If ever there was a gory and exploitative serving of boilerplate watchability, it's 1973's Walking Tall. I won't get caught in the thicket of details of McNairy Tennesse Sheriff Buford Pusser's story--real or Hollywood--but I will tell you that Walking Tall is greater than the sum of the cliched parts.
Four things make this movie work. The first and foremost is the sheer intensity and physicality of Joe Don Baker's performance. It take almost no time to suspend disbelief because Baker is an unknown in this movie--had you ever heard of him before? He just radiates a sweaty righteousness that's infectious.
The second is the shock value of the violence, sometimes bordering on nauseating. The bashing, bludgeoning chaos is believable because of the slithering reptiles who run the criminal enterprises in the county. They're just so awful, but they aren't cartoons. You accept people like this as the sort of gangsters who would carve up a guy on a pool table to teach him a lesson or strap down a hooker to a bed to beat a confession out of her.
When Pusser saves her, you're looking at her shredded back and not her bare bottom. That is actually pretty darned effective movie-making.
Next, I thought it was brilliant to use so many familiar TV and film actors in character parts. They probably didn't get many dollars out of a movie that cost 500k to make. I've seen almost every actor and actress in a bunch of things, and the murderous madam, Callie, is the actress who played Miss Maudie in To Kill a Mockingbird. That was a shock.
They seem like old friends having a field day, but the good guys (Noah Beery, Jr. and Lurene Tuttle among others) seem a bit cardboard because they're there to support Baker's powerhouse performance. The baddies ooze a level of menace and hatred that makes their violence seem real. You just want them dead, don't you?
Finally, number four of the winning elements is the location-filming in Tennessee. It looks like a lovely place after the blood soaks into the ground.
Even though Walking Tall is a pulpy one-man-against-crime drive-in flick, it is compelling, well-made, and earnest. That's what makes mayhem acceptable.
Four things make this movie work. The first and foremost is the sheer intensity and physicality of Joe Don Baker's performance. It take almost no time to suspend disbelief because Baker is an unknown in this movie--had you ever heard of him before? He just radiates a sweaty righteousness that's infectious.
The second is the shock value of the violence, sometimes bordering on nauseating. The bashing, bludgeoning chaos is believable because of the slithering reptiles who run the criminal enterprises in the county. They're just so awful, but they aren't cartoons. You accept people like this as the sort of gangsters who would carve up a guy on a pool table to teach him a lesson or strap down a hooker to a bed to beat a confession out of her.
When Pusser saves her, you're looking at her shredded back and not her bare bottom. That is actually pretty darned effective movie-making.
Next, I thought it was brilliant to use so many familiar TV and film actors in character parts. They probably didn't get many dollars out of a movie that cost 500k to make. I've seen almost every actor and actress in a bunch of things, and the murderous madam, Callie, is the actress who played Miss Maudie in To Kill a Mockingbird. That was a shock.
They seem like old friends having a field day, but the good guys (Noah Beery, Jr. and Lurene Tuttle among others) seem a bit cardboard because they're there to support Baker's powerhouse performance. The baddies ooze a level of menace and hatred that makes their violence seem real. You just want them dead, don't you?
Finally, number four of the winning elements is the location-filming in Tennessee. It looks like a lovely place after the blood soaks into the ground.
Even though Walking Tall is a pulpy one-man-against-crime drive-in flick, it is compelling, well-made, and earnest. That's what makes mayhem acceptable.