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North Carolina maverick Earl Owensby delivered his first offering to the Southern drive-in circuit with Challenge, a shameless riff on the previous year’s Walking Tall. Whereas that film adapted the story of real-life lawman Buford Pusser, Challenge invents a paint-by-numbers protagonist brought to life, if one uses that word loosely, by Owensby’s debut performance. Looking a bit trimmer here than he did in subsequent pictures, Owensby aspires to Burt Reynolds levels of manliness, but he exceeds Reynolds only in body-hair density. Seriously, Owensby is so furry here that it’s as if he’s already prepping for the werewolf picture he made at the end of the ’70s. Getting back to the saga of Frank Challenge (yes, that’s really the main character’s name), this is autopilot revenge cinema, so anemically conceived that viewers never learn what the villain intends to accomplish or why Frank was initially determined to thwart the villain’s scheme. Bad guy hurt good guy. Good guy hurt bad guy. Go with it.
Frank (Owensby) is a Senatorial candidate with a wife and child, and thanks to a TV broadcast that plays during the opening scene, viewers learn he’s “ruggedly handsome” in addition to being a virtuous construction magnate-turned-politician. Somehow, Frank has acquired papers that incriminate W.F. Guthrie (William Hicks), so our hero arranges a meeting with authorities. Along the way, Frank explains his plans to a fishing buddy who secretly owes money to Guthrie, so the buddy rats on Frank, leading Guthrie’s thugs to beat Frank and leave him for dead, then burn down the hero’s house with his wife and child inside. Cue the Walking Tall cycle of a long hospital recovery followed by systematic revenge. Once Challenge gets cooking—simmering is more like it, but you get the idea—Owensby largely ditches characterization and plot, as demonstrated by a comically overlong chase scene that features three (!) lengthy musical cues separated by quiet interludes. Yes, Challenge is the kind of unhurried movie in which action sequences have rest periods.
Nonetheless, like Owensby’s other revenge pictures (he faltered whenever he tried anything else), Challenge is watchably stupid and violent. Nominally directed by Martin Beck, the picture boasts Owensby’s usual hallmarks—extensive location photography, nonprofessional actors, simplistic dialogue, and thrills delivered on the cheap. Viewers get one fire, two explosions, and exactly one martial-arts brawl (notwithstanding a training match), though Owensby leaves room for a nostalgic montage set to a goopy ballad. Calling this movie perfunctory is giving it too much credit, but there’s a certain charm to the project’s unpretentiousness. Plus, even though the picture gets mired in dull stretches, Challenge ends well. The final showdown is somewhat offbeat, helped greatly by the backdrop of a stark forest, and the closing theme (which describes the final scene in granular detail) is hilariously dumb. Still, Owensby must have read his audience right, because a quickie sequel, The Brass Ring, appeared later the same year.
Challenge: FUNKY
Frank (Owensby) is a Senatorial candidate with a wife and child, and thanks to a TV broadcast that plays during the opening scene, viewers learn he’s “ruggedly handsome” in addition to being a virtuous construction magnate-turned-politician. Somehow, Frank has acquired papers that incriminate W.F. Guthrie (William Hicks), so our hero arranges a meeting with authorities. Along the way, Frank explains his plans to a fishing buddy who secretly owes money to Guthrie, so the buddy rats on Frank, leading Guthrie’s thugs to beat Frank and leave him for dead, then burn down the hero’s house with his wife and child inside. Cue the Walking Tall cycle of a long hospital recovery followed by systematic revenge. Once Challenge gets cooking—simmering is more like it, but you get the idea—Owensby largely ditches characterization and plot, as demonstrated by a comically overlong chase scene that features three (!) lengthy musical cues separated by quiet interludes. Yes, Challenge is the kind of unhurried movie in which action sequences have rest periods.
Nonetheless, like Owensby’s other revenge pictures (he faltered whenever he tried anything else), Challenge is watchably stupid and violent. Nominally directed by Martin Beck, the picture boasts Owensby’s usual hallmarks—extensive location photography, nonprofessional actors, simplistic dialogue, and thrills delivered on the cheap. Viewers get one fire, two explosions, and exactly one martial-arts brawl (notwithstanding a training match), though Owensby leaves room for a nostalgic montage set to a goopy ballad. Calling this movie perfunctory is giving it too much credit, but there’s a certain charm to the project’s unpretentiousness. Plus, even though the picture gets mired in dull stretches, Challenge ends well. The final showdown is somewhat offbeat, helped greatly by the backdrop of a stark forest, and the closing theme (which describes the final scene in granular detail) is hilariously dumb. Still, Owensby must have read his audience right, because a quickie sequel, The Brass Ring, appeared later the same year.
Challenge: FUNKY
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