Macon County Line (1974)

★ 5.8 1h 29m IMDb

Action Drama

A vengeful Southern sheriff is out for blood after his wife is brutally killed by a pair of drifters. Low-budget film set in Georgia in 1953 and at the time of release, purported to be based on a true story.

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Cast

Alan Vint as Chris Dixon Died 2006 · Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Alan Richard Vint (November 11, 1944 - August 16, 2006) was an American character actor. Vint was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He appeared in a number of suppor...

Cheryl Waters as Jenny Scott

Geoffrey Lewis as Hamp Died 2015 · Plainfield, New Jersey, USA Geoffrey Bond Lewis (July 31, 1935 – April 7, 2015) was an American character actor. His filmography includes television shows such as Law & Order: Criminal Intent and My Name is Earl, as well as fil...

Max Baer Jr. as Deptuty Reed Morgan Age 88 · Oakland, California, USA From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Maximilian Adalbert "Max" Baer Jr. (born December 4, 1937) is an American actor, screenwriter, producer, and director. He is best known for playing Jethro Bodine...

Joan Blackman as Carol Morgan Age 87 · San Francisco, California, USA Joan May Blackman (born May 17, 1938) is an American actress. Description above from the Wikipedia article Joan Blackman, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia..

Jesse Vint as Wayne Dixon Age 85 · Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA

Director Richard Compton

Cast Alan Vint, Cheryl Waters, Geoffrey Lewis, Max Baer Jr., Joan Blackman, Jesse Vint, Sam Gilman, Timothy Scott, James Gammon, Leif Garrett

Wuchak 6/10 May 17, 2021

_**Redneck drama/thriller from 1974**_

"Macon County Line" belongs to the redneck car/thriller genre, which overlaps with Southern Gothic (e.g. "The Fugitive Kind") and redneck car/comedies (e.g. "Smokey and the Bandit"). Many of these films take place in the South, but not always; there are tons of rednecks all over, even in the most "progressive" states, like California and Washington.

The plot revolves around two brothers in 1954 traveling through North Carolina. After picking up a lone female, their car breaks down in Macon County where they encounter a bigoted Sheriff. A crime takes place and the sheriff blames the trio.

The film only runs 89 minutes and the first hour is all small town tedium, which is part of the movie's low-budget charm, but the third act livens things up.

The screenplay was written by Max Baer Jr., best known as Jethro on the Beverly Hillbillies TV series; he also plays the redneck Sheriff in the story. Max, incidentally, directed another redneck classic, 1976's "Ode to Billy Joe".

The film has a good back country vibe and effectively shows how bigotry and racism are learned traits and not innate. It also shows how easy it is to blame the wrong person due to coincidence. Beyond this, the film has little depth. It's a light drama about mundane events in a small Southern town that turn to tragedy.

The movie purports to be based on a true story and offers details to this effect, but this was merely fabricated in order to hype the picture. It worked, as "Macon County Line" became a drive-in hit in the mid-70s.

My main beef with the film, other than its mundaneness, is that the story takes place in Macon County, North Carolina, but the picture was shot in the Big Valley of California (around Sacramento). It goes without saying, if you're going to film a Southern Gothic thriller that takes place in the South, shoot it in the REAL South, not friggin' California. That said, the filmmakers do a decent job of making it SEEM like the South, dry as California is.

GRADE: C+ or B-