I saw Walking Tall in a theater about a year after it was first released, in Boston, no less, and while I wouldn't say the theater was packed, it wasn't empty, either. That's pretty impressive for a movie geared to a primarily rural audience. No one stood up and cheered, though. It was one bloody MF of a movie. The hits, literally, kept on coming. What annoyed me was its cheap look, sub-movie of the week, sub-Russ Meyer and Roger Corman. It was at times hard to just look at, leaving the violence aside, because of its grainy color photography. Had it been made five or more years earlier it could have been done in black and white and would probably hold up better as the Thunder Road (or maybe anti-Thunder Road) of its era. Man, what a homely supporting cast. Elizabeth Hartman never looked worse. Her complexion was a mess. I swear she looked like she had smallpox the whole time. It was fun to see supporting guys Ken Tobey, Noah Beery, Jr. and Gene Evans, all looking pretty rugged, but then they always looked rugged.
Joe Don was unlucky in rising at around the same time as another south of the Mason-Dixon line good 'ol boy, Burt Reynolds. There probably was not at the time a big enough audience for drive-in oriented action flicks geared to rural and small town folk to allow both these guys to rise to superstardom or even just stardom, period. Burt made it, made it very big. Joe Don was, like Lawrence (Dillinger) Tierney before him, a flash in the pan. Joe Don was probably the better actor of the two, Reynolds the more handsome and by far the more charming. Yet Joe Don might have played his hand better. That the studio system was in extremis at the time robbed him of the chance of signing on with a studio that would tailor vehicles for him. The guy had to fend for himself. I think of Robert Mitchum, as (literally) opposed to guys like Holden, Lancaster, Ford, the Rock and all the rest of the clean cut guys of the postwar era, with Mitch the alternative to them. Joe Don, with a studio behind him, a first rate director helping him along, might have emerged as the anti-Burt, or better still, the real good 'ol boy, but it didn't happen.
One more thing about Joe Don Baker: I do think he had something, that he could have risen to genuine stardom if not to the top of the heap. Something that worked against him: he didn't know how to use what he had. At times he was spot on, at other times clueless. There was at least potential charisma in the guy, but he needed to find it within himself, use it, not rely on serendipity, the right line, camera angle. He never learned to master the screen.
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ecarle
15 years ago
The visual ugliness of "Walking Tall" consigns it to a heap of 70's movies in which, lacking the care and facilities of studio filmmaking, some moviemakers just went cheap and documentary-style, with a resultant "warts and all" effect that is quite off-putting today. In the 21st century, even the worst movies look good.
"Walking Tall" was by B-specialist Phil Karlson, who had done a similarly brutal "small town expose" with the cult favorite "The Phenix City Story"(not Phoenix Arizona, but Phenix City, Alabama) in the 50's. But came 1973, Karlson had an "R" rating and "Walking Tall" was essentially about a good sheriff and bad gangsters constantly avenging themselves against each other in an escalating bloodbath. It was a very disturbing film, with Buford Pusser(based on a REAL Buford Pusser) killing all the bad guys at cost of his wife, his dog, and just about every bone in his body(his final gory revenge takes place when he is in a full body cast and facial bandages -- he looks like a mummy.)
The true perversity of "Walking Tall" was how its low-rent studio converted a gory noir action picture into some sort of "All-American Film." A new campaign urging audiences to "stand up and cheer" at "Walking Tall" was like inviting Cub Scouts to a Satanic sacrifice.
I count "Walking Tall" among what I call "ARRRRGGGGH!" movies. Which is to say, revenge movies. "Dirty Harry," "Death Wish" the little-seen "Dark of the Sun"(with Rod Taylor) and maybe the "Kill Bill" movies are part of this trend, in which the bad guys are so evil that the hero moves to beat, torture and kill them all in a righteous rampage of revenge that feels like the hero is screaming "ARRRRGGGH!" as he(or she, in "Kill Bill") with every vengeful murder.
Interestingly, Joe Don Baker wasn't in the "Walking Tall" sequels. I don't know if he didnt' want to, or wasn't asked. A nice, clean, perfect-looking remake was made a few years back with ex-wrestler Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson in the title role. It was rated PG-13. I expect the gore was low-balled, and no wives or dogs got killed. The 70's was its own raw freakshow of a decade at the movies below studio level, let's face it. And sometimes AT studio level(Dirty Harry, Straw Dogs, Frenzy, Deliverance, The Exorcist, Chinatown. Them's some disturbing movies.)
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Telegonus, you have shaken loose the memory that in the 70's, I knew a guy who knew Joe Don Baker. He was always promising to take me to meet Joe Don, but it didn't happen. Quoteable quote from my friend: "Joe Don would rather raise his chickens in the Valley than make movies." Maybe that's the key. I never met him.
Honorable mention: in Sam Peckinpah's fine and gentle "Junior Bonner" of 1972, Steve McQueen was surrounded by a perfect cast as his family: Robert Preston as his father; Ida Lupino as his mother, and Joe Don Baker as his older brother, far more successful in development than broke rodeo rider McQueen and ready to trade brotherly punches along with brotherly love. Its a great little movie, and I believed easily that Preston could sire and Lupino could birth McQueen and Joe Don as sons.
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