Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry

"Any town's a nice little town when you nail a broad." Words to live by, n'est-ce pas?

Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry is a movie I remember from my childhood—not that I would have gotten to see it, of course, but I remember the ads in the paper, and sensitive child that I was, I found the title vaguely alarming. If only I had known that Larry's craziness is confined almost entirely to his reckless driving, and that Mary isn't really dirty, unless you define dirty as speaking with a dubious American accent. But I guess Dubiously Accented Mary, Unsafe Larry wouldn't have put asses in seats.

What Mary (Susan George) and Larry (Peter Fonda)—along with Deke (Adam Roarke), Larry's mechanic and the brains of the outfit—are is insufferably smug, to an extent that we kind of wanted to see them get caught by the sheriff Vic Morrow. For a hard-driving gang of robbers, they don't really seem to make much progress in getting out of Sheriff Vic's jurisdiction. Nevertheless, the chases, involving the muscliest sort of muscle cars that sound impressive even to non-gearheads like Athens and myself, are kind of exciting. There's even a duel between Larry's charger and a helocopter that's pretty cool. And then, in a cautionary moment befitting Last Clear Chance... well, I don't want to spoil the jaw-dropping ending, but let's just hope what happens led to safer railroad crossings throughout this county.