Fans of westerns will love Robert Benton’s takedown of wild west mythmaking: Civil War draft evaders Jeff Bridges and Barry Brown learn the hard lessons of frontier outlawry, scavenging their way across Kansas and falling prey to established outlaws. The experience could be called character-building, except for the part about starvation and getting one’s head blown off for stealing a pie. From the creators of Bonnie and Clyde, it’s funny and wickedly believable, and co-stars Jim Davis, David Huddleston and John Savage.

Bad Company
Blu-ray
Fun City Editions
1972 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 93 min. / Street Date August 20, 2024 / Available from Fun City Editions / 30.00
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Barry Brown, Jim Davis, David Huddleston, John Savage, Jerry Houser, Damon Cofer, Joshua Hill Lewis, Geoffrey Lewis, Raymond Guth, Edward Lauter, John Quade, Jean Allison, Ned Wertimer, Charles Tyner.
Cinematography: Gordon Willis
Production Designer: Paul Sylbert
Art Director: Art Gundlach
Costume Design: Anthea Sylbert
Film Editors: Ron Kalish, Ralph Rosenblum
Original Music: Harvey Schmidt
Written by David Newman, Robert Benton
Produced by Stanley R. Jaffe
Directed by Robert Benton

The American western never actually died, but we think the watershed film was 1969’s  The Wild Bunch, which closed out the traditional western the same way that  White Heat signalled a farewell to the ’30s style gangster drama. In the immediate wake of Peckinpah’s film came a number of shows claiming to tell a deglamorized truth about the West. The least persuasive was Stan Dragoti’s  Dirty Little Billy, a depressing takedown of Billy The Kid. The English critics dubbed it a ‘mud and rags’ western — its characters all but live in mud. At the higher end of the mini-movement were Dick Richards’  The Culpepper Cattle Company and Philip Kaufman’s  The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, about a cattle drive and the Jesse James gang, respectively.

The most original of the revisionist ’70s anti-oaters was the first directorial effort of Robert Benton, the celebrated co-writer of  Bonnie and Clyde and  What’s Up Doc?  Benton’s later efforts as a writer-director include  Kramer vs. Kramer,  Places in the Heart and  Nobody’s Fool, each an entertaining winner.

Benton’s collaborator Robert Newman co-wrote Bad Company. It didn’t burn up theater box offices, but it earned its share of critical praise. A story of Civil War draft evaders who drift West and become outlaws, it’s as unromantic as a Western can be. Its free form, small scale approach may be what Benton and Newman originally intended for Bonnie & Clyde, when its planned director was Jean-Luc Godard. A touch of  Pierrot le fou in Kansas of 1863?

The mothers of Missouri weep as their sons are taken to fight Abe Lincoln’s war. Draft evader Drew Dixon (Barry Brown) flees to St. Joseph to catch a wagon train West. He’s tricked and robbed by fellow teenager and petty criminal Jake Rumsey (Jeff Bridges), who informs him that the wagon trains are booked for months, and Army recruiters are snatching runaways right off the streets. Drew joins up with Jake’s youthful pack of starving scavengers, and they head West as a gang. The bunch have it in mind to live off the land, but only Jake knows how to skin a rabbit. Woefully inadequate as thieves, they are repeatedly victimized by experienced bandits like Big Joe (David Huddleston) and his mob. Their arrogance dwindles along with their numbers. After a betrayal by Loney (John Savage), Jake and Drew are alone. They’re not exactly Butch and The Kid … Jake talks up a storm about loyalty, but he has a bad habit of reverting to his basic untrustworthy nature.

Raised in Texas, Robert Benton probably knew a thing or two about Billy the Kid and the old-time bandits.  ^*  His original take on Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker was likely nothing like Warren Beatty’s glamorized version of history. Constructed of brief vignettes, Bad Company starts with an eye-opening look at The Draft in the Union North. Abe Lincoln was far less popular than Richard Nixon. Rural kids that shirked their call-up papers were hauled away in paddy wagons. Drew Dixon doesn’t flee to Canada. His parents urge him to leave the jurisdiction of the Union’s war department by heading West. The problem is that anybody on their own in the wilderness has a serious survival problem.

Overwhelmed by runaway draft evaders, St. Joseph’s unsuspecting citizens are suffering a crime wave. Benton and Newman’s upstanding Drew Dixon cannot avoid becoming a petty outlaw. City boy Jake can fleece the unwary but is just as unprepared for the reality of the open plains. Every farmer guards his homestead with a shotgun, and everyone they meet is equally desperate, or a predatory highwayman. The boys are often defeated by their own arrogance and vanity. When a man in a wagon offers them the services of his wife, they foolishly spend more than half their grubstake, as if turning down sex in any form would be a slight on their manhood. Leader Jake can talk a good line, but fails to deliver the easy pickings he promises. The tougher members of his gang (including a very young John Savage) eventually turn on him. More typical is Arthur, a clueless whiner who might as well give up immediately. He’s played by Jerry Houser, a teen actor who scored memorable roles in  Summer of ’42 and  Slap Shot.

The youngest gang member Boog (Joshua Hill Lewis) is only 11 years old. Youth doesn’t save them from being mercilessly plundered by real thugs, nor being shot at by irate farmers. Mistakes can be costly, as when a bungled heist gets one of them killed outright. Did Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn really swipe fresh pies cooling on a farmer’s windowsill?  Benton and Newman make such doings look very unadvisable.

These ‘plain kids’ are a combination of cast-offs and draft evaders, and nobody would call them nice. The film’s rating was PG, but they are not framed as cute, sentimental or socially enlightened. Jake and Drew are as bigoted and racist as the communities the come from, and speak in derogatory ways of Blacks and Jews. When Drew tries to cajole Jim Davis’s Marshal, he uses the ‘that’s white of you’ card. The Marshal is harsh, but refreshingly incorruptible. Was this movie Davis’s attempt to make a nostalgic comeback, as an ‘old cowboy guy?”   Ben Johnson had earned himself an Oscar opposite newcomer Jeff Bridges in the previous year’s  The Last Picture Show.

In a place where survival is so tenuous, what Law there is, is absolutely pitiless. The Marshal long ago lost his sense of humor. Catching the thieving, murdering renegades on the loose is so difficult that those unlucky enough to be caught are hung without ceremony. Kids get strung up from trees just as easily as do older crooks. The closest thing to a glamorous outlaw is David Huddleston’s Big Joe,  ↓  a cutthroat with a reputation. He can indeed do some fancy shooting, but his gang are pitiful incompetents. Prominent in Joe’s pack of Losers are favorites Geoffrey Lewis and Ed Lauter.

The Draft was a very topical subject in 1972 — a high lottery number saved my student deferment. The Civil War practically invented modern-style draft evasion, and the public response was violent. There has never been a movie about the New York City Draft Riots, ‘the largest civil urban disturbance in American history.’ Drew’s forthright parents give him $100 and a horse and think it will get him to California. That’s all but an impossibility considering the exodus West that was happening at the time. Drew considers himself an upstanding citizen, yet ends up stranded with other evaders up to no good.

Are Drew and Jake really ‘great American outlaws in the making?’  The film skewers romantic genre notions about a shared code of honor. Camaraderie is a fairy tale that Jake twists to snooker Drew or secure his cooperation. Jake stands ready to conk his partner on the head the moment he thinks doing so might be profitable or expedient.  Yet Drew tries his best to talk the stern Marshal out of hanging Jake with some other, older bandits. Drew knows he’s not a Bad Man, but once one crosses a particular line…

Jeff Bridges proceeded to great things, of course; after years as a child actor he made a big splash in The Last Picture Show and would soon be established as a bona fide movie star. Jeff and second-billed Barry Brown play off one another very well. Brown’s good looks remind us of Al Pacino. He was building a decent acting resume until the flop Daisy Miller put him back into television movies. He killed himself only a few years later, here in Hollywood.

Like other Robert Benton films, Bad Company has a sparse look and an economy of framing and action. It’s clearly not a big-budgeted movie, as a few well-chosen details paint in the 1860’s setting. Gordon Willis’ stark photography, using only the light of campfires at night, reinforces the feeling of solitude and desperation. Yet the movie is also irresistably funny, because of the outrageousness of these foolhardy outlaw wanna-bees. They are snookered by each new challenge, yet maintain their pretenses and illusions. You have to love them even as you know they’re walking around with ‘shoot me’ signs hanging from their necks.

Bad Company did not become a moneymaker, which in 1972 wasn’t the automatic career-killer that it can be today. When it’s over we feel a slight sense of disappointment, as if it ended too soon. It plays as incomplete, like the first chapter in a longer story. Newman and Benton make their point very clearly — some ‘outlaw legends’ likely sprung from punks like these. It’s a perfect 93 minutes of what we wish could be an 8-hour saga.

The Overlook Encyclopedia of Westerns tells us how the Brit genre critics regarded the revisionist Westerns of the early ’70s. Surprisingly, after judging  Dirty Little Billy  ‘surreal,’  The Culpepper Cattle Company  ‘elegiac,’  The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid  ‘complex and modern,’  Blake Edwards’  Wild Rovers  ‘triumphant,’  Peter Fonda’s  The Hired Hand  ‘superb,’  Frank Perry’s  Doc  ‘minor, but engaging,’  Robert Benton’s  Bad Company was deemed to be ‘overpraised.’  This contrasts with Americans calling Benton’s film an ‘acid western’… an idea that escapes us altogether.

Fun City Editions’ Blu-ray of Bad Company is a fine HD restoration of this original and engaging ‘western’ tale … we’re not sure if our criminal pioneers ever get out of Kansas. The old DVD was no beauty, but the new remaster replicates the film’s textures and ‘atmospherics’ out in the endless grassy hill country. We can feel the cold and see the falling rain that makes our adventurers so miserable. Cinematographer Gordon Willis gives the impression of natural light at all times. No Day for Night games here: around the campfires, it is pitch, pitch black.

The images available on the web are reddish and faded — the colors and contrast on the disc are much more delicate. If you’ve only seen old airings on cable TV, the visuals here will be a welcome surprise.

The music score is a simple piano accompaniment, which never feels thin or insubstantial. It’s a change of pace for composer Harvey Schmidt, who created the music for the longest running musical in history, The Fantasticks.

Fun City appoints the show with a good commentary and a good insert essay. Walter Chaw’s audio track is seasoned with production information, and offers an analysis of Robert Benton’s painterly compositions. Margaret Barton-Fumo’s insert essay examines the show’s picaresque, slightly cynical view of the American character … the ‘social forces’ forming Jake and Drew and millions like him, don’t turn out that many model citizens. Thematically speaking, the only hope offered for Drew, who wanted to be a virgin until marriage, is that he does retain his brother’s pocket watch, a symbol of his connection to lawful civilization.

Fun City has released the disc in two editions.  →  A Limited Edition exclusive to their site has a slipcover with new artwork by Tom Ralston.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Bad Company
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Very Good / Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
Double-sided wrap with legacy artwork
Audio commentary with Walter Chaw
Radio spots
Image gallery
Theatrical trailer
Illustrated insert pamphlet with an essay by Margaret Barton-Fumo.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: August 27, 2024
(7188bad)

^*   Billy the Kid was 4 years old in 1863. The writers of Hollywood westerns often identify their villains, evil or misguided, as having been part of outlaw militia engaged in guerilla warfare (read: murderous terrorism) in Kansas-Missouri during the Civil War, one faction of which were Quantrill’s Raiders.  One of James Stewart’s Anthony Mann characters is trying to live down his past as a border raider. We rush to recommend Ang Lee’s superb movie about ‘bloody Kansas,’ Ride with The Devil.

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