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Fighting Mad
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| Year: |
1976
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Director: |
Jonathan Demme
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| Stars: |
Peter Fonda, Gino Franco, Harry Northup, Philip Carey, Noble Willingham, John Doucette, Scott Glenn, Lynn Lowry, Kathleen Miller, Ted Markland, Peter Fain, Al Wyatt Sr
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| Genre: |
Drama, Action, Thriller |
| Rating: |
  6 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
Tom Hunter (Peter Fonda) is returning to Arkansas with his young son (Gino Franco) after his marriage failed, planning to stay with his father Jeff (John Doucette) who runs his own horse ranch in the middle of the countryside. Along the journey, he is distracted by an obnoxious driver who nearly forces him off the road then collides deliberately with a truck outside a diner, obviously looking for an argument. This thug gets one with Tom, who is about to kick the ass of both the driver and his passenger when the cops appear and break up the altercation. Tom is a man who wants to take a stand against injustice, but this occurence is a mere scuffle compared to the issues he's about to become involved with...
Peter Fonda never went on to command the respect his father Henry Fonda did as far as being a movie star went, and a lot of that was down to his choices in the nineteen-seventies in the wake of his hit Easy Rider where he had summed up all that was cool about the counterculture, thereby cultivating a modern rebel image that held him in good stead for a whole run of action movies. He had made moves to respectability with his own, self-directed movie The Hired Hand, but for many that was about as good as it got for him cult movie-wise until Steven Soderbergh came a-calling, with too much of the work in the meantime mindless thrillers such as Fighting Mad, a Roger Corman production very much in the style of that producer's output.
But wait a second, perhaps Fonda was not worth dismissing as far as his detractors would have you believe, sure he never had the career his father had, or even his sister did - though she had her detractors for other reasons - but there were a number of interesting efforts in his filmography suggesting his cult following may not have been because of his blistering performances but nevertheless had entertaining and even thought-provoking elements that saw Fonda choosing projects with more attractions than some of his contemporaries. In the case of Fighting Mad, that attraction lay with its director, Jonathan Demme, whose long rise to somewhere near the top of his profession began with the Corman works of which this was maybe not the best.
That said, it did have a brain in its head which was more than you could claim of some so-called hicksploitation flicks, though that was more because it was indebted to the Westerns of yore, maybe quite recent yore in some cases, with Tom Hunter and his family essentially playing the American Indians to the evil developers playing land-grabbing cowboys. Hunter's weapon of choice, highlighted in the advertising, was even a bow and arrow, just underline the theme of native injustice though it may have been given more of a kick if Corman had cast actual American Indians to essay the roles of the Hunters and their threatened neighbours. As it was, it was the United States working classes who were taking a stand against a corrupt and capitalist society.
The head honcho was Crabtree (Philip Carey), who behaves like Donald Trump bulldozing locals out of the way to build a golf course for his wealthy buddies with the full support of the politicians and the law. Trump never needed to resort to the lengths Crabtree does here, however, as the industrialist finds the easiest method of getting the farmers off the land he has big plans for is murder, with Scott Glenn as Hunter's brother bumped off with his pregnant wife within minutes of their introduction to the story, and prompting our hero to get, well, fighting mad. In its way this was your basic vigilante, loner pushed too far so falls back on violence affair this decade could not get enough of, and if you wanted to watch on that level it was perfectly fine. Yet the righteous anger against big business bully boys lent it a dimension more political than you might expect, as let's not forget this era was an age of labour disputes hitting the headlines day after day, so while you could acknowledge exploitation favourite Lynn Lowry hoving into view, there was more to this. Music by Bruce Langhorne.
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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| Jonathan Demme (1944 - 2017)
American director with a exploitation beginnings who carved out a successful Hollywood career as a caring exponent of a variety of characters. Worked in the early 70s as a writer on films like Black Mama, White Mama before directing his first picture for producer Roger Corman, the women-in-prison gem Caged Heat. Demme's mainstream debut was the 1977 CB drama Handle With Care (aka Citizens Band), which were followed by such great films as the thriller Last Embrace, tenderhearted biopic Melvin and Howard, wartime drama Swing Shift, classic Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense, and black comedies Something Wild and Married to the Mob.
Demme's Thomas Harris adaptation The Silence of the Lambs was one of 1991's most successful films, making Hannibal Lecter a household name, while the worthy AIDS drama Philadelphia was equally popular. Since then, Demme has floundered somewhat - Beloved and The Truth About Charlie were critical and commercial failures, although 2004's remake of The Manchurian Candidate was a box office hit. Rachel Getting Married also has its fans, though Meryl Streep vehicle Ricki and the Flash was not a great one to go out on. He was also an advocate of the documentary form, especially music: his final release was a Justin Timberlake concert. |
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