Chris Forbes | Through the Shattered Lens

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing CHiPs, which ran on NBC from 1977 to 1983. The entire show is currently streaming on Freevee!

This week, CHiPs makes me cry!

Episode 1.14 “Rustling”

(Dir by Phil Bondelli, originally aired on January 12th, 1978)

This week’s episode of CHiPs featured a scene that brought tears to my mismatched eyes.

A drunk driver (played by G.W. Bailey) swerves across the highway and causes another car to flip over. While Ponch chases after the driver, Baker goes to investigate the crash. He discovers that the car’s driver is a 17 year-old girl named Susie (Pamelyn Ferdin) and she has been pinned under the wreckage. He manages to free her and carry her away from the car before it explodes. YAY! Another life saved by Jon Baker, right?

That’s when Susie says that she can’t feel her legs.

That scene got to me. It was far more well-acted than anything that I think one would normally expect to find on a episode of CHiPs, with both Ferdin and Larry Wilcox bringing a lot of emotional sincerity to their roles. Susie realizes that she may never walk again. Baker realizes that, just because he saved her from the car, he can’t save Susie from the other consequences of the accident. I wanted to cry. Actually, I did cry.

Now, I should admit that I’m recovering from a sprained ankle and I was doing my ankle exercises while watching this scene. So, not only did I already have tears in my eyes (seriously, some of those exercises hurt!) but I was also feeling pretty emotional. But still, even if I was just watching this scene while sitting on a couch, I think it would have had the same effect on me.

Of course, for the record, Ponch does capture the drunk driver (and the driver starts to sob when he realizes what he has done). And, by the end of the episode, Baker is informed that Susie is going to be okay. I was happy about that.

Excuse me, I’m starting to cry again….

Okay, believe it or not, that was only a small part of the episode. The main storyline featured the great L.Q. Jones as a cattle rustler who, when he’s not driving his truck full of stolen cattle, rides a motorcycle. Fortunately, after a lengthy chase, Baker and Ponch are able to capture him and his accomplice (Paul Tuerpe). It was a pretty simple story but, at the same time, L.Q. Jones was one of those brilliant character actors who make even the most mundane of characters interesting.

Also, over the course of the episode, Ponch and Baker deal with an irate driver (Mill Watson) who claims that he was only speeding because his gear shift failed. In court, Ponch is able to prove that the gear shift didn’t break by pointing out that the brake lights would have come on in that case. (“Your honor,” the defense attorney says, “my client would like to change his plea to guilty.”) Ponch and Baker also stop a magician and his assistant and are so fascinated by the magician’s tricks that they nearly forget to write his assistant a ticket.

Finally, Ponch arranges for everyone to meet at Baker’s apartment to throw him a surprise birthday party. Whoops! Baker’s birthday isn’t for another three months. Ponch looked at Baker’s personnel file and misread his employment number as being his birthdate. Oh, Ponch! Still, the party is a success. Getraer shows up with zucchini. The magician shows up and performs a trick that involves tossing milk on Ponch and Baker. What? Well, whatever.

What’s important is that one scene that brought tears my eyes. The rest of the episode may have been generic but that one scene was beautifully done and I’ll never forget it.

Does this sound familiar?

Grady and Bobby Lee Hagg (played by Kiel Martin and Jame Mitchum) are just some good ol’ boys, never meaning no harm, but they’ve still been in trouble with the law since they day they were born. They live in rural Georgia, on a farm owned by their Uncle Jesse (Arthur Hunnicutt). Uncle Jesse’s an expert on two things: the Bible and how to brew the best whiskey. Uncle Jesse is moonshiner with integrity. No one knows his formula and he won’t sell his moonshine to just anyone. He doesn’t want anything to do with the New York mob and their efforts to move in on the moonshine racket.

Uncle Jesse’s main rival is Jake Rainey (George Ellis), the corpulent county commissioner who used to be Jesse’s business partner but who now is in league with the Mafia. Jake and the Hagg boys have a rivalry that is sometimes friendly but still dangerous. Helping Jake control the county is a formerly honest lawman named Rosco P. Coltrane (Bruce Atkins).

The Hagg boys are on probation so they can’t leave the county and they can’t carry guns. Instead, they hunt with bow and arrow. They drive a fast car that they’ve named Traveller (after General Lee’s horse). Grady dreams of going to Nashville with Beth Anne Eubanks (Chris Forbes) and becoming a country music star. Bobby is a laid back race car driver who is having an affair with Jake Rainey’s wife.

The film follows the Hagg boys as they transport moonshine, outrun the police, and occasionally get into bar fights. The movie was shot on location on Georgia, features several car chases, and it’s narrated by country singer Waylon Jennings.

Moonrunners was filmed in 1973 but not released until 1975. It didn’t get much attention when it was released but it did go on to inspire a television series called The Dukes of Hazzard. Even considering the show’s popular success and current cult status, Moonrunners is still a largely unknown film. (It’s so obscure that Warner Bros. was reportedly shocked to discover that they were required to pay several million in royalties to the film’s producers before they could move ahead with their own film adaptation of The Dukes of Hazzard.) However, Moonrunners is superior to The Dukes of Hazzard in every way.

Of course, being better than The Dukes of Hazzard may seem like a low bar to clear but Moonrunners is still one of the better moonshiner films out there. The car chases are genuinely exciting and well-filmed and the cast feels authentic. Arthur Hunnicutt and George Ellis both seem like they naturally belong next to a still while James Mitchum and Kiel Martin are well-paired as Grady and Bobby Lee. Mitchum, in particular, channels the laconic charisma of his father, Robert. Not surprisingly, Moonracers is far rougher and has more of an edge than The Dukes of Hazzard. The TV show may have been for kids but the movie is not.

It’s a B-movie, of course. The soundtrack, which is full of outlaw country, is sometimes obtrusive. I burst out laughing at the film’s most dramatic moment because Waylon Jennings suddenly started singing a song called “Whiskey Man.” The DVD release appears to have been copied straight from a VHS tape so the images were often grainy. It’s not a perfect movie but I still enjoyed Moonrunners for what it was, a celebration of fast cars, pretty girls, and rebellious attitudes. Your collection of car chase films is incomplete without it!