Rating: C+
Dir: Robert Carl Cohen, James Landis
Star: Jack Lester, Beverly Lunsford, Jim Reader, Virginia Wood
This is the recrafted version of a country melodrama written and directed by Landis, in its original two-hour version called Tender Grass. Deemed commercially unviable by the people who financed it, they hired Cohen to turn it into something with better potential for a return on their investment. He whacked it down to eighty-two minutes, but also added additional footage including an entirely new character, the “town floozie” Lulu Belle (Wood). It also went through two title changes, first becoming Albert Peckingpaw’s Revenge (that, tinted version is on YouTube) , eventually getting released three years after being filmed, under the even more salacious title above. And inaccurate too, everyone here being easily old enough to vote.
Jennie (Lunsford) is trapped in a loveless marriage to farmer Albert Peckingpaw (Lester), who is old enough to be her father, and refuses to entertain Jennie’s idea of fun. Quite how this relationship happened is unclear, but Jennie is his second wife, after the late, lamended Sarah: “God rest her soul, she did less wantin’ in 20 years than you have in four months.” His young wife’s feelings are no less intense, telling muscular but extremely dumb farmhand Mario (Reader), “He’s buyin’ a $4,000 new tractor, and he won’t even buy me an $8 dress. Let him take his tractor to bed with him!” She consequently hatches a plan to find out where Albert keeps his savings, and abscond with them. Her husband’s weak heart might or might not be involved.
In general plot, it feels like it was influenced by Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! albeit without a fraction of the tightly-wound intensity. Despite Cohen’s best efforts, it’s slightly too earnest, but a couple of factors definitely work in its favour. The first is a sprightly soundtrack, such as Birthday Suit, a chipper little tune which plays while Jennie goes (relatively chastely) skinny dipping in the farm’s water-hole, or courtesy of the beat combo playing in the bar where Mario is on a date with Lulu. These are catchy little numbers. The second positive is fine cinematography by Vilmos Zsigmond, who’d win an Oscar a decade later for shooting Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The crisp, black and white images fairly pop off the screen.
You get a brief spell of tension in the middle, where it’s unclear whether or now Albert knows about Jennie’s plans. Then things look as though it’s all going to end in a “crime doesn’t pay” way. However, it all ends in a surprisingly mature manner: and for once, I’m not using the M-word as code for gratuitous sex. Calmer heads largely prevail, and the ending is unexpectedly happy. If you’re watching this on the basis of the lurid title and poster, you might be disappointed. On the other hand, I fell into that group, and while this was undeniably different from my expectations, it was a considerable improvement, in most departments, over what I thought I’d get.