Cinema: Two-Lane Box Top

DIRTY MARY CRAZY LARRY

Directed by JOHN HOUGH Screenplay by LEIGH CHAPMAN and ANTONIO SANTEAN

Greetings to Peter Fonda, the old Easy Rider himself, who has slipped back into the driver’s seat. This time around, he has four wheels instead of two and plays a heist artist with racing ambitions instead of a romantic outlaw biker. Fonda has dreams of glory on the fast track. To get himself a stake in the big time, he knocks over a large super market in a small California town.

Aiding him is a mechanic-pal named Deke (Adam Roarke), a barely reformed rummy who could go round the bend any minute. Only a girl is required to round out this formula, and it must be said of Susan George that she rounds it out very nicely indeed. Miss George makes something of a specialty of playing pouty jailbait (recall Straw Dogs), and she shows spunk—among other things—as she runs about in tight jeans and skimpy halters.

The movie, which is raucous and engagingly empty-headed, has mostly to do with this fractured gang taking it on the lam. They drive around back-country California thwarting attempts by the local constabulary to bring them to justice. Over a dozen police vehicles are put out of commission during the rigors of the pursuit, but no cop ever gets hurt. This lends the movie a trace of the fabulous, like some sort of STP fairy tale. For the trio, however, the moral is finally brutal and predictable.

Fonda cackles maniacally behind the wheel and seems to be enjoying himself. Director John Hough (who engineered a good little thriller last year called The Legend of Hell House) does not pay much attention to any of the obvious weaknesses of this rough road genre. What he depends on instead is its undeniable careless charm. ·J .C .