The Dion Brothers
Two rural West Virginia brothers leave home, rob an armored car and become fugitives.
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- Cast:
- Stacy Keach , Frederic Forrest , Margot Kidder , Barry Primus , Richard Romanus , Denny Miller , Robert Phillips
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Reviews
While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.
The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.
Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.
By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.
I used to catch this quirky product of the 1970s late at night on KTRK, Houston's ABC affiliate. I could never let this little gem go by without trying to catch a little of it and usually couldn't let go of it once I started.Stacy Keach is the more "sophisticated" of the two Dion brothers, simply because he has chosen to sample the world outside their West Virginia coal mining community. He quits his factory job and returns to lure his bumpkin brother (played wonderfully by Waxahachie, Texas native Fredric Forrest) into a scheme to establish a seafood restaurant. The trouble is, the restaurant is to be financed via an armored car robbery with a gang that includes Denny Miller and Richard Romanus. Romanus double crosses the group and the Dion brothers take out after him. Yeah, Margot Kidder shows up but so does stuntman, director, writer & actor Hal Needham in an uncredited role as a guy in a bathtub.
I happened to catch about the last 45 minutes of the movie,late night about 8 years ago. What a wild and funny 45 minutes.I was absolutely knocked out by chase-shoot-out at the end that takes place at night ,inside an old hotel that's being torn down with a wrecking ball....Incredible. I vaguely remember Stacy Keach ,stealing a cop car, faking being a cop and strong arming some winos....Wino to Keach"Hey,why Ya hasslin us?...Keach"It's my job".You're correct. They don't make them like that anymore.Great movie. The golden70's...Hopefully it will see the light of day as a DVD along with other lost treasures...Hickey and Boggs being one such.
why won't IFC ,Sundance,TV Land or Bravo rescue the Hundreds of Classic movies that sit in vaults in Hollywood while we are forced to watch mediocre films for rookie hollwood film school wannabe's...Matt & Ben , and Vince & Jon...are Not takin any risks...nor are they pushing anything but their own type of one dimensional portraits stuck in the Material World of INSTANT GRATIFICATION....They want it ALL NOW! when will be over this drought of creativity? Am I the only one who senses that we are in the age of cookie cuter movie-making, by people who have arrived and risen to star status overnight, and they don't dare lose any money & power by working with quality scripts that call for real acting ability.
I try to describe this movie to people or ask them if they've seen it and I always sound like a wombat. I just remember laughing myself wet the last time I saw it, sometime around 1985. I remember Stacey Keach or Frederick Forrest threatening some guy with a live lobster, and I remember the guy in the bathtub more annoyed than scared when they were dipping the plugged-in razor in the water. "I don't even know those guys!!" he wails as they leave. No, they don't make them like this anymore, and it's shameful. I truly think Tarantino might have been inspired by this movie when he and Clooney played the Gecko brothers in "From Dusk Til Dawn', only these brothers were A lot more fun. Pitiful, too, if it is locked away in some vault. It's the kind of movie that would turn up on FLIX at 4AM on a work night. And that's not a BAD thing...