My Movie Journal is Better Than Yours

Notes History

Date Viewed	Venue	Note
11.15.05	Alamo Downtown	Not the new Johnny Cash biopic but the 1970 Gregory Peck movie where the titular song originated. Actually I'm not sure if the song was on some album beforehand or not but Johnny Cash did the music for this and that song seems to speak to the film pretty closely so... yeah. It's still pretty clear that the song is more famous than the movie, which is a story about a hick town sheriff falling for hot jail bait and looking the other way as her family cooks up moonshine. Tuesday Weld, hot off of Pretty Poison fills the role of underage sexpot quite well, luring icon of decency Greg Peck into a lurid affair, ultimately driving him crazy with lust. The movie... is not that great but there are some really gorgeous Frankenheimer compositions in here and I think this is the trashiest drive-in-iest movie ever to use split diopters and deep focus. I really don't know if it was supposed to be a throw-away drive-in movie or not with talent like Frankenheimer, Peck, and writer Alvin Sargent involved, but that's really how it ended up. The movie gets kinda crazy at the end and a baling hook comes out of nowhere to inflict some damage. Pretty interesting experience to say the least. It's also funny to note that the theater was almost empty after being nearly full for Oldboy and pre-sold out the previous night for a collection of Johnny Cash TV appearances and music performances.