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Last week's Movie Quiz winners

Last week's quiz movie was the immortal Walking Tall (1973), starring Joe Don Baker is his most famous role as Tennessee sheriff Buford Pusser, the lawman who cleaned up the vice in his little town with the help of a big stick. Of course, the standing ovations mentioned in the above poster were for things like vigilante justice and poice brutality. To be fair, however, the bad guys in this romanticized but brutal biopic were some of the meanest men in character acting at the time (including the great Kenneth Tobey in picture clue #3), and it was directed by the talented Phil Karlson, a longtime pro whose speciality was hard-nosed crime and action fare. So civil liberty issues aside, audiences had a reason to cheer: it was a fun movie with bad guys who had it coming.

It's a jolt to see Bing Crosby listed as executive producer of a movie this scuzzy and bloody, but it was originally intended to be an ABC Movie of the Week, the pioneering series of original TV movies from the '70s. But like Don Siegel's The Killers (the very first made-for-TV movie), it was too violent for its medium, so it became an uncut theatrical release. And while the movie today might not even rate its original R-- the language isn't much and the violence is shocking but not graphic-- at the time it was right at the top of movies revelling in the first wave of Hollywood's newfound ultra-violence. But almost as shocking back then was the halfway honest portrayal of the scurvy Tennessee vice dens and the lowlifes in them. That may have been, in part, because the real Buford Pusser was technical advisor.

(Pusser went out on a promo tour for the movie and actually showed up at the progressive rock station I worked for in 1973. I wasn't there, but a friend was and said, "He was huge-- when he came into our tiny little studio, it was like he filled the room.")

So congratulations and a pair of loaded dice from the Lucky Spot to the following quiz winners: Wayne Palmer, Thomas Miller, Bill Hearne, E. Yarber, Michael Mattson, Stacy Sarette, Michael Kelly, and Bob Redwing. And Pusser-sized congrats to Patrick Orr who wins this week's grand prize, to be announced!

Posted by Steve Monaco at September 10, 2007 12:22 AM

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