Macon County Line

er picking up a lone female, their car breaks down in Macon County where they encounter a bigoted Sheriff. A crime takes place and the sheriff blames the trio. The film only runs 89 minutes and the first hour is all small town tedium, which is part of the movie's low-budget charm, but the third act livens things up. The screenplay was written by Max Baer Jr., best known as Jethro on the Beverly Hillbillies TV series; he also plays the redneck Sheriff in the story. Max, incidentally, directed another redneck classic, 1976's "Ode to Billy Joe". The film has a good back country vibe and effectively shows how bigotry and racism are learned traits and not innate. It also shows how easy it is to blame the wrong person due to coincidence. Beyond this, the film has little depth. It's a light drama about mundane events in a small Southern town that turn to tragedy. The movie purports to be based on a true story and offers details to this effect, but this was merely fabricated in order to hype the picture. It worked, as "Macon County Line" became a drive-in hit in the mid-70s. My main beef with the film, other than its mundaneness, is that the story takes place in Macon County, North Carolina, but the picture was shot in the Big Valley of California (around Sacramento). It goes without saying, if you're going to film a Southern Gothic thriller that takes place in the South, shoot it in the REAL South, not friggin' California. That said, the filmmakers do a decent job of making it SEEM like the South, dry as California is. GRADE: C+ or B-