Don Levy Movies

The CB (citizen's band) radio fad had nearly run its course when this feel-good action film was made by director Sam Peckinpah. In the story, based on C.W. McCall's song "Convoy", a group of struggling truckers (who stay in touch by CB) run into a situation which ignites their indignation. They arrange to form a truck convoy under the leadership of the man whose CB nickname is "Rubber Duck" (Kris Kristofferson). He is the most aggrieved of the bunch, having been harassed beyond the point of endurance by Lyle Wallace (Ernest Borgnine) a blackmailing traffic cop who pursues him ever more frantically through several states after he fails to submit to the phony speed trap he had set up. As news of the truck convoy spreads, unexpected allies join the line, and the now-gigantic illegal protest becomes the subject of national news reports. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

A former friend betrays a legendary outlaw in Sam Peckinpah's final Western. Holed up in Fort Sumner with his gang between cattle rustlings, Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson) ignores the advice of comrade-turned-lawman Pat Garrett (James Coburn) to escape to Mexico, and he winds up in jail in Lincoln, New Mexico. After Billy theatrically escapes, inspiring enigmatic Lincoln resident Alias (Bob Dylan) to join him, the governor (Jason Robards Jr.) and cattle baron Chisum (Barry Sullivan) requisition Garrett to form a posse and hunt him down. Rather than flee to Mexico when he can, Billy heads back to Fort Sumner, meeting his final destiny at the hands of his friend Pat, who, two decades later, is forced to face the consequences of his own Faustian pact with progress. With a script by Rudolph Wurlitzer, Peckinpah uses the historical basis of Billy's death to eulogize the West dreamily yet violently as it is desecrated by corrupt capitalists. Both Pat and Billy know that their time is passing, as surely as Garrett's posse knows that they are participating in a legend. Using familiar Western players like Slim Pickens and Katy Jurado, Peckinpah underscores the West's existence as a media myth, and he even appears himself as a coffin maker. Just as the bloodletting of Peckinpah's earlier The Wild Bunch (1969) invoked the Vietnam War, the casting of Kristofferson and Dylan alluded to the chaotic late '60s/early '70s present; the counterculture has little place in a corporate future. Also like The Wild Bunch, Pat Garrett was truncated by its studio; the cuts did nothing to help its box office. Key scenes, particularly the framing story of Garrett's fate, have since been restored to the home-video version. In this director's cut, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid stands as one of Peckinpah's most beautiful and complex films, killing the Western myth even as he salutes it. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

In this high-seas adventure, a wicked one-eyed, one-armed pirate forces a young man, who was wrongfully imprisoned, to take him and his band to his Caribbean island home where the pirate believes great treasure is buried. Once there, the pirate begins fighting for control of the island and begins slaughtering the lad's family and friends. The young man is utterly appalled and with his step-sister, a young woman and her beloved, somehow escape. Later the pirate discovers a large statue of pure gold. He and his men haul it to the beach and put it on a raft. As they are floating toward their ship, they are ambushed by the man and the other survivors causing the precious statue to fall overboard and sink to Davy Jones' locker while the pirate is killed. Later the survivors return to their ravaged home. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide