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Lee Marvin starred in some pretty mean flicks, but Prime Cut (1972) may be the meanest of 'em all.
Marvin stars as Nick Devlin, a semi-retired button man for the Chicago Mob. He's called back into duty because the Kansas City operation has been defiantly holding out to the tune of $500,000. Bag men have been sent to collect, but they keep turning up dead, the latest one sent back to Chicago as sausage links. The megalomaniacal psycho in charge of Kansas City is "Mary Ann", played with glee by Gene Hackman. His right-hand man is his filthy and large dim-witted brother "Weenie", played by Gregory Walcott (Plan 9 From Outer Space, Joe Kidd). Nick knows them all too well, so he heads down to the heartland with a small crew. When they arrive they find Mary Ann's operation is run on a farm, including a literal stable of prostitutes who are kept drugged-up, naked, in pens and auctioned off. You know things are gonna end bloody, and boy do they ever.
This is the prototypical Lee Marvin role, the dry and restrained yet efficiently brutal tough guy who doesn't say much, but when he does you'd best listen. Walcott makes a convincing sick-o redneck, and Hackman seems to find genuine joy in portraying the sleazy bad guy (Prime Cut was released just after he won the Best Actor Oscar for The French Connection). A nekkid Sissy Spacek bares all of her freckles and makes her big-screen debut as one of the young girls Nick decides to save from the ranch.
The whole movie is very sleazy and incredibly politically INcorrect. You'd never see this movie made today, not by a major Studio with any kind of budget or reconizeable stars anyway. But Prime Cut's strength is that it is unabashedly sleazy, which is refreshing. Michael Ritchie (Fletch, The Bad News Bears) tells the story quickly and plainly, not sparing us from a completely unpleasant tone and attitude. This is true Pulp cinema.
There are a couple great action setpieces, including a chase from a thrasher in a wheat field, calling to mind Cary Grant's encounter with the cropduster in North by Northwest (ever seen a thrasher eat a stretch Town Car?), and the final assault on the farm, where machine-gun Marvin and his men shoot it out with the overall-clad hicks in a huge field of six-foot-tall giant sunflowers, all while an ominous thunderstorm approaches. Really great stuff.
While not quite as good and definitely not as inventive narratively as John Boorman's similarly tough Point Blank (1967), this is Lee fu*kin' Marvin at his hard-boiled best. A warning: if you're not a Vegetarian already, this movie may put you off meat for a while and have you enjoying leafy greens and Tofu.
Grade: B+
Marvin stars as Nick Devlin, a semi-retired button man for the Chicago Mob. He's called back into duty because the Kansas City operation has been defiantly holding out to the tune of $500,000. Bag men have been sent to collect, but they keep turning up dead, the latest one sent back to Chicago as sausage links. The megalomaniacal psycho in charge of Kansas City is "Mary Ann", played with glee by Gene Hackman. His right-hand man is his filthy and large dim-witted brother "Weenie", played by Gregory Walcott (Plan 9 From Outer Space, Joe Kidd). Nick knows them all too well, so he heads down to the heartland with a small crew. When they arrive they find Mary Ann's operation is run on a farm, including a literal stable of prostitutes who are kept drugged-up, naked, in pens and auctioned off. You know things are gonna end bloody, and boy do they ever.
This is the prototypical Lee Marvin role, the dry and restrained yet efficiently brutal tough guy who doesn't say much, but when he does you'd best listen. Walcott makes a convincing sick-o redneck, and Hackman seems to find genuine joy in portraying the sleazy bad guy (Prime Cut was released just after he won the Best Actor Oscar for The French Connection). A nekkid Sissy Spacek bares all of her freckles and makes her big-screen debut as one of the young girls Nick decides to save from the ranch.
The whole movie is very sleazy and incredibly politically INcorrect. You'd never see this movie made today, not by a major Studio with any kind of budget or reconizeable stars anyway. But Prime Cut's strength is that it is unabashedly sleazy, which is refreshing. Michael Ritchie (Fletch, The Bad News Bears) tells the story quickly and plainly, not sparing us from a completely unpleasant tone and attitude. This is true Pulp cinema.
There are a couple great action setpieces, including a chase from a thrasher in a wheat field, calling to mind Cary Grant's encounter with the cropduster in North by Northwest (ever seen a thrasher eat a stretch Town Car?), and the final assault on the farm, where machine-gun Marvin and his men shoot it out with the overall-clad hicks in a huge field of six-foot-tall giant sunflowers, all while an ominous thunderstorm approaches. Really great stuff.
While not quite as good and definitely not as inventive narratively as John Boorman's similarly tough Point Blank (1967), this is Lee fu*kin' Marvin at his hard-boiled best. A warning: if you're not a Vegetarian already, this movie may put you off meat for a while and have you enjoying leafy greens and Tofu.
Grade: B+
__________________
"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra
"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra
Last edited by Holden Pike; 01-20-02 at 08:32 PM.