Cinema: Texas Twister

The Chase is a shockworn message film, smoothly overacted and top-heavy with subtle bigotry, expertly exploiting the violence, intolerance and mean provincialism that it is supposed to be preaching against. Taking a Horton Foote novel adapted by Playwright Lillian Hellman, Producer Sam Spiegel (Lawrence of Arabia) hired Director Arthur Penn (The Miracle Worker) to whip up a scathing, lopsided indictment of a small town somewhere in Texas. With Star Marlon Brando as chief jeer-leader, the movie smugly points an accusing finger at all the wrong, wrong deeds done by precisely the right people.

Ignorant Texans are the targets, and Scenarist Hellman blows the lid off a snake pit of contemporary evil when the town’s bad boy, Bubber Reeves (Robert Redford), escapes from prison and heads home to settle scores among a scroungy lot of drunken, wife-swapping, white-collar workers who carry their pistols to parties of a Saturday night. “Shoot a man for sleepin’ with someone’s wife?” cries a roundheeled young matron, Janice Rule. “Half the town ‘ud be wiped out.” Poor Bubber’s Mama (Miriam Hopkins), cast as Parental Guilt, hysterically accepts blame for all his misdeeds, though maternal love appears to be her only failing.

Meanwhile, back at the mansion of Land Baron E. G. Marshall, a passel of vulgar new-rich Texans pledge donations to found a college near by, in order to protect their young against the perils of an education at Harvard. Marshall’s son, played by Britain’s James Fox, drawls endearments to Jane Fonda, who conquers a casting error as Bubber’s faithless wife, making trollopy white trash seem altogether first class. Actor Redford, as Bubber, plays a born loser engagingly but cannot quite mask the clear-eyed confidence of a boy born lucky. All three finally flee to a flaming auto junkyard where virtually the entire county converges, brandishing torches, cheap whisky and other unmistakable symbols of moral decay.

Chase has very few dull moments, nor does it lack the courage to cash in on its convictions, most of which are half-truths deftly rigged to attract liberal non-thinkers. Miss Hellman seldom lets a scene end without tacking on her comment; except for a handful of courageous, long-suffering Negroes and Sheriff Brando, no Texan escapes being singed by a Statement. Brando ably plays the stereotyped champion of human rights that he seems compelled to endorse in film after film, changing only his dialect. Bloody, brutally beaten by local louts, he makes a final, desperate attack against prejudice and hatred while indifferent townsfolk stand by. Next morning, Marlon packs up Wife Angie Dickinson and hits the road. Heading straight North, like as not.