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Things begin to turn sour after Boone’s
wheelman Turnip (an unbearable performance by James Garner’s brother Jack)
is killed in an accident; Boone then tries to convince Turnip’s son Carter
(Terence McCarthy) to take over the old man’s route. While Carter
vacillates between Boone’s easy money and his fiancée's desire for him to
return to college, it is revealed that someone is killing off those who
have threatened to leak information about Boone to the authorities. All of
these loose ties come together in a conclusion that is fraught with both
overbaked melodrama and high improbability—par for the course in a
Herschell Gordon Lewis movie.
Filmed as The Devil Wears Clodhoppers
(which should give you some idea of Lewis’ opinion on rural culture),
This Stuff’ll Kill Ya! is a mess, but one delivered with the desperate
gusto of a community theater production gone awry and steaming brake-free
for the final curtain. The cast (all of whom are terrible) jaws vast
mouthfuls of meaningless dialogue around a non-existent story that can’t
decide if it’s a comedy or drama, and the two bits of brief gore seem more
like the fulfillment of a contractual obligation than a sub-plot. Yet
there is an insane sense of joie de vivre to the proceedings that
makes the film weirdly compelling. The cast hurl themselves into their
sub-human roles with mad abandon; Allen in particular delivers his endless
rants with a ferocity that belies the fact that you can’t understand
anything he’s saying due to the poor sound mix. And Lewis seems very
pleased with his handiwork, letting a scene like the “Isaiah wedding”
stretch on long after the audience has not only gotten the joke, but grown
to find it interminably stupid (the gag has a new groom share his bride
with his fellow cretins). Other exploitation filmmakers would have thrown
in the towel with nothing to offer an angry/stoned/bored/horny audience
but yokel humor, but Lewis and Co. seem not to mind. They’re enjoying
themselves, so who are we to spoil their fun?
Image Entertainment’s disc pairs This
Stuff'll Kill Ya! with the long-lost Year of the Yahoo, Lewis’s
version of A Face in the Crowd, and includes interesting commentary
from Daniel Krogh, who worked on both films and later penned the
invaluable Amazing World of Herschell Gordon Lewis book. The DVD is
rounded out by a clip from an earlier HGL cornpone pic, Moonshine
Mountain (also with Allen) and a brace of Lewis trailers.
—Paul Gaita |
