DIRTY MARY CRAZY LARRY: Rolling Over The Hero/Villain Line At Top Speed

One of the fas­ci­nat­ing things about American films of the 1970’s is their ambiva­lent rela­tion­ship with the con­cept of “hero vs. vil­lain.”  Hits like The Godfather and Superfly asked audi­ences to iden­tify with char­ac­ters who would be vil­lains in the real world — and they did so with plea­sure.  This toy­ing with the idea of who could be a pro­tag­o­nist in a film per­me­ated all lev­els of film­mak­ing, right down to the low-budget flicks.  A fas­ci­nat­ing exam­ple of this trend at a drive-in level is Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, a car-chase movie whose sense of moral rel­a­tiv­ity is as head-spinning as its auto­mo­tive thrills.

The film starts by plac­ing a trio of clas­sic 1970’s anti­heroes front and cen­ter.  Hot-headed race car dri­ver Larry (Peter Fonda) and his recovered-alkie mechanic Deke (Adam Roarke) want money to buy a qual­ity rac­ing car so they set out to rob a gro­cery store’s pay­roll.  An unex­pected com­pli­ca­tion kicks in when Mary (Susan George), the town’s res­i­dent “easy girl,” pops up in the get­away car (Larry ditched out on her after their night together).  To make things worse, their clean-getaway plan fails and the cops, led by icon­o­clas­tic Everett Franklin (Vic Morrow), set out to stop them.  Thus, the stage is set for a coun­try­side chase with sur­prises around every turn.

If you want to look at Dirty Mary Crazy Larry as an action flick, it totally deliv­ers on that level.  Leigh Chapman and Antonio Santean’s script is sharply paced and laced with cyn­i­cal humor.  Better yet, it boasts some dis­tinc­tive dia­logue, par­tic­u­larly in its use of rapid-fire gear­head jar­gon between Larry and Deke.  The film also ben­e­fits from brisk direc­tion by the under­rated John Hough, who gives the film the mus­cu­lar, visu­ally kinetic style it needs (note his skill­ful use of push-ins to accen­tu­ate con­flicts between char­ac­ters).  Excellent stunt dri­ving seals the deal: the best moment in this area may be a chase between the heroes and an overzeal­ous tough-guy deputy named Hank (Eugene Daniels).

However, there’s another level at play in Dirty Mary Crazy Larry that makes it as com­pelling as the story or the stunts.  It’s the film’s defi­ance of the basic good guy/bad guy sto­ry­telling setup.  Even though Larry, Deke and Mary are our main char­ac­ters, the film never tries to give them a motive for their deeds: they haven’t been wronged by a cor­rupt estab­lish­ment fig­ure and they aren’t fight­ing for a cause.  Larry’s main moti­va­tions are greed and impa­tience.  More impor­tantly, the law­men aren’t por­trayed as abus­ing the law or being a force of repres­sion.  Instead, they’re just try­ing to do their job — and Everett Franklin is every bit as icon­o­clas­tic and con­temp­tu­ous towards author­ity as the kids he’s chasing.

There is also a fas­ci­nat­ingly dys­func­tional arrange­ment going on in the film’s anti-heroic tri­umvi­rate.  Larry is our main pro­tag­o­nist but he’s also ter­ri­bly self-destructive, always allow­ing his ego to out­run his com­mon sense and need­ing con­trol so badly that he’s con­stantly needling/testing his accom­plices to their break­ing points.  Mary is not an empow­ered fig­ure of female inde­pen­dence: instead, her ten­dency of “get­ting around” is por­trayed as an out­growth of her emo­tional need­i­ness.  Deke could’ve been a hero but he has a fatal­is­tic streak that dooms him to ter­mi­nal “sec­ond banana”-hood.  Their rela­tion­ships con­stantly shift and reform, ensur­ing that the audi­ence is never allowed to get com­fort­able with them.

That’s a tricky set of demands for the cast to nav­i­gate but they pull it off.  Fonda’s low-key approach to act­ing fits the inscrutable mood­i­ness of Larry per­fectly, allow­ing him to shift back and forth between charm­ing and nasty with dis­arm­ing ease.  Roarke, an under­rated char­ac­ter thesp who worked sev­eral times with Richard Rush, is appro­pri­ately dead­pan but also shows great comic tim­ing and fierce anger when the sit­u­a­tion calls for it.  George was always great at bring­ing inten­sity to her per­for­mances and she gets to do that here: it’s eas­ily the most emo­tion­ally demand­ing role in the film and she pulls it off beau­ti­fully.  However, she also gets to show a seduc­tive, play­ful side that is just as effec­tive in the moments where she matches wits with Fonda.

On the straight-society side of things, Morrow makes the most of every scene as the reluc­tant law­man.  Though he gets less screen time, he’s every bit as charis­matic as the heroes and man­ages to make world-weariness seem like an expres­sion of out­sider cool.  Amongst the sup­port­ing cast, Daniel deserves notice for his funny turn as the most car­toon­ish of the deputies and Roddy McDowell pops up for an effec­tive (and uncred­ited) cameo as the gro­cery store’s owner.

To sum up, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry is more than a clas­sic car-chase flick.  It’s also a mem­o­rable expres­sion of the shift­ing moral­ity going on in  American film­mak­ing dur­ing that dis­il­lu­sioned Watergate era.  Whatever way you choose to take it, this unex­pect­edly com­plex genre pic is a cult movie trip worth taking.

Dirty Mary Crazy Larry / Race With The Devil [Double Feature] Dirty Mary Crazy Larry / Race With The Devil [Double Feature]      Dirty Mary Crazy Larry: Two lovers and a mechanic rob a gro­cery store and flee the police with hopes of mak­ing the pro­fes­sional rac­ing cir­cuit. They are chased by the cops, who deploy every­thing from a 426 Hemi to a heli­copter to stop them.Director: John HoughStars: Peter Fonda, Susan GeorgeRace With The Devil: Two cou­ples vaca­tion­ing together in an R.V. from Texas to Colorado are ter­ror­ized after they wit­ness a mur­der dur­ing a Satanic ritual.Director: Jack StarrettStars: Peter Fonda, Loretta Swit