Lita Milan as Marie.
to retain their cut of the picture in perpetuity while giving him the right to recut the picture once it had been played out, adding reshoots and elimi- nating other material, to produce a more exploit- ative version. The end result was then sold to the fledgling Cinema Distributors of America, who re- titled it POOR WHITE TRASH in 1961. This turned out to be a golden goose of a move, which ended up netting around $10,000,000 when CDA sent it out on a drive-in double-bill with Corman’s civil rights drama THE INTRUDER (1962), which the company savvily retitled I HATE YOUR GUTS! Un- der its new title, BAYOU was still playing drive-ins in the 1970’s, years after director Harold Daniels’ 1971 death, often paired by Dimension Pictures (a company owned by the aforementioned Lawrence Woolner) with their completely unrelated S.F. Brownrigg backwoods acquisition, SCUM OF THE EARTH (1974)—given the new moniker POOR WHITE TRASH II.
The fascinating thing about BAYOU’s re-edited version is that, unlike other films which have suf- fered at the hands of money-hungry distributors, some of the additions and re-edits actually work in the film’s favor. Com- paring the transforma- tion of what essentially was a Cajun-flavored drama into a Deep South potboiler with roughie undertones reveals a lot of interesting quirks and bizarre editorial choices. Let’s examine this. The difference is ap-
parent from the get-go. In BAYOU, the title theme is a jazzy little number—more Dave Brubeck than zydeco—
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Peter Graves as Martin. Douglas Fowley as Emil.
with Dick Noel enthusiastically singing “Bayouuuuuu...” In stark contrast, POOR WHITE TRASH completely eschews the BAYOU theme for a brand new song and opening se- quence. Lest you go into this movie experience expecting anything less than lurid backwoods hu- man drama, the POOR WHITE TRASH theme song—“introducing” vocalist Bill Hays—puts you firmly in place. Bedecked in overalls, the banjo- plunking Hays strolls around the bayou singing such lines as “In the swamp I live, in the swamp I’ll die.” Like all of the additional footage still to come, it’s remarkably well-shot and framed. There’s even an effort to match up an upward pan shot of a tree from the new footage directly to the old one. Granted the cut and quality difference is still obvious, but the effort is appreciated. After the title credits, BAYOU opens with Marie crabbing while being watched by the covetous Ulysses, who is hiding out in the bushes. For her troubles, she almost gets knocked overboard by a goon on a motorboat, who happens to be Mar- tin. POOR WHITE TRASH is the same, up until the 4:35 mark when Martin has a talk with his boss about needing to schmooze more to get the big contract deal with one of the hot shot developers. This scene, setting up Martin as a good guy with strong ideals, doesn’t occur in BAYOU until the 9:30 mark.
What gets left out of POOR WHITE TRASH is a scene where a mail- man drops off a book for Emil to give to Marie, asking “What’s a girl in
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