The Winds of Autumn (1976)

          One of low-budget auteur Charles B. Pierce’s most frustrating movies, The Winds of Autumn demonstrates how Pierce was simultaneously his own secret weapon and his own worst enemy. A revenge-themed Western with an offbeat angle, inasmuch as the character seeking revenge is an 11-year-old boy from a Quaker community, the picture has Pierce’s usual slick widescreen look, and yet it also has Pierce’s usual enervated storyline. The movie begins when young Joel (played by the director’s son, Chuck Pierce Jr.) observes a band of thugs approaching his family’s homestead. Joel’s parents ignore the boy’s warnings, believing God will protect them. He doesn’t. After the inevitable massacre, Joel is offered refuge by neighbor Mr. Pepperdine (played by the film’s cowriter, Earl E. Smith). Hungry for vengeance, Joel steals guns from Mr. Pepperdine’s stash—turns out the fellow used to be a gunfighter—and starts tracking the thugs. Soon afterward, Mr. Pepperdine arms himself and pursues Joel, hoping to prevent further tragedy.

          Scenes of Joel trekking through the wilderness are picturesque but repetitive and sluggish, so the picture’s limited entertainment value stems from the presence of actors seasoned in playing rural varmints. Jack Elam plays the main heavy, and the always-colorful Dub Taylor plays a snake-oil salesman who is moderately important to the plot. Every scene follows predictable rhythms, from the friction between the villains to the incredible resolve of the virtuous characters. On the plus side, the movie has a couple of so-so shootouts, and there’s a whorehouse scene featuring several attractive starlets—however, because The Winds of Autumn is a family picture, neither of those scenes has much bite. Nor, in fact, does the movie overall. Getting back to the secret weapon/worst enemy notion, Pierce, a set dresser by trade, always makes his pictures look more expensive than they are, but he’s perpetually incapable of embellishing narrative concepts with similar flair.

The Winds of Autumn: LAME

Winterhawk (1975)

          Beautifully shot in wide-open locations throughout the Montana wilderness, Winterhawk has the trappings of a proper Native American–themed Western saga, complete with appearances by such reliable Hollywood character actors as Elisha Cook Jr., Denver Pyle, and Woody Strode. Alas, the film’s merits are almost wholly superficial, because the characterizations are thin and the narrative is trite. One suspects that writer-director Charles B. Pierce knew he’d missed the mark during principal photography, because he adorns the finished film with a corny theme song and prosaic narration (both penned by Earl E. Smith), and those elements provide most of the story’s shape.

          Winterhawk begins on the tribal lands of the Blackfoot Indians, where proud chief Winterhawk (Michael Dante) watches his people suffer from smallpox, which was brought into their lives by white men. Taking the counsel of a friendly mountain man named Guthrie (Leif Erikson), Winterhawk travels to a white settlement seeking medicine. He is not only rebuffed but ambushed, so Winterhawk attempts reprisal by kidnapping two siblings from the encampment—pretty young woman Clayanna (Dawn Wells) and her little brother, Cotton (Charles Pierce Jr.). Then things get convoluted. Finley (Cook), the uncle of the kidnapped youths, forms a posse to chase Winterhawk, enlisting Guthrie as a guide. Shortly afterward, a thug named Gates (L.Q. Jones) attacks Guthrie’s cabin, raping and killing Guthrie’s Indian companion, Pale Flower (played by Sacheen Littlefeather, infamous in real life as Marlon Brando’s Oscar proxy).

          Pierce twists the story into knots to create comic relief from the interplay between the folks in Finley’s posse, to create tension from the various chases, and to disguise the fact that nothing much happens in the main plot. After all, scenes of Winterhawk and his captives include nothing more than shots of people riding across fields, mountains, and rivers. It’s not hard to figure out what went wrong, because Pierce clearly wanted to portray Winterhawk as a noble victim of circumstance, meaning that Winterhawk couldn’t be shown leading raiding parties or mistreating Clayanna. Instead, he does next to nothing. Supporting players deliver entertaining work, but the miscast Dante mistakes sleepwalking for stoicism, and Wells (of Gilligan’s Island fame) simply looks lost. On some level, Pierce’s heart was in the right place. Nonetheless, the countless shortcomings make Winterhawk a slog even though it’s supposed to be a song.

Winterhawk: LAME

Grayeagle (1977)

Among the more intriguing participants in the assembly line that fed the ’70s drive-in circuit was Charles B. Pierce, a Hollywood set decorator who moonlighted as an auteur of schlocky low-budget features. His work generally comprised rural horror and Westerns, and while Pierce evinced a measure of cinematic skill—for instance, his compositions are almost always pleasing to the eye—his storytelling ranged from the basically competent to the hilariously inept. Grayeagle, one of several Pierce-helmed Westerns with a Native American theme, falls on the “hilariously inept” end of the spectrum. A shameless copy of John Ford’s classic The Searchers (1956), only with a more sympathetic point of view on the Indian psyche, Grayeagle is dull, melodramatic, silly, and turgid. For instance, Pierce awkwardly attempts to generate operatic levels of emotion, so whenever he lingers in slow motion on a “significant” event, the picture slips into self-parody. It doesn’t help, of course, that two of the film’s most crucial performances are outrageously awful. The story  concerns trapper John Colter (Ben Johnson), who lives in the wilderness with his adult daughter, Beth (Lana Wood). One day, Cheyenne brave Grayeagle (Alex Cord) kidnaps Beth, so John and his trusty Indian sidekick, Standing Bear (Iron Eyes Cody), begin an epic rescue mission. Grayeagle is presented as a noble warrior, so, predictably, Beth develops affection for her captor. Eventually, all the plot strands converge in a maudlin twist ending that transforms Grayeagle from an action saga to a would-be tearjerker. Johnson and fellow screen vet Jack Elam, who plays a supporting role, deliver their usual professional work. Cody, best remembered for his role in an iconic anti-pollution commercial, contributes little. As for Cord and Wood, however, yikes. Cord, an Italian, is both miscast and terrible, preening in every shot while issuing dialogue with a comic-book version of plains stoicism. It’s hard not to laugh every time he appears onscreen. Wood, the younger sister of screen legend Natalie Wood, is worse. Screaming idiotically whenever she’s not forming goofy facial expressions, the actress is undeniably sexy but otherwise unwatchable. On the technical front, cinematographer/editor James W. Roberson generates attractive shots of the film’s Montana locations (though his cutting is sloppy at best), and Pierce lends texture with his usual eye for physical detail.

Grayeagle: LAME

The Evictors (1979)

Low-budget filmmaker Charles B. Pierce was relentless about trying to recapture the success of his first movie, The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972), a backwoods monster movie that was shamelessly sold as a true story, even though it wasn’t. For instance, Pierce’s last flick of the ’70s, The Evictors, wasn’t a true story either, despite hype to the contrary. Set in Louisiana circa 1942 (with extensive flashbacks to the same area in 1928), The Evictors employs the scary premise of displaced psychos tormenting the current residents of the psychos’ former home. Unfortunately, the movie is far less interesting than the concept. To the dismay of viewers suckered by the spooky poster and trailer, The Evictors comprises an hour of boring preamble and about 30 minutes of underwhelming climax. Like Pierce’s other Southern-fried shockers, the picture has atmospheric widescreen cinematography and decent production design, but there isn’t enough narrative to sustain a feature. The picture begins with a sepia-toned flashback of cops trying to evict rednecks from an attractive rural home in 1928. Bloodshed ensues. Cut to 1942, when newlyweds Ben Watkins (Michael Parks) and Ruth Watkins (Jessica Harper) decide to buy the house from overly solicitous realtor Jake Rudd (Vic Morrow). For the next hour, Ruth grows worried based on cryptic written threats and the resulting vague suspicions. (The acting in The Evictors is exactly as lifeless as the material deserves, though cult-fave starlet Harper is a uniquely vulnerable presence in any context.) To get a sense of how ineptly Pierce tries to build tension, consider the bit where Ruth walks into her property’s barn, looks directly at a group of chickens, then yelps when one of the chickens hops off the ground. Pierce tries to jack up moments like these with spooky music, but the sum effect is still ridiculous. Occasionally, the movie livens up with a grisly flashback—as when someone gets murdered with a horseshoe attached to the end of a stick—and, of course, when “the evictors” finally show up at the end of the movie, a few minutes of chasing and running and screaming occur. This is followed by a head-scratcher of a “twist” ending.

The Evictors: LAME

The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976)

Despite scoring a major hit on the drive-in circuit with his first movie, the Bigfoot-themed mockumentary The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972), low-budget auteur Charles B. Pierce dabbled in stories about Indians and moonshiners before returning to his comfort zone of Southern-fried horror. Once again flimflamming viewers by claiming that a highly fictionalized story was based on true events, Pierce’s The Town That Dreaded Sundown dramatizes the reign of terror that a real-life serial killer inflicted on a small Arkansas town during the 1940s. To give the story momentum, Pierce and his frequent screenwriter, Earl E. Smith, focus on a hard-driving Texas Ranger (Ben Johnson) who tries to capture the murderer. So far, we’re off to a good start—and, indeed, many aspects of The Town That Dreaded Sundown seem promising at first glance. The title is great, the poster is spooky, and the trope of a psycho appearing from darkness wearing a sack over his head while he wields a pitchfork is memorably disturbing. (A long sequence in which the so-called “Phantom Killer” stalks a woman played by Gilligan’s Island star Dawn Wells almost fulfills this gimmick’s promise.) Unfortunately, Pierce’s usual problems with maintaining a consistent tone and sustaining dramatic interest derail the film. Recalling the faux-newsreel style he used for Boggy Creek, Pierce presents most of the movie like a documentary, complete with narration and re-enactments, but he occasionally abandons the style to showcase long stretches of straight narrative. This doesn’t work. Furthermore, a comedy subplot about an inept policeman (played by Pierce) is beyond tiresome, and the murder scenes are so sadistic they feel out of character with the rest of the picture. In other words, enjoy the poster and skip the movie, otherwise you’ll say goodbye to 86 minutes that could have been spent more constructively.

The Town That Dreaded Sundown: LAME

The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972) & Return to Boggy Creek (1977)

          Hollywood set decorator Charles B. Pierce launched his career as a low-budget auteur by producing, directing, and photographing this ersatz documentary about sightings of a Sasquatch-like creature in the swamps of Fouke, Arkansas. Presented with very little synchronized sound (most of the commentary is provided by a narrator), the movie trudges through dull re-creations of encounters with the shambling man-beast. Pierce isn’t a bad cinematographer, at least when he’s got enough light for proper exposures (which isn’t always), so some sequences have passable atmosphere. With Pierce’s camera picking out evocative details like the way tree shadows fall across murky water, the best images in The Legend of Boggy Creek reveal why Pierce made his living embellishing cinematic visuals. Unfortunately, every other aspect of the picture explains why his directorial endeavors were limited to cheap drive-in attractions. Working with screenwriter Earl E. Smith, Pierce fails to generate any narrative momentum. It’s true that certain vignettes of slow-witted rednecks tromping around their backwoods hovels have a certain lurid appeal, but Pierce’s inability to deliver the horror-flick goods grows tiresome—since the picture comprises scenes of people reacting to something the audience cannot see, the whole movie is a tease.

          Worse, the movie feels padded, even though it runs less than 90 minutes. This is especially true when Pierce cuts to montages featuring godawful original songs. Yes, there’s actually a “Creature Theme,” a melancholy country ballad explaining the loneliness felt by the unseen monster. (Sample lyrics: “Perhaps he dimly wonders why/ there is no other such as I.”) Still, many ’70s moviegoers found The Legend of Boggy Creek sufficiently unsettling to make it a substantial hit—the movie earned a reported $20 million despite costing only $100,000 to make.

          An inevitable sequel followed in 1977, but Return to Boggy Creek was made without Pierce’s involvement; furthermore, Return to Boggy Creek is a fiction film rather than a fake documentary, and it’s also a kiddie movie. The plot concerns redneck children getting rescued from danger by a benevolent Bigfoot, and the biggest star in the cast is “Mary Ann” from Gilligan’s Island, the one and only Dawn Wells, who plays the kids’ worried mama. (Still cute as hell, by the way!) Interminably slow and stuffed with embarrassingly bad acting—the main character is played by amateurish teenager Dana Plato, who later achieved fame on the sitcom Diff’rent Strokes—Return to Boggy Creek is vanilla-flavored tripe of the least digestible variety. Apparently content to pretend Return to Boggy Creek didn’t exist, franchise originator Pierce returned with an “official” sequel, 1985’s The Barbaric Beast of Boggy Creek, Part II, widely regarded as one of the worst movies of the ’80s. After Pierce died in 2010, a new gang of no-budget filmmakers created the quasi-remake The Legend of Boggy Creek (2011), a home-video production featuring a guy in a gorilla suit.

The Legend of Boggy Creek: LAME
Return to Boggy Creek: SQUARE

Bootleggers (1974)

          True story. I was halfway through watching Bootleggers, a low-budget adventure story about feuding moonshiners in Prohibition-era Arkansas, when it occurred to me the picture was going down more smoothly than the usual offering from schlockmeister Charles B. Pierce: The story made sense, the acting was more or less passable, and the photography exploited real locations to fill the screen with lush colors. Then I glanced at the video sleeve and discovered Bootleggers was supposed to be a comedy. Not having laughed once during the first hour, this caught me by surprise, but by the time the movie was over, it didn’t really matter. Bootleggers is pleasant drive-in fare with better storytelling and visuals than might be expected—but it ain’t no gosh-darned comedy, to put it in the backwoods vernacular of the picture’s characters. Slim Pickens, at his a-hootin’ and a-hollerin’ best, plays the patriarch of a clan of moonshiners, with Dennis Fimple and Paul Koslo (don’t worry, I’d never heard of them, either) playing his grown-up grandkids, who cook the hooch and make deliveries while Slim keeps the home fires a-burnin’.

          The movie depicts various adventures as the boys avoid the law, romance local ladies, and tussle with another bootlegging clan. When the movie actually tries to be funny, it’s excruciating simply because of the cartoony music used to accentuate “comedy” bits, but when it grinds through vignettes of rambunctious redneckery without editorial commentary, it’s innocuous fun. The sheriff is stupid and sweaty, the “bad” bootleggers are dirty and sweaty, and the heroes are exuberant and sweaty. Future Charlie’s Angels beauty Jaclyn Smith shows up for a supporting role as a pistol-packin’ hairdresser, lending loveliness and sass to the proceedings, but the real star of the picture is cinematographer Tak Fujimoto (later to become a go-to guy for directors Jonathan Demme and M. Night Shyamalan). His images make Pierce’s slight story look a lot more credible than the story probably deserves to look.

Bootleggers: FUNKY

The Norseman (1978)

So shamelessly absurd that it’s almost amiable, this medieval adventure stars Lee Majors as the chief of a Viking war party that sets ashore in 11th-century America to rescue their lost buddies from the clutches of dastardly Native Americans, with the help of a weather-controlling wizard and an Indian woman who inexplicably turns on her people. Suffice to say that Majors, a strapping Michigander with the acting range of a Pet Rock, doesn’t exactly disappear into his role as “Thorval the Bold”; from his flat Midwestern line readings to his perfectly groomed ’70s-stud mustache, he’s preposterous. It doesn’t help that his Viking costume includes a black superhero mask for no discernible reason, and that he spends much of the movie running in slow motion, which makes the film seem like a dream sequence from one of his Six Million Dollar Man episodes. Jack Elam, another performer who’s about as American as they come, plays the wizard, scowling from under the black cloak that hides his unconvincing hunchback prosthetic. The picture starts out well enough with a fusillade of action and semi-coherent plotting, then devolves into a series of needlessly protracted fights and chase scenes; even the spectacle of watching Majors spout silly dialogue wears thin. (Sample line: “Our shores are laden with the remains of intruders whose ambitions were far greater than their fighting skills.”) Running the show is writer-producer-director Charles B. Pierce, a prolific hack who spared every expense making robustly bad movies like The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976). Pierce shot The Norseman in Florida—which everybody knows is exactly where Native Americans and Vikings would most likely tussle—and he didn’t break the bank acquiring the picture’s one impressive prop, because a closing credit thanks the city of Newburn, NC, “for furnishing the Viking boat.”

The Norseman: LAME