Sunday, July 31, 2022

Poseidon Quickies: "Truckin' " Along

Somehow, maybe even against my will, I've been caught up in several drive-in level 1970s flicks, most of them about mountain distilleries! (Like Moonshine County Express and Whiskey Mountain, both 1977.) Along similar lines, I stumbled into the quite atrocious Truckin' Man (1975), which, after six months, was re-titled Trucker's Woman in order to draw in a broader audience. A homegrown production, filmed in Florence, South Carolina and written by a resident there who generated several movies of this ilk, I was surprised to find a few notables sprinkled in the cast. (Many of the players were local residents, making their "acting" debuts.) As this is a "Quickie," I'm only touching on a few points. Even those may not interest you! LOL You may be thankful I didn't delve further into the movie...

Almost all of Truckin' Man is lit with the subtle ambiance of an all-night supermarket. The story concerns this man, Michael Hawkins, who plays a college student (at 37!) who comes home when his semi-driving father dies in an "accident." He keeps the trucking business going while also discovering that his old man may have been deliberately killed by a competitor.

Hawkins also discovers this hot young lady Mary Cannon. She spends virtually the entire movie in this frosted, plastic wig.

Even in the shower!

Cannon is presumably who the distributors were referring to when they re-dubbed the film Trucker's Woman. Here, she's resisting the attention of Hawkins, who has followed her from the diner to her motel room (a Ramada Inn!)


Eventually he barges in, tosses her around a little and then she gives in to his torrid advances. Note the string of nylon "hair" hanging near her neck! I am using a lot of quotation marks in this brief post!

These two indulge in some of the most awkward kissing I have ever witnessed on screen. His lips never open or really even move, so she has to do most of the work, including hooking on to unusual portions of his mouth!

A later love scene with a different actress is also uncomfortable and icky. In this one, the two share a cigarette before kissing and a strand of spittle is seen as their lips part!

It may be difficult to spot, but it is there.

I'm not finished with Hawkins just yet, but I'm going to move on for the moment to someone else.

On the left here is a man named Doddles Weaver. Weaver was a comic actor who found success on radio, the stage and in movies from the mid-1930s on.

His "comedy" in this film is something beyond excruciating... Not all routines that worked in the '30s & '40s translated through the '70s. Weaver was the younger brother of high-ranking NBC television executive Pat Weaver, whose daughter Susan later gained considerable fame as... Sigourney Weaver! Doodles Weaver, having grappled with an alcohol problem and enduring physical pain in his later years, took his own life

The husky auto mechanic that Weaver is speaking to above is also someone of note. One of the villains of the piece, it is he who tampered with Hawkins' father's semi and who also does a number on Hawkins' truck.

At one point we're treated to a love scene between him and a nude blonde.

She apparently felt that a nice, stiff belt of booze was in order! If you haven't recognized this guy yet,


This may help. The character of Benny Stulwicz from L.A. Law was a showy part. The mentally-disabled character figured into story lines across a seven year period.

Larry Drake won two Emmys and was nominated for a third as Benny. (His costar Jimmy Smits won that third time.) Drake also appeared in Darkman (1990) and many other TV shows and movies.

At one point in the movie, Drake has finally been caught up with for his horrible actions.

Hawkins grabs a rifle and takes aim at his nemesis.

Drake takes a bullet in the leg as he's trying to escape and falls to the ground.

As he careens to the ground, we find that he has split his pants (which, if you look at the prior photo, were raggedly in this area to start with) and the camera spots his inner thigh and (thankfully!) his jockey shorts! Drake worked up through the late-2000s, but was discovered dead in 2016. It was determined to have been cancer of the blood. He was 66.

Now back to Hawkins. You know what a completest I am. He takes a shower in the movie and I nearly always document such instances here.

It's the morning after he has seduced Cannon and he's chatting with her from the shower as she's packing to leave in the main room.

He wants her to wait (and, in fact, doesn't even know her full name!), but she's ready to roll.

He calls to her, but she's heading out.

Aggravated, he decides to leave the shower and chase after her.

I have been known to do towel posts, too, so this also qualifies on that score!

Finding that she's departed the motel room, he continues to chase after her.

As he trots out the door to her convertible, he barely has on more than a large diaper.

She has no intention of hanging around.

He asks her how she can just leave him like this...

...which prompts her to say that she is actually going to leave him like THIS, and promptly yanks off his towel and begins to speed off!

In a nearby room, an old woman is peering out into the parking lot and tells her husband that she thinks she just saw a "streaker!"

In a nod to a big hit song of the day ("The Streak" by Ray Stevens), the woman's name is, of course, Ethel.

This scene is edited very swiftly and carefully, to avoid any nudity on Hawkins' behalf.

But there is this moment where he backs into the room again, using those dastardly blue-green curtains as his only protection against immodesty.

I suspect that not too many of you are overly familiar with Michael Hawkins. He wasn't a household name for most, but prior to this he'd enjoyed featured roles on several soap operas from As the World Turns to Love is a Many Splendored Thing to The Doctors to How to Survive a Marriage.

This same year (1975), he was handed another principal role on another soap.

He was cast as Frank Ryan, one of the key members of the central family of Ryan's Hope. Unfortunately, the wheels were starting to come off. He was battling an alcohol addiction and had trouble memorizing his lines. He was fired at the end of the show's first year. After that, it would chiefly be bit roles in movies from The Amityville Horror (1979), Mommie Dearest (as a Pepsi executive) and Looker (both 1981.) He hasn't acted on screen at all since 1988.

He'd been married since 1966 to his wife Mary Jo, a very successful casting director, but that also came to an end in 1976. His life careened into one of unemployment or menial jobs, manic-depression and substance abuse. Their little tree-hugging son went to live with his mother and when she reverted to her maiden name, the child took that as well.

Mary Jo's maiden name was Slater and her son Christian went on to a highly-successful movie career. Christian, despite his busy in-demand career, had his own battles with alcohol and drugs, but managed to survive it.

Not only did Slater pop-up briefly on Ryan's Hope (long after his father's departure), but one of his early roles came on L.A. Law, too, though it was an episode in which Drake didn't appear. The father and son were estranged for years and at one point Hawkins was suing Slater for a hefty sum. However, more recently, Slater has relayed that they've been in contact, rebuilding some sort of relationship. The father is 83 while the son is now 52.

I will leave you with this one last bit of lunacy... Around the 1:09 mark of the film, Hawkins is checking the brake lines of his semi, following a near accident. For what's probably less than a second, a shot featuring a pepperoni pizza suddenly appears!! It's believed that perhaps it was meant to instill subliminal hunger to the drive-in crowd and help form a stampede to the snack counter...!

I did nothing to help relieve this shot of it's scratches, dirt and other anomalies. What a scream...! I think you've probably all had your share of cheese by this point. Till next time.

9 comments:

  1. Haha, what a great piece of crap film. And where's the MST3k crew when you need 'em? This one looks perfect for them.

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  2. Yeah, that poster art looks like something one of the vocational boys would have drawn in his geometry notebook. All that’s missing is the race car with flames.
    A movie interesting solely for its ‘six degrees of separation’ quality. In the shower pics, Hawkins reminds me a bit of Dick Shawn, in others reminds me of Wally Bruner who had that weekend woodworking show for so many years.
    Thanks again for making the sacrifice of watching this dreck so your loyal followers don’t have to.

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  3. This is definitely something from the bargain bin in the video store that wouldn't have caught my eye, it's better from a distance. I did recognize some of the actors and just cringed at the embarrassing love scenes. The cheap wig drove a nice car though. The Weaver connection is wild (also the Slater) I was watching "Eyewitness" over the weekend with Sigourney, who is gorgeous in that. While watching I remembered reading a chick-lit book called "Marrying Mom" I think where the daughter named Susan changes her name to Sigourney, and always wondered if that was a nod to Ms. Weaver. Here it's confirmed! thank you for that Poseidon

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  4. What delightfully dreadful movie. I'm guessing everyone did their own hair and makeup. And costuming. Kind of a come as you are theme, maybe? I loved the Sigourney Weaver and Christian slater tie-ins.

    Thanks for the great post!

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  5. Shawny, I neglected to mention it, but there is a second version of this movie out there, with RiffTrax commentary. I didn't listen to it as I like to provide my own snark when I'm taking in a "gem" like this! ;-)

    Dan, the poster reminded me of those ones you could buy in the '60s & '70s that came with bright markers and you could color it all in yourself. I think some of them had the black lines raised and sort of felt or velvety in texture. The poster for "Trucker's Woman" was in color and more finished looking (by like 1.07% - Ha ha!) I totally see the Wally Bruner thing!! I know him from the 1960s version of "What's My Line?"

    Gingerguy, I'm glad I could be of some small service. LOL I have never watched "Eyewitness" but I ought to. I wasn't into Sigourney much until about "Working Girl." I adored (as I typically do) her total rich-bitch character.

    A, this was just a little oddity, really. Glad you liked it. The year before this was "Hot Summer in Barefoot County" and the year after came "Redneck Miller." I've yet to explore those at all...! It kind of fascinates that these local productions, made for $7.39, are out there now for us all to watch, if we dare.....! Thanks.

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  6. Okay, what *was* the decade-long national obsession we had in the '70s for "rednecks" and truck drivers all about? It even spilled over into the '80s to some extent, but not quite as bad.

    And it wasn't just low-budget drive-in movies and country-western music, it was in mainstream films and network television (even after CBS "purged" itself of rural sitcoms like GREEN ACRES) and rock music as well-- and even in mainstream clothing, with those "western style" shirts with the contrasting yokes, straight-leg jeans with wide belts with huge buckles, and boots.

    Anyway, TRUCKIN' MAN/TRUCKER'S WOMAN was directed by Will Zens, who (because God is merciful) only directed eight films in a career spanning 1961-1985, with this one being his next-to-last effort. There were four other similar "redneck" films in his *oeuvre*-- his last one, THE FIX (1985) added an element of organized crime to make it "fresh."

    However, Zens' first three films were a then-topical "espionage" film about spies trying to interfere with a NASA launch, followed by two military-themed films starring Robert Dornan-- THE STARFIGHTERS (1964) having achieved notoriety as an MSTK3 episode, and for its star.

    Yep, that's future homophobic Rep. "B-1 Bob" Dornan, back in his days as an aspiring actor, when he appeared in a number of low-budget films and TV shows. Strangely, he went from marching with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and helping Blacks register to vote in Mississippi to viciously opposing women's rights and infamously outing gay Rep. Steve Gunderson on the House floor in 1994!


    Anyway, though TRUCKIN' MAN/'S WOMAN had managed to elude me, I did see a good bit of this sort of thing in its natural setting back in the day, including drive-in pizza. I actually had a cousin who would go to the drive-in *just* for the pizza (we didn't have any other options locally at the time, other than those wretched Chef Boy-ar-dee kits)-- so subliminals were actually kind of a waste of film for us, but that shot is hilarious!

    Even though I instantly recognized Doodles Weaver and Larry Drake-- they were pretty distinctive-- I didn't realize Doodles was Pat Weaver's brother and therefore Sigourney's uncle! I just knew him from his association with Spike Jones and his own comedy records (including a bizarre cover of "Eleanor Rigby") and TV appearances.

    Also, even though I hadn't seen star Michael Hawkins in anything as far as I knew (didn't watch soaps, though I own DVDs of THE AMITYVILLE HORROR and MOMMIE DEAREST), his face and name seemed strangely familiar. And it came together when you mentioned he had been married to a casting director named Mary Jo, because I knew who Christian Slater's mom was and had heard about the trouble he had with his estranged dad, a former actor. And now that Slater's older, I can even kind of see a resemblance to Hawkins.

    (And here's another unexpected family connection-- would you believe that asshole Bob Dornan's uncle was beloved "Tin Man" Jack Haley and his cousin Jack Jr. was married to Liza Minnelli?)


    Anyway, I love these little gems of trash cinema you uncover, even though I'm sure reading your recap is a LOT more enjoyable than trying to watch this thing devoid of its original setting!

    (I guess you *could* take a bootleg video file on a laptop, a greasy pizza and a sixpack, get in the car and drive out to a field somewhere and try to recreate the "ambience," but-- nahhh.)

    Thanks for another great post! Love to all and be safe and well, everyone!

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  7. hsc, it seems like the advent of CB radios (or at least popularity among non-truckers) played into that whole trend somehow. I don't know where I was because I had NO CLUE that drive-ins even served pizza!!! Popcorn, ice cream bars and hot dogs are the principal things that come to mind for me. But I was deprived because other areas of the country indeed had pizza as a featured item. I found this Drive-In intermission ad that hilarious manages to make virtually every item offered look at UN-appetizing as possible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MKy-etYkZ4 Thanks for all the additional background info.

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  8. Sometimes, Poseidon, I think you are in fact a genius. Or perhaps some kind of hitherto unknown sort of cinematic six-degrees mastermind ..
    Huston

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  9. Huston, you are far too kind. I appreciate that you enjoyed this, though, and that you like my rambling thoughts! :-) Take care and thanks!!

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