Prime cut (1972)

One of my favorite testosteronemovies is Walter Hills lovely firecracker of an actionmovie, Extreme Prejudice. Just looking at the cast of that movie will make your balls shrink in awe, characteractors like Nick Nolte, Powers Boothe, Michael Ironside, Rip Torn, Clancy Brown and William Forsythe. Awesome stuff indeed, a movie worthy of devotion. Now I've seen a movie where two actors manage to outman the entire cast of that flick... the greatness that is Prime Cut.

Lee Marvin plays a mobenforcer in Chicago who is sent to a small town in Texas where Gene Hackman is the cattlerancher in charge of a prostitutionring, owing the Chigago mobsters a substantial amount of money. The last person sent came in return as a package of sausages. Marvin takes a small posse, goes to Hackmans place where he is selling drugged out young girls for pleasure, calmly informs him that he has to pay up and takes one of the girls with him. Hackman gets pissed of course and sends his goons after them. Mayhem ensues.

Prime cut isnt really like anything I've ever seen. It's some sort of Lynchian Hitchcockmovie oozing of manliness and meat, going on in that special 70s pace that I love so much and is full of strange little quirks like that whole meatbusiness and an ending that is straight out of an entirely different movie. Marvin and Hackman chew the scenery like their lives depend on it and you really wish that they had more scenes together, not that the movie is dull when they arent sharing scenes but since they each outman the entire cast of Extreme prejudice youwant more. There are a couple of excellent setpieces such as when Marvin and the girl try to outsmart Hackmans aryan thugs at a county fair, ending with fun chase in a cornfield where a cropdust eats a car. Loving it. Watch this and Charley Varrick on a cozy afternoon and you have the perfect doublebill of what the seventies could offer at it's greatest moment.

And this movie also made me realize something. A 22 year old Sissy Spacek in one of her first roles is HOT! She spends the first half of the movie either nude or seminude and it is truly a gloriuos sight, making the movie even better.

So yes, if you like me is a sucker for excellent 70s thriller, you will gobble this up like an Elvis sandwich.