White Line Fever *** (1975, Jan-Michael Vincent, Kay Lenz, Slim Pickens, L Q Jones, Don Porter, R G Armstrong, Dick Miller) – Classic Movie Review 6737

Co-writer/ director Jonathan Kaplan’s intense and credible 1975 crime action drama movie about American truck drivers stars Jan-Michael Vincent as Carrol Jo Hummer, who initially rides with his Tucson, Arizona, father Sam (Frank Kennedy) as partners: Sam Hummer and Son.

But the dad dies, Carrol Jo has a stint in the Air Force in Vietnam and, returning home, borrows money to buy a truck, hoping to make enough money hauling produce to marry Jerri Kane (Kay Lenz). He does get married, but then he finds the local long-haul trucking business is run by racketeers and he risks his life fighting the corruption controlling the industry.

Kaplan’s idea was to make a modern-day Western, influenced by the films of Sam Peckinpah. Kaplan said: ‘I was trying to counter-act the right-wing vigilantism of some of the pictures that were around at the time.

Peter Guber at Columbia Picture asked Kaplan to direct the movie after the success of his Truck Turner (1974), which Guber mistakenly thought was about trucks. It was Guber who cast Jan-Michael Vincent, mistakenly believing he was going to be a big star.

Vincent may not quite have become a big star, though he came close in the early to mid-Seventies, but he is always a strong, good, solid, and above all welcome presence, as here. Big star or not, this movie was very successful and profitable. $35,000,000.

Also in the cast are Slim Pickens, L Q Jones, Don Porter, R G Armstrong, Dick Miller, Jamie Anderson, Leigh French, Ron Nix, Sam Laws, Johnny Ray McGhee and Martin Kove.

White Line Fever runs 90 minutes, is written by Kaplan and Ken Friedman, shot in Metrocolor by Fred J Koenekamp, produced by John Kemeny and scored by David Nichtern, with Art Direction by Sydney Z Litwack.

White Line Fever was shot in and around Tucson, Arizona, as well as in Monument Valley in Utah.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6737

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