The Gravy Train/The Dion Brothers (1974, Jack Starrett)

Today, be on the lookout for the Dion Brothers. They are armed with a lobster and considered dangerous.

Looting, pilfering, plundering, robbing, and generally having the time of their lives.

A magnum farce.

The key art is reminiscent of Columbia's California Split (1974).

Released in New York in June of 1974, Jack Starrett's madcap caper film The Gravy Train received a fairly even mix of good and bad reviews.  The film must not have done very good business because when it re-emerged in Los Angeles in November of that year, it was as The Dion Brothers.  Since its original release, the film, under either title, has been quite elusive. It had a primetime network airing in 1978 and was a late night television staple for the next decade or so.  In the late 90s it received a boost from Quentin Tarantino who included it in his one of his "neglected 70s" film festivals and, more recently, David Gordon Green cited it as a major influence on his Pineapple Express and featured it in a film series that he curated at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. 

Co-written by Terrence Malick (under the pseudonym David Whitney), the film is something of a mess structurally, but it contains a raucous energy and a genuinely zany, and deceptively simplistic, sense of humor.  Small town West Virginia brothers Calvin (Stacy Keach) and Rut Dion (Frederic Forrest) quit their factory jobs, which they despise, to make their fortunes as armed robbers in Washington D.C. The more worldly Calvin leaves first and hooks up with a gang led by the twitchy Tony (Barry Primus).  Tony plans to rip off an armored truck and enlists the help of Calvin, Carlos (Richard Romanus), Rex (Denny Miller), and Rut.  Tony double-crosses Rex and the Dion brothers, but fails to finish off Calvin and Rut, who spend the rest of the film hunting for Tony and their cut of the heist.  Along the way, the brothers convince Tony's girlfriend, Margie (Margot Kidder, post-Sisters and looking quite lovely), to help them track him down.

Note the last minute nature of the film's re-titling.

Director Starrett is very adept at filming the action sequences as he had cut his teeth on motorcycle epics such as The Losers and Blaxploitation hits Slaughter and Cleopatra Jones.  The pleasant surprises are the absurd touches-- the film opens with a shirtless Calvin quitting his job at a canning factory and maniacally screaming, "Look at me!  I got the makings of a Kirk-fucking-Douglas!!"  Where most movie crooks seek sex, or drugs, or their own criminal empire, all Calvin wants is to open a fancy seafood restaurant that serves things like escargot.  At one point, the brothers impersonates cops, steal a squad car, and find "one of them funny cigarettes" in the glove compartment.  Calvin tells his brother, "Light that sucker up and let's take a cosmic ride." Keach and Forrest are a winning team and their engaging performances take the characters beyond standard Southern caricatures.  

I've read that Malick was removed from the film as director (explaining his pseudonymous credit) here, but cannot locate any further documentation to elaborate on or corroborate it. The famously elusive and reclusive Malick is no help in the matter, and it's unclear how much of the film, and which parts, should be attributed to Malick, co-screenwriter Bill Kerby, or Starrett. Whatever the behind-the-scenes machinations, Keach, who remains criminally underrated in film circles, was said to be so happy about his performance and the film, that he wrote executive producer Roger Gimbel to tell him he thought it was his best screen work up until that time.  This is saying something when one considers the powerhouse performance Keach gave in John Huston's late career classic Fat City.

The new campaign's artwork emphasizes the brotherly bond and lets the critical raves speak to the film's comedic side.

For all the film's laughs and hijinks, however, a sense of sadness pervades the film, especially with concern to the fate of the brothers, because it is clear from the start that they are in way over their heads.  Fittingly, as the films winds to a close, Starrett plays to his strengths, emphasizing action, while downplaying the humor and ending on a sober note.  This all-over-the-map approach, from social critique to comedy to action to drama surely drives many critics and viewers nuts, and numerous films that attempt it fail in one aspect or another, but The Gravy Train/The Dion Brothers is able to navigate those waters and succeeds in spite of its limited budget and general messiness.  It is easy to see where the film has influenced the likes of Tarantino who repeatedly pays loving homage to Gravy Train and its ilk, albeit with more money and in a slicker form.  However, with hindsight, Gravy Train's lack of spit and polish, an aspect which is rarely, if ever, imitated by the younger generation, is a significant part of the film's overall appeal.

My DVD of the film, which comes from an Encore Action airing, is noticeably without any type of studio logo.  The film was originally distributed by Columbia Pictures, however, it was independently produced by Jonathan Taplin, who'd previously served as tour manager for Bob Dylan and the Band and produced Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets, and was financed by Tomorrow Entertainment, a subsidiary of General Electric.  An April 1974 article in the Los Angeles Times identifies The Gravy Train as the first in a ten-picture deal between Tomorrow Entertainment and Columbia.  I'm not certain this deal was ever completed. Regardless, the film's somewhat convoluted production and ownership history, might explain its complete absence from any legitimate home video format. Hopefully, whatever legal ends need to be cleared up, will be, sometime soon.  If the film is ever to be released to home video, the only remaining question will be which title to release it under--The Gravy Train or The Dion Brothers?

Here's the pre-credit "Kirk Douglas" sequence. "Busy, busy, busy, busy, busy.":

Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing (1972), The Crazy World of Julius Vrooder (1974), A Small Town in Texas (1976)

U.S. One-Sheet

"If they think you're crazy you can get away with anything."

Style A

Style B, U.S. Insert

With Barbara Hershey in her "Barbara Seagull" days.

Timothy Bottoms' future as a Dubya impersonator was sealed at an early age.

"All Poke wanted was to get his girl and get out.  All the Sheriff wanted...was to get Poke."

U.S. One-Sheet

We need more Bo Hopkins.

Same goes for Susan George.  First Hershey and then George.  Damn you, Bottoms!

Of the four acting Bottoms brothers of Santa Barbara, California, Timothy was the first to break out and the most likely to achieve stardom.  Joseph came next, then Sam, and finally, Ben.  It never really happened for any of them, but Timothy had quite a run following early success in Johnny Got His Gun in the title role and, most famously, The Last Picture Show as Sonny Crawford.  In the wake of the success of co-stars Jeff Bridges and Cybill Shepherd it's easy to forget that Bottoms was top-billed.  He went on to great success in James Bridges' Academy Award-nominated The Paper Chase and played a pivotal role alongside Warren Oates and Lou Gossett in Philip Kaufman's fascinating and unusual The White Dawn. Around this time he starred in a trio of curios that are less remembered than the aforementioned titles: Alan J. Pakula's Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing, Arthur Hiller's The Crazy World of Julius Vrooder, and Jack Starrett's A Small Town in Texas.  Following these films, Bottoms migrated more to television films and theater, mixing in the occasional feature film (Rollercoaster, Hurricane, Invaders From Mars).  He appeared in the long-awaited sequel to Last Picture Show, Texasville, and a long line of direct-to-video titles before gaining new fame as something of a professional George W. Bush impersonator (the resemblance is rather uncanny) in three different productions, most notably That's My Bush! for Comedy Central.

The Pakula film, a May-December romance co-starring Dame Maggie Smith and written by Alvin Sargent, was the film he made in between Klute and The Parallax View, two of his most admired films.  Perhaps inspired by the success of Harold and Maude, Love and Pain was a considerable change of pace for Pakula, best known, of course, for a series of paranoid thrillers, with the occasional drama such as Sophie's Choice, from the early 1970s until his bizarre and untimely death in 1998.  Because of its pedigree, Pakula, Sargent, Smith, it is surprising that the film has nearly completely fallen off the radar.  In his Times review, Vincent Canby praised the humor of the film while criticizing it for overplaying the dramatic ramifications of the "taboo" (at least in Anglo-Saxon culture) age defying relationship between the two leads.  While, he says, the film "eventually goes to soap suds...you can enjoy two of the most intelligently comic performances of the year so far."

The Crazy World of Julius Vrooder was a clear attempt to cash in on Bottoms' appeal to the young, hip audience.  Produced by Hugh Hefner, the anti-war comedy stars Bottoms as a Vietnam vet who thinks he is smarter and saner than the doctors running the mental institution he's been placed in following his return to civilian life.  Barbara Hershey, known then as Barbara Seagull, is the nurse who he falls in love with and marries.  Nora Sayre, writing in the Times felt the film was too cute and that Bottoms appears to have been directed to appear perpetually "elfin."  The cast includes Golden Age director George Marshall (Destry Rides Again, How the West Was Won) not long before his death, Lawrence Pressman (who also appeared in Walk Proud), Richard Dysart, future playwright-screenwriter-director Michael Cristofer (The Witches of Eastwick, Original Sin), and Albert Salmi.  Hiller had already struck big with Love Story and Plaza Suite and directed cult films such as The Hospital and The Out-of-Towners.  He would next work on The Man in the Glass Booth for the American Film Theatre before settling primarily into the realm of comedies and light dramas.

Probably best known for his intense portrayal of sheriff's deputy Art Galt in First Blood or as Gabby Johnson in Blazing Saddles, the late Jack Starrett was, in fact, a first-rate director of hard-hitting action films throughout the 1970s.  A Small Town in Texas came after an impressive run that included Run, Angel, Run, Slaughter, The Gravy Train (aka The Dion Brothers), Cleopatra Jones, and Race With the Devil.  He would later direct Final Chapter: Walking Tall and contribute episodes to Starsky and Hutch, The Dukes of Hazzard, Hill Street Blues, and Eischied, the only show to top-line one Joe Don Baker. Bottoms is Poke Jackson, recently jailed on a marijuana charge and out to reunite with the mother of his son, Mary Lee (Susan George).  Bo Hopkins is Sheriff Duke, the one who wants to "get Poke."  Ebert, Canby, and Variety ridicule the film's Southern stereotypes while giving praise to the stunt work and chase scenes.  The latter says that "Bo Hopkins acts rings around Bottoms."

From what I can tell, the earlier films have never appeared on any home video format in the States.  Julius Vrooder has played on Fox Movie Channel in the last several years.  MGM, who controls A Small Town in Texas, released a VHS through Amazon a few years ago, but there has been no DVD in Region 1.  There is a Spanish DVD of the film, which is playable if you have an all-region DVD player.  

On the repertory circuit, Starrett's Gravy Train (never on home video) recently played at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in a series curated by David Gordon Green and he calls it, along with Tango and Cash, the biggest inspiration for Pineapple Express.  A Small Town in Texas and Race With the Devil were screened at the George Eastman House as part of a series devoted to car chase movies.