All American boy and war hero Carol Jo Hummer returns home to Arizona, and becomes a trucker, like his dead daddy. Living the dream, he marries his sweetheart Jerri, take a loan, and buys a rig he names "The Blue Mule". He starts hauling for the Red River Co. only to find out these crooks are running non-taxed cigarettes and slot machines! When he raises Hell, Hell calls back in the form of a vengeful company owner, Buck, who turns Carol Jo's life onto a shit storm of violence and retribution. As the people Carol Jo loves and associates with begin dying around him, the hero becomes the subversive, and takes action to set things right...with a big rig and a shotgun!
I saw this one multiple times in theaters as a kid, read the novelization, and poured over every TV Guide for years, waiting for it to show on my local station.
Jan Michael Vincent, Kay Lenz, L.Q. Jones, Slim Pickens, and R.G. Armstrong head up one of the greatest drive-in style casts ever known, and the climax would do Peckinpah proud, with it's hail of bullets and tornado of shattered glass. This flag waiving, country music loving action flick from 1975 deserves a proper dvd/bluray release, complete with little Blue Mule die cast car in a special edition. It's also the best way to remember jan Michael Vincent, who, to put it nicely, has seen better days.
Directed by Johnathan Kaplan, who also did the ass kicking flicks TRUCK TURNER (which is how he got this gig) MR. BILLION, and the teen rebellion classic OVER THE EDGE. Seek this out y'all, and have a Coors and a shot of jack to go along with it.
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