Whiskey and moonshine are on tap tonight! Yeehaw! This is one hellacious double feature perfect for a chilly November night at a drive in. Whiskey Mountain not only features music by Charlie Daniels, but check out this plot summary: four motorcyclists arrive at Whiskey Mountain for a treasure hunt are terrorized in the woods by by a gang of murderous hillbilly drug dealers. It's directed by William Grefe' who is a b-movie/exploitation legend.
Moonshine County Express features "high powered cars and 100 proof women" so what more would you want? When a hillbilly moonshiner is murdered his three daughters take over the business and swear vengeance. It features John Saxon, Susan Howard, Claudia Jennings, William Conrad, and best of all Maureen McCormick with some very unBradylike behavior. I'd say both of these flicks deserve episodes of Redneck Matinee so get on that Jackie and Dunlap.
The Martin Twin has a comedy and and a movie about driving trucks full of nitroglycerin through the jungle. The Kentucky Fried Movie had to have been an unexpected hit in 1977. The estimated budget was $600,000 and it grossed $15,000,000 domestically according to the-numbers.com. That's pretty awesome for what was just random comedy sketches. It's funny in places (A Fistful of Yen especially), but even at just 83 minutes in length I find it to a chore to watch without pausing. It was in its 3rd big week of playing.
William Friedkin's (wow, there's the word "fried" in his name too, even if it's not pronounced the same) Sorcerer was also playing at the Martin Twin. Even at the age of 10 I knew he was the guy who had directed The Exorcist. I may have been too young to have seen that film, but it was all over the news when it came out and all of us kids who read Mad magazine felt like we knew what the movies was all about thanks to their parody of it.
The main thing is that what little I did know of Friedkin was that he was a horror movie director. The French Connection (which is a great film) had come out much too long ago to register in my head. So when I was a kid I thought Sorcerer was a horror movie due to the director and the movie poster's look. It does look scary.
It would be years later before I would learn it was a remake of The Wages of Fear and figure out it was a suspense film. The movie was a flop at the box office even though it earned $5.9 million it had cost up to $22 million to make. The critics weren't too keen on it originally, but appreciation for Sorcerer has risen over the years. The Tangerine Dream score is epic. The actors are great in it. I wish I had been able to see it on the big screen, but the Blu-ray will have to do.
The Cinema One is showing Fire Sale. It is the second and last feature film to be directed by Alan Arkin who also stars in it. I have never seen it and the movie trailer doesn't really inspire me much. Sid Caesar and Alan Arkin are probably good in it, but Rob Reiner is a total turn off for me. Reiner is an excellent director and he's tolerable in This Is Spinal Tap, but otherwise I'll skip the acting portion of his filmography.
Fire Sale would only play a week at Cinema One. The only film from November 15, 1977 that would be back was The Kentucky Fried Movie which would play for a 4th and final week at the Martin Twin. It may have come back at some point as my childhood memories are of seeing that on the big sign at Jackson Heights Plaza for months.
I'll be back next week to see what was playing on some random year on November 22. I'm going to switch it up a bit in December and feature some Christmas shopping directed film flashbacks. Until then, the balcony is closed......wait a second, there is no balcony in any of the theatres we just covered.
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