Movie review: ‘Dirty Mary Crazy Larry’

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As I’m looking at “Dirty Mary Crazy Larry” today, it is the third “chase” film that I’ve reviewed recently. The first two were Burt Reynolds specials from the South and “Dirty Mary Crazy Larry” has Peter Fonda’s cool in California. All three weren’t viewed well by critics and Fonda’s car chase flick did better at the box office than either of Reynolds’ efforts. You can find “Dirty Mary Crazy Larry” on streaming services, but you might want to check out my review before making the effort.

‘Dirty Mary Crazy Larry’
(1974; 93 minutes; rated PG; directed by John Hough and starring Peter Fonda, Susan George, Adam Rourke and Vic Morrow)

DIRTY AND CRAZY IS THE WAY TO LIVE … MAYBE!

“Dirty Mary Crazy Larry” was a film released the year I graduated high school. It was 1974 and car chases were done for real since CGI was a couple of decades away. However, much as I remembered it best for the chase sequences, a re-watching now of “Dirty Mary Crazy Larry” shows that it has some good acting to go along with the cars and chase scenes that made it a cult favorite.

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“Dirty Mary Crazy Larry” headliner Peter Fonda was one of the “cool” stars for the youthful audiences that forced filmmakers to have to reckon with a new age of movie fans and he does a good job, but two other actors do better. However, there is one discordant note from an actor who just blusters about and doesn’t bring much thespian talent to the big screen.

Let me get the plot out of the way: Fonda as “Larry Rayder” is a failed race-car driver who, with his mechanic (Adam Rourke as “Deke Sommers”) has set up a robbery of a store’s fresh shipment of cash – back in the day, supermarkets cashed workers’ checks (like CGI, direct deposit was a long time away) and needed a large supply of cash to operate. Well, Fonda has had a liaison with “Dirty Mary Crazy Larry” co-headliner Susan George as “Mary Coombs” and she forces her way on the duo to get to come along for the wild ride that is the aftermath to the robbery.

Filmmakers did a good job setting up the robbery – Rourke goes to the home of the supermarket manager and holds his family hostage while Fonda just walks in and gets the cash – and then it’s off to the races as the trio speed away in a souped-up Chevy Impala before switching off to a beautiful 1969 Dodge Charger R/T with the 440-cubic-inch engine. They use a police-band radio to keep up with law enforcement communications to keep clued in on what the authorities are doing to find them.

Vic Morrow plays “Capt. Everett Franklin” and becomes the instant nemesis to Fonda, George and Rourke. He’s an old-fashioned cop and immediately makes the chase a personal vendetta against the criminals. He doesn’t know them personally, but he takes all crime personally.

I’m not going to do a spoiler about the ending of the film, so, unless you’ve already seen it, you’ll have to watch it to find out how it ends.

Here’s a look at your headliners and Morrow …

  • A two-time Oscar nominee and two-time winner and two-time nominee for Golden Globes, Fonda has no problem projecting “cool” with his good looks, affable personality and … well, height (at 6-2½ compared to many Hollywood micro-men measuring up to a miniscule 5-5 or 5-6). However, his lone expression in “Dirty Mary Crazy Larry” is an open-mouth, fall-down smile that kinda wears thin as the movie moves along. Otherwise, he’s good in this one, but not as good as in his Oscar nominated and Globe winner for “Ulee’s Gold” (his other Oscar nomination was as co-writer on the classic “Easy Rider,” in which he co-starred with Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper). His other Globe winner was for the TV movie “The Passion of Ayn Rand.” Of course, Fonda was the son of screen legend Henry “Battle of the Bulge” Fonda, the brother of Jane “The Electric Horseman” Fonda and father of Bridget “Jackie Brown” Fonda. Peter Fonda died of lung cancer at 79 in 2019.
  • Rourke was known for playing bad guys in biker flicks and does the best job of any actor in “Dirty Mary Crazy Larry”. He is always low-key in his presentation of himself, but he manages excellent projection of his strong emotions of the moment. Early in the film, as he kidnaps the family to facilitate the robbery, he watches the supermarket’s manager in the shower (behind frosted glass since it was the 1970s) in a moment that is good filmmaking. He then continues to exert his quiet presence and ultimately gets the girl. Rourke was uncredited but in the pilot for the original “Star Trek” series on tee-vee; he did an episode of “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.;” and was in “El Dorado” with John Wayne and Robert Mitchum. He died of a heart attack at the young-ish age of 59 in 1997.
  • George is simply bad in this film and she is only a so-so actor overall. She projects well because of her energy, but the projection is completely amateurish and more along the lines of a failed audition for a dinner theater troupe. She’s not helped by the screenwriter as she curses to start the film (remember, women weren’t supposed to curse back-in-the-day on screen and this was an obvious attempt to show she was “real”) and isn’t given much to work with. However, she must have been much better in films such as Sam Peckinpah’s “Straw Dogs” with Dustin Hoffman and I’m not sure how to measure her work in the crude “Mandingo,” since I didn’t see it. She was OK in the martial arts failure called “American Ninja” with Franco Nero (click here to read my review), but that isn’t a glowing review.
  • A Primetime Emmy winner, Morrow gives his usual solid performance as he’s a cop who hates technology and relies on his experience and old-fashioned police tactics to catch crooks … and he takes crime as a personal affront. His experience and his imagination ultimately bring a conclusion to the chase. Morrow’s insouciance about the politics and bureaucracy of his organization adds to his stature as an anti-establishment figure of the time (except, of course, that he’s a cop). He won his Emmy for the signature World War II drama on tee-vee called “Combat!” (except in artwork, the exclamation point was a bayonet). Morrow was the nasty father/coach in the original “The Bad News Bears” movie (click here to read my review of the “reboot”) and was on many notable TV series including episodes on “Magnum P.I.” to “Fantasy Island.” Sadly, he was excellent in an episode of the four-director movie version of “Twilight Zone: The Movie” that was directed by John Landis. I note “sadly” because he and two others were killed in a stunt-gone-wrong with a helicopter (see notes at the end of this review for more details) during filming. Morrow was 53 in the 1982 fatal stunt.

In the very thin supporting cast, the most notable is …

  • A Primetime Emmy winner and nominee and a Golden Globe nominee, Roddy McDowell was uncredited and played “George Stanton” the store manager whose family is held hostage. I can’t say why McDowell didn’t want credit. He did a solid job in presenting the scared, flustered retailer who fears for his family, but you won’t find his name in the credits (it is said he did it as a favor to the director, but insisted on being uncredited). He won his Emmy for the variety show “Sunday Showcase” and was nominated for a Globe for “Cleopatra” with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Among his prolific 270 acting credits in a career spanning eight decades, I liked his work in the original “Fright Night” where he was a TV vampire hunter who found a real one. McDowell, a native of the UK, died of lung cancer at 69 in 1998.

One supporting actor who is interesting but doesn’t do much is James Gavin as “helicopter pilot” and he’s, uh, well … the helicopter pilot who ferries Morrow until, at the height of the chase as the chopper is literally fighting with the Charger, his bird runs out of fuel. Gavin, who was a pilot, had 71 acting credits, including a couple of dozen as “helicopter pilot” or “pilot” and was the founder of the Motion Picture Pilots Association. I remember seeing him first as a helicopter pilot in a two-part story on “Adam-12” (“Skywatch – Part 1 and Part 2;” season 6, episodes 1 and 2) He died at 70 in 2005.

“Dirty Mary Crazy Larry” was the 14th ranked film at the U.S. box office in 1974 with $28.4 million in ticket sales, according to The Numbers website. The No. 1 film of the year was the magnificent comedy “Blazing Saddles” (click here to read my review) with $119.5 million and at No. 2 was “The Towering Inferno” with $116 million. Wiki has “The Towering Inferno” at No. 1 and “Blazing Saddles” at No. 2. Rounding out the top six were “The Trial of Billy Jack,” “Earthquake,” “Young Frankenstein” and “The Godfather: Part II.” Here are the films from 1974 that I have reviewed for my blog:

Assorted cast and film notes (via IMDb.com):

  • Kris Kristoferson reportedly turned down the part played by Fonda. Hmmm … it could have been interesting with him in the film.
  • The film was shot near Stockton in northern California, which is east of San Francisco.
  • Rourke’s birth name was Richard Jordan Gerler, while Morrow’s was Victor Morozoff.
  • Directly from IMDb.com: “the color of the Charger is a Chrysler Corporation factory color called “Citron Yella” (1971 paint code GY3), which is a fluorescent greenish-yellow. The black stripe on the side of the car is not a factory-offered Dodge racing stripe, but rather one painted on by the crew. The wheels are 15-inch “Ansen” brand wheels.”
  • Six Dodge Polaris cruisers were purchased from the California Highway Patrol for filming. All six were destroyed during the filming of the stunts.
  • Director Quentin Tarantino has always liked this film and paid homage to it by having it on a TV during a scene in his film “Jackie Brown” (click here to read my review).
  • Finally and directly from IMDb.com: “Vic Morrow, playing ‘Franklin’, insisted on a $1 million life insurance policy before he would film any scenes involving the helicopter, and said that if he wouldn’t be insured, he would walk off the picture. His wish was granted, and he very reluctantly agreed to fly in the chopper. When asked why he wanted the policy, Morrow replied ‘I have always had a premonition that I’ll be killed in a helicopter crash!’ Of course, on July 23, 1982, Morrow was indeed killed, along with two children, when a helicopter was brought down by special effects explosions, right on top of them while they were filming Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) …”

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