with hick music and squealing tires. Jackson and Carradine aren't bad, but they have next to nothing to work with; supporting cast includes some fine character actors, including a bearded, shaggy-haired Charles Napier, but they get stuck playing unfunny goons. Some of the best lines are delivered by the bit players, such as a garbage collector who points when he talks and a foreign delivery man who sings to himself on the job. *1/2 from ****

Thunder and Lightning is an interesting movie, it's an action movie with a plot! The characters actually have reasons to do what they do. David Carradine stars as a bootlegger and Kate Jackson is his fiancee. Her father is a soft-drink manufacturer who is secretly making and distributing large quantities of moonshine. The conflict starts when her father's goons decide to close down Carradine's operation. It is pretty much an adventure comedy from then on, with lots of car chases, fights, banjo music, rednecks, hillbillies and moonshine. Watch for the gator-wrestling church!