PRIME CUT - Lee Marvin, Gene Hackman

[The Burgomaster]

I got this DVD yesterday and watched it last night.

This is a well-done, off-beat crime movie/black comedy.  Lee Marvin stars as "Devlin," a hit man who is hired by an Irish mob boss (played by Eddie "Popeye" Egan, the real cop who cracked the French Connection case) to collect $500,000 from Kansas City slaughterhouse owner/drug dealer/prostitution king Gene Hackman.  Hackman's character is named "Mary Ann."

Along the way, Marvin rescues drugged out Sissy Spacek from a life of forced prostitution.  (Hackman auctions off drugged, naked hookers inside his cattle stables!)

Marvin and Hackman both play it cool . . . Marvin wants to collect the money, but Hackman refuses to hand it over.

There is a suspensful scene in which Marvin and Spacek are running through a wheat field while a guy driving a huge, mechanical reaper chases them and tries to grind them up into tiny pieces.  Spielberg must have seen this before making JAWS.

There are also a couple of good shootouts.

And the music is by 1970s crime film icon Lalo Schifrin!

At 86 minutes, this is a fast-paced, no nonsense "tough guy" movie.  But, even with its short ruinning time, it does manage to develop most of the major characters.  Check it out.

[Neville]

I remember seing this one when I was a kid and being completely horrified at the generous ammount of violence. I'd love to see it again.

P.D: To think director Michael Ritchie devoted the rest of his career to direct comedies for people like Eddie Murphy makes me cringe.

[Mofo Rising]

I saw this on the shelf at Blockbuster and picked it up on a whim.  I really enjoyed it.  I missed out on all these "tough guy" films growing up, so this was the first I'd seen.  I'd recommend it to anybody.

[peter johnson]

I saw this on the Big Screen in Virginia when it first came out.  This was way before R ratings, even before GP, so all you had was M or G.  Anyone was allowed into an M film.
Boy, did this youngster ever get an eyefull!!
Sissy Spacek is nude throughout almost the whole thing, and utterly lovely.  Even in the "clothed" sequence where Marvin takes her out to eat at her first nice restuarant, she's wearing a green see-through top.
The other girls are naked and cute too.
That and the scene where the combine devours the Cadillac, and neatly bales it into a black steel block, make this a badmovies must see!!
And, oh yeah, it's got these guys acting in it too -- they're pretty good . . .
peter johnson/denny crane

[Yaddo 42]

Maybe I should give this one another shot, I saw it years ago on TV and hated. Considered one of the worst films Marvin made in the 70s, when he made some really lousy stuff. It wasn't as bad as "Avalanche Express" and nowhere near the grubby depths of the awful "The Klansman/The Burning Cross/KKK" but it's hard reach those depths anyway. Just did not care for then.

And while "Prime Cut" was an atypical film for Michael Ritchie, he did make some great and pretty good lighter films along the way: The Bad News Bears, The Candidate (a personal favorite, and mostly still relevant even today), Diggstown, Fletch, Semi-Tough, and Smile. Yes, he made "The Golden Child", the stupid and annoying waste of talent "Survivors" and even the turd "The Island" starring Michael Caine. But don't be so quick to write him off, Neville, most of his films are kind of out of place on this site but I'd recommend any of that first group of films I mentioned to anyone.

[Neville]

Yeah, maybe I was too rough on Ritchie, but I though tha if he was capable of doing a flick like this one, he should have made more thrillers instead of comedies, specially considering how mediocre thay are. Although yes, of course, he is no Ed Wood.

[Yaddo 42]

Maybe he took what work he could get, looking at the films from his heyday, only "The Bad News Bears" and maybe "Fletch" could be considered huge commercial hits. The other good films are either critical favorites (like "The Candidate" and "Smile") or films that people may like but have small or no following at all. I like "Semi-Tough" but it is very dated, only vaguely resembles the book, and the cast seems to be having lots of fun even though they are only going through the motions acting-wise. But I know few people IRL who have seen it or even heard of it at all now.

So he probably wasn't one of the top tier directors who had first pick of projects, or maybe he liked light comedy better, he certainly had a flair for it at times. Even if I'm wrong about "Prime Cut" (I may give it a rental soon and see), he also directed "The Island" which which is an awful thriller.

And looking at my last post, I seem to have left out the word "it" three different times in the first paragraph.