Thunder and Lightning (1977) – DVD

**/**** Image B+ Sound B+
starring David Carradine, Kate Jackson, Eddie Barth, Roger C. Carmel
screenplay by William Hjortsberg
directed by Corey Allen

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover A long time ago…I saw Thunder and Lightning with my family on a drive-in double-bill with Star Wars. I remember the experience of the former being not only uncomfortable for my 6-year-old self, but in fact the polar opposite of the elaborate fantasy I was there to see (again). Yet aside from a couple of scenes that stuck, I later drew a complete blank on what it was all about. In one of those grail quests exclusive to sedentary movie nerds, the idea that I had to find out never stopped bothering me, though I now know there was a reason for my initial discomfort: it turns out that Thunder and Lightning takes entirely serviceable moonshine B-movie tropes and does as little as possible with them.

Nobody comes to this movie looking for genius, but we do hope that somebody within the production is taking things seriously. In the case of Thunder and Lightning, this means ensuring that Florida moonshine runner Harley Thomas (David Carradine) suggests something close to heroic as opposed to something hanging around the set. But while his hatred for mob-connected rival Ralph Junior Hunnicutt (Roger C. Carmel) is duly noted, it's never strong enough that Harley's defiance of him seems like a vital issue. And although a nice wrinkle has Harley dating Hunnicutt's deluded daughter Nancy Sue (Kate Jackson), there's no sense that the sweaty stakes are high. Meanwhile, the cast of good ol' boys–including the thugs headed by Russ Meyer (and later Jonathan Demme) regular Charles Napier–are so innocuous that it doesn't really matter who wins what.

The problem isn't William Hjortsberg's script, which merely serves as the springboard for the chase and fight scenes that are the genre's bread and butter. The real blame belongs to director Corey Allen. Asked to set up the mayhem with a bit of punch, he fails to rise to the occasion, taking what should be a jolt and turning it into a trickle. He handles fight scenes as if he were at a barroom brawl on a Sunday night, standing outside the action and never cutting in; the car crashes are similarly unspectacular, never lingered on and over much too quickly. As Allen's number-one priority appears to be staying on schedule, all he succeeds in doing is sucking the pleasure out of the cheesy thrills so that an already threadbare product fails to live up to its low aspirations.

I'm not bucking for India Song, I'm just looking for some investment in the material. A critic friend of mine remarked that because popular bad directors like James Cameron and M. Night Shyamalan fervently believe in their lousy ideas, they stick. Well, there are plenty of bad ideas in Thunder and Lightning, but there's no investment on the part of Allen and company. By the time Harley and Nancy Sue hit the road to stop Hunnicutt's stash of poisoned rotgut (triggering the final act's chase orgy), you don't feel much of anything–not put-out, exactly, but unmoved and unexcited. It's as though Roger Corman's decree to make a hayseed picture was greeted with grumbling and resentment instead of a call to auterial colouring outside the lines.

THE DVD
Fox releases the picture on DVD in a flipper containing fullscreen/1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen presentations. The transfer has its issues, including muddy, green-tinged blacks and saturation fluctuations, though daylight scenes fare better than the nighttime ones do. The Dolby 2.0 stereo audio is a mite tinny and lacking in potency, but not to terribly deleterious effect. Side one features "Fox Flix" trailers for The Chase, Silver Streak, and Big Trouble in Little China, while Thunder and Lightning's theatrical and teaser trailers round out the widescreen flipside.

95 minutes; PG; 1.85:1 (16×9-enhanced), 1.33:1; English DD 2.0 (Stereo), English DD 2.0 (Mono), French DD 2.0 (Mono), Spanish DD 2.0 (Mono); CC; English, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Fox