save for some brief room tone lapses in the on-set audio. Dohler and Ripple provide a thorough and interesting commentary and there is also a featurette, deleted scenes, an alternate ending, trailer, blooper reel and still gallery. Timewarp Films is self-distributing this two-disc DVD-R set and it can be ordered from either their website (
www.timewarpfilms.com) or
Amazon.com.
MACON COUNTY LINE
1974, Warner Home Video, DD-1.0/16:9/LB/ST, $12.98, 88m 14s, DVD-1
By Richard Harland Smith
The success of this Max Baer, Jr.-scripted, Richard Compton-directed thriller in the summer of 1974 spawned an exploitation subgenre of rural menace films revealing the dark side of HEE HAW. (While John Boorman’s DELIVERANCE is likely the biological father of this bastard brood, MACON COUNTY
LINE showed producers that the recipe could be whipped up for pennies per serving.) What’s in- teresting, 35 years down the road, is how MACON COUNTY LINE differs from the films it inspired (among them, New World’s JACKSON COUNTY JAIL and Jack Starrett’s RACE WITH THE DEVIL). Baer depicts the American South not so much as a hotbed of hypoc- risy and prejudice but as the last bastion of conservative values, where strict bound- aries (enforced by Baer’s hard- ass deputy sheriff) serve as a bulwark against disorder, per- sonified by drifters Alan and Jesse Vint. That the principal characters have their worldviews spit back in their faces by the final fade-out gives MACON COUNTY LINE a disarmingly anarchic feel, its twist-in-the- tale worthy of an EC Comics shocker.
MACON COUNTY LINE made its digital debut in 2000 under
the auspices of Anchor Bay En- tertainment, around the time of its 25th anniversary. That disc was graced with an audio com- mentary by Richard Compton and an 8m featurette that re- united Baer, Compton, Jesse Vint, bit player Geoffrey Lewis (in THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHT- FOOT the same year) and pro- ducer Roger Camras. Neither of these extras is to be found on the new Warner Home Video DVD, which bears the stink of a major studio dully reasserting its ownership. Worse yet, the disc doesn’t even offer a menu of chapter stops! With the sub- sequent deaths of Alan Vint and Richard Compton, some kind of memorial gesture would have been a classy move on Warner’s part. The image itself is identi- cal to the earlier release: letter- boxed at an anamorphic 1.85:1 and looking grainy and muted in color. The single-track audio is adequate and English and French subtitles are optional. At
Screenwriter Max “Jethro” Baer, Jr. doubles as a deputy sheriff in Richard Compton’s tense thriller MACON COUNTY LINE.
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