Morgan Woodward | Through the Shattered Lens

For one last time, Buford Pusser is back! The 1977 film Walking Tall: Final Chapter ends the story that was begun in Walking Tall and continued in Walking Tall Part II. And it turns out that the final chapter is pretty much just like the previous two chapters. In fact, I’m tempted to just tell you go reread my review of Walking Tall Part II because that review works just as well for most of the Final Chapter.

Final Chapter starts with footage from the first Walking Tall, with Bo Svenson awkwardly inserted in place of Joe Don Baker. Once again, we watch as Elizabeth Hartman is shot in the back of the head and Svenson — in the role of Buford Pusser — is shot in the face. Oh my God, we think, how many times can the exact same thing happen to the exact same character!?

Oh wait — it turns out that Buford is just remembering the death of his wife. Buford is still haunted by that day and he’s still out for vengeance. For the next hour or so, we follow Buford as he and his deputies blow up moonshiners across Tennessee. After each arrest, an attorney shows up and yells at Buford for violating everyone’s civil rights. In response, Buford smirks until the attorney gets so mad that he decides to run for sheriff himself.

Buford doesn’t give his opponent much of a chance. As one of his deputies puts it, this guy is just a “bleeding heart liberal.” (But if he’s so liberal, what’s he doing in Tennessee? Off with you, sir — return to Vermont!) Instead of campaigning, Buford spends his time hunting down more moonshiners. When he discovers that one moonshiner is also an abusive father, he personally drives the man’s son down to the local orphanage. Oddly enough, Buford does not offer to adopt the kid himself.

Anyway, to the shock of everyone, Buford is not reelected. No longer sheriff, he struggles to find a full-time job and makes plans to run in the next election. One of the moonshiners shows up and taunts Buford until Buford is forced to beat him up in the middle of the street. The new sheriff show up and demands to know what happened. None of the townspeople are willing to snitch on Buford. Good for them!

After about an hour and a half of this, something interesting actually happens. A film producer drives up to the Pusser Farm and tells Buford that he wants to make a movie out of his life. “We’re going to tell the story exactly how it happened!” the producer assures him. In the next scene, Buford is advising the director of Walking Tall on how to properly film a car chase.

And you know what? These scenes of Buford watching his life story be filmed are actually rather charming. For the only time in the series, Bo Svenson actually appears to be having fun in these scenes. And, when Buford runs from a theater while watching the recreation of his wife’s murder, it’s actually a very effective moment.

Anyway, there’s not much running time left after all of that. We see Buford sign a contract to play himself in the sequel and, by this point, we all know what happened afterward. Buford was killed in a mysterious car accident. But fear not! The film opens with a heavenly choir and Svenson’s voice booming from the heavens so we all know that Buford Pusser is arresting moonshiners in Heaven.

And good for him!

Peace be with you, Buford Pusser.

Two of my favorite films of all-time happen to be very similar. In fact, one could say that they’re pretty much the same films. I’m talking about Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai and it’s Western-remake by John Sturges, The Magnificent Seven. Kurosawa’s film is one of the greatest films of all-time and it’s no wonder that many have taken the film’s story of the downtrodden hiring a band of misfits, rogues, but still honorable men to help them fight against huge odds.

One such film that tries to add onto Kurosawa film’s legacy was the Roger Corman-produced scifi-adventure film Battle Beyond the Stars. This 1980 film was one of Corman’s many attempts to cash-in on the Star Wars phenomena, but in his usual low-budget style.

For a low-budget scifi film, Battle Beyond the Stars happened to have quite a cast one doesn’t usually see in such productions. While it had such grindhouse and exploitation regulars as John Saxon and Sybil Danning, it also starred the wholesome Richard Thomas from The Waltons and George Peppard (who would later become famous with a new generation as Hannibal Smith of The A-Team). The film would be directed by Jimmy T. Murakami, but from watching the film one could see Corman’s fingerprints all over the production from the script which was pretty lean and cut to the basic outline of Kurosawa’s original film. There’s not much fluff to bog down the pacing of the film.

This film has always been a guilty pleasure of mine because it so resemble Seven Samurai and The Magificent Seven, but adds in it’s own unique style and look to a well-worn and well-trodden plot. It was much later that I found out that James Cameron had a major hand in the special effects work in the film. Think about that for a moment. The self-proclaimed “King of the World” who literally breaks film budget records every time he begins work on a film did FX work on battle Beyond the Stars whose effects budget probably wouldn’t buy a day’s worth of crafts table eating for his most modestly budgeted films.

Lisa Marie always loved to say that grindhouse and exploitation films are some of most honest films out there. There’s no bullshit to what we see on the screen. It’s filmmakers forced to be daring and inventive because the lack of resources forces them to think outside the box. Battle Beyond the Stars might be seen as a mediocre attempt to cash-in on a scifi cultural phenomena, but it does so with a go for broke mentality that makes it such a fun film to watch. It’s not the greatest thing Corman has ever produced and some would even call it a very bad film, but once one looked past it’s rough and flawed surface then one could see a gem in the rough hidden beneath.

Oh, this remake of the remake of the original also happened to star one Robert Vaughn who was one of original Magnificent Seven.