With Luis Buñuel's The Young One / La joven (1960), take Gilligan's Island (1964-1967) and mix it with In the Heat of the Night (1965 novel and 1967 movie); or maybe take To Kill a Mockingbird (1960 novel and 1962 movie) and blend it with Robinson Crusoe (1719 novel and 1954 Buñuel movie) . . . and that may give you some idea of this film, which is loosely based on "Travelin' Man," a 1957 Peter Matthiessen story.
Still mulling this one over. The main actors: Bernie Hamilton (some may know him as Captain Dobey from Starsky & Hutch), Zachary Scott, Key Meersman, Crahan Denton and Claudio Brook.
The setting: a small island off the coast of segregated South Carolina. Ewie (Meersman) attends to a couple of shacks, a colony of bees, a flock of hens and a scrawny pet deer tied to a rail. Her boozing grandfather (Pee-Wee) has just died, leaving her with Miller, the island's gruff game warden and huntsman who almost immediately covets her. Traver (Hamilton), a clarinet player from the North, has arrived on the island by boat, fleeing a lynch mob. Jackson (Denton) arrives separately to inform Miller of some rich folks' plans to develop the island. That's quite a set up! Conflict and action tumble forth through the scrim of race, gender, class and language. An added kicker: both the principal men are American veterans of the WW2 Italian campaign. Add in a minister, the Reverend Mr. Fleetwood (Brook), and even a "golden key" baptism and presto, a compelling combination of mythology, primal energies and realism that may still make some people nervous fifty plus years later.
Today's Rune: Signals.
2 comments:
I'm a big fan of Matthiessen, but more of his nonfiction than his fiction. I didn't even know about this movie based on his story, though.
Don't think I've seen this one.
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