Entry 118: Pray for the Wildcats (1974)

Pray for the Wildcats (1974)

Dir: Robert Michael Lewis

"They're off on a wild motorcycle trip into hell...a bully...a coward...a survivor...and a man who faces his own death and finds a courage he never knew he had."

 

For this, the first of a hopefully-annual series of Marjoe May entries, Marjoe is joined by "America's best-loved actor" in the fucking bonkers role of a lifetime, as well as a KILLER supporting cast!  You'll never look at old Andy Griffith Show episodes the same way again!  Grab your dirt bike and helmet, pack a lunch and for fuck's sake, don't forget to Pray for the Wildcats as we journey from the Basement of Sleaze to the darker side of Mayberry...

In this ABC-TV movie, TV's Andy Griffith (The Andy Griffith Show, Matlock) plays scumbag pillar-of-industry and dirtbike enthusiast Sam Farragut, who enjoys shredding some sick sand mounds with his favorite trio of ad men, TV's Bill Shatner (Star Trek, T.J. Hooker), TV's Robert Reed (The Brady Bunch, Roots) and our Marjoe, while their wives gossip and unpack picnic baskets.  Reed is married to bitchy, entitled Angie Dickinson (Big Bad Mama, Dressed to Kill), Shatner is married to meek, supportive Lorraine Gary (Jaws, 1941) and Marjoe is partnered with artsy free-spirit Janet Margolin (Annie Hall, Ghostbusters II).  You know you're in trouble when Dickinson refers to Griffith as "Big Daddy" and her gropes young Margolin lustily during the group's lunch!  Anyway, the ad boys have devised a new campaign for Farragut, but he'll only agree to accept it if they agree to accompany him on a several-thousand mile bike trip through Baja, Mexico.  Beleaguered Shatner is reticent, but he's secretly been terminated and only gets to collect his severance package if the campaign is approved.  Ex-hippy Marjoe (complete with fantastic leather pants and a cowboy shirt!) agrees to the trip (and declined to refute Farragut's earlier groping of his gal-pal) because he's enjoying his acceptance by corporate America and is slowly subverting his once-free lifestyle, but his life suddenly becomes complicated when Margolin announces she's pregnant.  Reed, meanwhile, is consumed by his work and sees the trip as a chance to further distance himself from his marital problems with Disckinson, who's secretly having an affair with the Shat!  Consumed by guilt over his affair, and worried about providing for Gary and their children after his impending termination, Shatner takes out a hefty life insurance policy...the stone-cold motherfucker doesn't intend to come back!  Under these soap opera auspices, Farragut and the boys head down to Mexico, resplendent in custom "Wildcats" jackets that Farragut's had designed for them.  They stop off at a bar south of the border, where they drink tequila while a hippy girl belly dances to a mariachi tune.  Then, in a scene that will absolutely make you doubt your sanity, goddamn MATLOCK gets visibly aroused by the girl; he starts hooting, hollering and cat-calling, then tries to force himself upon her ("It's just you and me, baby...Here I come, honey!") and beats the shit out of her long-haired boyfriend, before he's restrained by Shatner and Reed.  When Farragut and Marjoe (who's now wearing pink and white striped leather pants, by the way) make a detour, they come upon the hippy couple from the bar, at which point Andy GODDAMN Griffith tries to buy a piece of ass with a hundred dollar bill!  Holy shit, this movie is something else!  When the boyfriend refuses to pimp out his girl, Andy hacks the radiator on their van with an axe, stranding this peace-practicing couple in the desert!  Later, the boys are stopped by police officers who inform them that the couple has died; him from exposure and her from a snakebite.  The rest of the movie's fairly mundane, with all of the disparate plot threads converging in a climax in which Gary admits to Dickinson that she knows of the affair, Dickinson admits knowledge of the life insurance policy, reliable Reed lets his simmering anger with Shatner boil over to the surface and Shatner has a breakdown ("I'm the man of 1,000 faces, but...when I look in the mirror, there's no one staring back.") before confronting Griffith in a fateful cliffside race!  Oh yeah, shithead Marjoe gets a MAJOR bummer of a twist-ending when he reunites with Margolin...

HOLY.  SHIT.  I love, love, LOVE this movie!  They don't make 'em like they used to, folks!  Today, TV movies are intentionally-crappy, CGI-fueled shark-fests or touchy-feely relationship dramas, but in the '70's, we got FANTASTIC shit like this, with slumming already-B-listers bringing their all and elevating what would otherwise be hackneyed, B-movie drivel into absolute GOLD!  Where else are you going to find Andy Griffith cast as an irredeemable villain, with Marjoe Gortner as his toady, pitted against Captain Kirk and Mike fucking Brady?  Production values really don't matter in a film like this; it's all about the performances, and Pray for the Wildcats delivers in spades, with a cast of has-been or up-and-coming stars competing against each other AND everybody winning!  From Griffith's unhinged madman to Reed's steely-eyed corporate lifer, from Gortner's hippy who realizes true value too late to Shatner...doing his Shatner thing, they're all winners.  Best of all, this flick was sold in Hallmark stores as part of a DVD 4-pack to elderly folks looking for entertainment in the vein of The Andy Griffith Show or Matlock...I'd give my goddamn arm to be a fly on that wall!  Chock full of great seventies fashions (dig Shatner's suits and Griffith's country westernwear!), cut-rate, slower than hell dirt bike "stunts" and characters who are all either irredeemable assholes or unlikably pathetic, Pray for the Wildcats gets my highest possible recommendation!