We watched The Farmer on the Drive-In Asylum Double Feature last year and I've been thinking about it ever since. I'd waited years to watch it and it more than was worth it.
This film was never released on home media - not on VHS, Beta, Laserdisc, DVD or any other release outside of theaters - until Scorpion Releasing put it out in 2022. Now, you can easily watch it on Tubi, a movie people waited for years to watch.
Originally written as a vehicle for Clint Eastwood - screenwriter George Fargo had acted with him in Dirty Harry, Play Misty for Me, Paint Your Wagon and Kelly's Heroes - this was sold as a twenty-five page treatment to producer and star Gary Conway, who plays Kyle Martin. Martin is a hero of World War II, but his medals don't help him run his one-man farm. He saves a gangster named Johnny (Michael Dante), who gives him $1,500, but it's not enough. The bank barely pays him attention.
Johnny has no such money issues, especially after he screws over a mobster named Passini (George Memmoli) for $50,000. The boss finds him, kills Johnny's bodyguard and then burns his eyes with acid. The gangster remembers the military man and has his girl Betty (Angel Tompkins) offer Kyle $50,000 to kill everyone. Kyle turns it down until Angel gets assaulted and his friend Gumshoe (Ken Renard) is killed.
And that's when he basically becomes an unkillable slasher, taking out every single gangster one by one.
According to Tompkins, there was an alternate ending where - spoiler warning - the black soldier that Kyle stood up for at the beginning of the movie that has become a mob killer actually kills both of them. As she had never seen the movie, she had no idea that there is a happy ending.
Directed by David Berlatsky (the only movie he directed, but he edited The Deep) and written by Fargo, Janice Eymann, John Carmody and Patrick Regan, this is the kind of tough guy movie that has dialogue like "You made two mistakes: one was getting up and the other was making fun of Shirley Temple." It also has a part for Sonny Shroyer, who would soon be Enos on The Dukes of Hazzard.
Memmoli got injured while making this and was in the hospital for most of the shooting. He only weighs 190 pounds in this, way less than his normal weight, but would get to nearly 500 pounds before his death. That accident also kept him from being in Taxi Driver.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops reviewed this movie and said, "Revenge story of a World War II veteran (Gary Conway) has arty pretensions but not a spark of intelligence. Mechanically directed by David Berlatsky, it is excessively brutal and sexually degrading."
Sounds like a great review.
The Farmer has a song on its soundtrack by the name of "The American Dreamer" by singer-songwriter Gene Clark. How strange that it is from the Dennis Hopper documentary The American Dreamer, which is about the making of The Last Movie.
Conway is totally Rick Dalton. He went from his TV show Land of the Giants to appearing in low budget films and finally making this film, his own, to improve his career. He'd also bring a script he wanted to star in to Cannon and it totally got changed around. That script would end up being Over the Top and Conway would get to act in one Cannon film, playing The Lion in American Ninja 2.
There's just something about this movie. Is it how inscrutable its hero is? How cathartic the violence is? The strange soundtrack by Hugo Montenegro? The fact that it took forever to be seen?
I don't know. But I do know I think about it all the time.
This film was never released on home media - not on VHS, Beta, Laserdisc, DVD or any other release outside of theaters - until Scorpion Releasing put it out in 2022. Now, you can easily watch it on Tubi, a movie people waited for years to watch.
Originally written as a vehicle for Clint Eastwood - screenwriter George Fargo had acted with him in Dirty Harry, Play Misty for Me, Paint Your Wagon and Kelly's Heroes - this was sold as a twenty-five page treatment to producer and star Gary Conway, who plays Kyle Martin. Martin is a hero of World War II, but his medals don't help him run his one-man farm. He saves a gangster named Johnny (Michael Dante), who gives him $1,500, but it's not enough. The bank barely pays him attention.
Johnny has no such money issues, especially after he screws over a mobster named Passini (George Memmoli) for $50,000. The boss finds him, kills Johnny's bodyguard and then burns his eyes with acid. The gangster remembers the military man and has his girl Betty (Angel Tompkins) offer Kyle $50,000 to kill everyone. Kyle turns it down until Angel gets assaulted and his friend Gumshoe (Ken Renard) is killed.
And that's when he basically becomes an unkillable slasher, taking out every single gangster one by one.
According to Tompkins, there was an alternate ending where - spoiler warning - the black soldier that Kyle stood up for at the beginning of the movie that has become a mob killer actually kills both of them. As she had never seen the movie, she had no idea that there is a happy ending.
Directed by David Berlatsky (the only movie he directed, but he edited The Deep) and written by Fargo, Janice Eymann, John Carmody and Patrick Regan, this is the kind of tough guy movie that has dialogue like "You made two mistakes: one was getting up and the other was making fun of Shirley Temple." It also has a part for Sonny Shroyer, who would soon be Enos on The Dukes of Hazzard.
Memmoli got injured while making this and was in the hospital for most of the shooting. He only weighs 190 pounds in this, way less than his normal weight, but would get to nearly 500 pounds before his death. That accident also kept him from being in Taxi Driver.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops reviewed this movie and said, "Revenge story of a World War II veteran (Gary Conway) has arty pretensions but not a spark of intelligence. Mechanically directed by David Berlatsky, it is excessively brutal and sexually degrading."
Sounds like a great review.
The Farmer has a song on its soundtrack by the name of "The American Dreamer" by singer-songwriter Gene Clark. How strange that it is from the Dennis Hopper documentary The American Dreamer, which is about the making of The Last Movie.
Conway is totally Rick Dalton. He went from his TV show Land of the Giants to appearing in low budget films and finally making this film, his own, to improve his career. He'd also bring a script he wanted to star in to Cannon and it totally got changed around. That script would end up being Over the Top and Conway would get to act in one Cannon film, playing The Lion in American Ninja 2.
There's just something about this movie. Is it how inscrutable its hero is? How cathartic the violence is? The strange soundtrack by Hugo Montenegro? The fact that it took forever to be seen?
I don't know. But I do know I think about it all the time.