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“Hicksploitation” is a beloved sub­genre for many exploita­tion flick fans, espe­cially those of us from the south: White Lightning, Macon County Line, the Walking Tall series, the list goes ever on.  However, hick­sploita­tion isn’t all moon­shine and punch-ups.  There was once a sub­set of this cin­e­matic style aimed at the entire fam­ily that usu­ally mixed broad humor, fam­ily val­ues and coun­try music in equal pro­por­tion to cre­ate a down­home buf­fet of clean-living enter­tain­ment for the Bible Belt to enjoy.

The Farmer’s Other Daughter is a boil­er­plate exam­ple of this lighter, family-friendly ver­sion of the for­mat.  The script was an early effort from William Norton, who would later write White Lightning, Big Bad Mama and other down­home fare, and focuses on the tra­vails of the Brown fam­ily.  Patriarch Horace Brown (Harry Lovejoy) is try­ing to keep his farm out of the clutches of evil rich guy Cyrus Barksnapper (William Guhl), who has eyes for Horace’s nubile daugh­ter, June (Judy Pennebaker).  All seems lost until hap­less trav­el­ing sales­man Jim Huckleberry (William Michael) hap­pens into town, hawk­ing biki­nis made of a “mir­a­cle fab­ric.”  He gets mixed up in the family’s strug­gles and hijinks ensue.

The end result def­i­nitely knows its intended view­ers.  The Farmer’s Other Daughter is packed with Hee Haw–derived humor (includ­ing tons of slap­stick) and a cyn­i­cal dis­trust of the gov­ern­ment and the wealthy, topped off with a mild amount of pin-up-style cheese­cake.  There’s even an extended seg­ment where a fresh-from-the-Grand-Olé-Opry band, Ernest Ashworth and the Kentucky Colonels, stop the film cold to per­form a multi-song set.  In terms of con­tent, it caters to the tar­get audi­ence beautifully.

That said, none of the above ensures that The Farmer’s Other Daughter is actu­ally enter­tain­ing.  By anyone’s stan­dards, this is pretty dire stuff.  The schtick is stale, the act­ing is as wooden as it is broad and the 84 minute run­ning time feels like three hours.  Director John Hayes was a pro­lific direc­tor of low-budget fare so there’s a basic tech­ni­cal com­pe­tence on dis­play but his work feels woe­fully unin­spired.  He was bet­ter known for more twisted fare like Mama’s Dirty Girls and Grave Of The Vampire so it’s pos­si­ble that these corn­pone antics left him cold.

There are some inci­den­tal bits that are amus­ing — like the fact that Judy Pennebaker doesn’t even try to do a south­ern accent or how the Kentucky Colonels’ per­for­mances fea­ture a drum­mer bang­ing on his kit despite the total lack of drum­ming on the sound­track — but this would-be quickie is a dis­mal slog.

(Note: this is one of four films in VCI’s Drive-In Grindhouse set — the other three are Summer School, Psychedelic Fever and Up Yours — A Rockin’ Comedy. All four will be reviewed at Schlockmania)