Jack Nicholson’s loose, wooly, not-particularly-well-organized western comedy is often quite funny, especially in the early stages. With a half-dozen capable funny men given little to do — John Belushi, for one — the movie is ultimately saved by its leading lady. The marvelous, 100% charming Mary Steenburgen helps the film earn its label ‘romantic comedy,’ even if the exercise gets a little sloppy. Nicholson did hire the best, though — Richard Bradford, Christopher Lloyd, Jeff Morris … and his cameraman is none other than Néstor Almendros.

Goin’ South
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray
Cinématographe / Vinegar Syndrome / Paramount
1978 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 105 min. / Street Date August 27, 2024 / Available from Amazon / 44.98 / Available from Vinegar Syndrome / 39.99
Starring: Jack Nicholson, Mary Steenburgen, Christopher Lloyd, John Belushi, Veronica Cartwright, Richard Bradford, Jeff Morris, Danny DeVito. Tracey Walter, Luana Anders, Ed Begley, Jr., Anne Ramsey.
Cinematography: Néstor Almendros
Production Designer: Toby Carr Rafelson
Art Director: Augustín Ituarte
Costume Design: William Ware Theiss
Film Editors: John Fitzgerald Beck, Richard Chew
Original Music: Perry Botkin Jr., Van Dyke Parks
Screenplay by John Herman Shaner, Al Ramrus, Charles Shyer, Alan Mandel story by Shaner & Ramus
Produced by Harry Gittes, Harold Schneider
Directed by Jack Nicholson

The label Cinématographe is a new branded line from Vinegar Syndrome, presenting limited editions from the ’70s and ’80s (roughly) in specially designed, cloth-bound, media book packaging. This first CineSavant Cinématographe review dips into New Hollywood, for a comedy-romance western directed by and starring Jack Nicholson, in 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray.

After fifteen years of frustration as an actor and writer, Jack Nicholson hit big with his turn in  Easy Rider. Nobody remembers his fairly awful contribution to a  Barbra Streisand movie, because a string of solid hits made him the emblematic male star of the ’70s:  Five Easy Pieces,  Carnal Knowledge,  The Last Detail ,  One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. After the unexpected flops  The Missouri Breaks and  The Last Tycoon, Nicholson had some time free before going to England to star for Stanley Kubrick. Thus was born 1978’s Goin’ South, a bawdy comedy western. Nicholson enlisted a number of old associates to help put the show together, and had no trouble attracting fine acting talent.

An amusing comedy that never quite hits its stride, Goin’ South gets off to a terrific start with a gallows-day scene so funny, everything that follows can’t help but seem a letdown. Jack Nicholson plays broad and loud, milking his devilish he-wolf smile for all it’s worth. Outrageous mugging aside, he directs himself well. Some of the other performers don’t get the same level of attention, especially not John Belushi. In her feature debut, Mary Steenburgen grounds a comic marriage as a battle of personalities. She holds her own against Nicholson and flips the funny stuff into traditional romantic comedy territory.

Unrepentant thief Henry Moon (Jack Nicholson) is on his way to the gallows. His old gang arrives, not to spring him, but just to witness his hanging. Healthy males are so scarce in this Texas frontier town that a condemned man can be saved if a woman of property will marry him, so Henry is overjoyed when homesteader Julia Tate (Mary Steenburgen) steps up with an offer. It’s no honeymoon, as Julia has plans to put Henry to work digging for gold. He’s soon looking for the right moment to sneak away, while putting up with the neighbors and the vindictive Deputy Towfield (Christopher Lloyd).

Random credit-diving on Jack Nicholson’s movies shows that he often helped his friends from the old days of the unemployment line — when possible, there was often a role set aside for fellow Roger Corman favorite Luana Anders. Scriptwriter John Herman Shaner had played the sadistic dentist in the original  The Little Shop of Horrors and had ten years of mostly TV work behind him. He sometimes worked with Al Ramrus, who wrote for TV docus as well as dramatic shows.

Goin’ South has an unbeatable first reel, the funniest ten minutes of 1978 outside of John Landis’s  Animal House. His neck already in the noose, Nicholson’s Henry Moon learns that any of the old-crone hanging spectators can save his skin, and suddenly becomes Bachelor Number One in a gallows Dating Game. Several hilarious reversals later, Steenburgen’s reserved Julia Tate wins the raffle. Henry wrongly assesses Julia as a creampuff, a marital pushover. She’s turns out to be a starched & ironed virgin, a strong personality with an independent mind — she sees Henry not as a companion but a beast of burden, to work her long-shot gold mine. The story settles into a battle of wills, as Henry realizes that there’s just one way to turn this screwy marriage in his favor … sex. An Ernst Lubitch, Preston Sturges or Billy Wilder could developed the situation into a masterpiece of dirty bedtime storytelling.

We find the show wholly enjoyable, mainly just to see some favorite performers at work. Not all have suitable parts. Nicholson extends roles to two of his Cuckoo’ Nest colleagues. Christopher Lloyd shines as a jealous deputy eager to see Henry hang. Danny DeVito’s role is tiny and he’s almost unrecognizable as a bandit. We’re happy to see the likes of  Luana Anders,  Jeff Morris,  Anne Ramsey,  Tracey Walter,  Veronica Cartwright and  Ed Begley Jr. show up to play bits large and small. Favorite  Richard Bradford is excellent as the sane, reasonable sheriff, who seems to think the impromptu marriage might work out: “Well, you two ought to try and get along, then. We all have to.”

Goin’ South was an early feature role for Saturday Night Live star John Belushi. One of his hit SNL skits was about ‘Killer Bees from South of the Border,’ so casting him as a broad Mexican stereotype seems a really lazy idea. Belushi at this time was not noted for being particularly cooperative, and reports from the Durango location were that he Nicholson and Belushi ‘didn’t get along.’

With those wild eyes and wicked grin, Jack Nicholson is a natural for the scruffy crook Henry Moon. A few critics slammed him for overdoing the mugging, but Jack maintains his ragged charm even when pulling goofy faces. Moon never seems bitter about his terrible luck. On the run from a posse, his horse takes a tumble and throws him into the dirt — apparently an actual mishap, that Nicholson retained for the final cut. It is said that Nicholson always had an interest in westerns. One of his best pre-stardom roles is as the black-garbed killer Billy Spear in  The Shooting, one of two superior westerns by cult director Monte Hellman.

Mary Steenburgen became the film’s big discovery. She’s charming but subdued, trying her best to be the straight foil to Nicholson’s clowning. Steenburgen’s own strong personality comes through. She would proceed to Nicholas Meyer’s  Time After Time and then Jonathan Demme’s  Melvin and Howard, each character more adorable than the one before. Steenburgen’s screen presence is both delicate and powerful. When a smile flashes across her face, our whole outlook on life seems to improve.  ^*

The mixed critical reviews noted that the film’s plotting wasn’t very inventive. A side story about the railroad seizing property via Eminent Domain isn’t particularly welcome. The lecherous railroad manager (Gerald H. Reynolds) spies on Julia when she’s skinny-dipping, the joke being that Julia bathes wearing a neck-to-knee slip. That Henry strikes gold in Julia’s mine isn’t much of a surprise either. The find is revealed when Henry sees flakes of gold on Julia’s face, but the direction misses a romantic opportunity — the real treasure is Julia.

The writers pause several times for jokes about Texas oil, even slipping in an appearance by a forward-thinking entrepreur named Farmer Standard, who is curious about the black stuff that burns when set afire. A homesteader foreclosed by the railroad could have been a good joke on the dispossesed Oakies of  The Grapes of Wrath. The bankrupt sodbuster curses his bad luck, and then steps into a puddle of naturally-oozing Texas crude: “Damn worthless black goo!”

Other unusual details serve as one-line jokes. Henry’s horse can be a liability in a getaway … it has a bad habit of fainting under stress. Moon has an interesting reaction to Julia’s habit of hanging chairs on the wall when not in use.

How much character development do we expect in a broad comedy?  Everything we know about Henry Moon, we learned in the first scene. The same goes for his bandit cronies Jeff Morris and Veronica Cartwright, whose outlawry is never very strongly established. Nicholson and his writers play the ‘Moon Gang’ fairly seriously, when the audience may have been wondering where the big laughs went. Chris Lloyd is consistently broad in his substantial role as the manic deputy, but he never gets his big showdown with Henry. That jealousy conflict lacks a payoff, unless you count getting drenched by a tub of horse urine as his big scene.

Horse pee aside, the movie doesn’t become too gross. Audiences today will find reasons to PC-invalidate almost any comedy from the past, and Goin’ South has its share of objectionable issues, starting with John Belushi’s Mexican bandit impersonation. When Henry finally decides to exert his matrimonial privileges with the virgin Julia, we get a comic semi-rape scene of the kind that no longer flies whether done well or poorly. Julia does seem to get a kick from being tied up, though.

Even when it doesn’t quite transform from a broad comedy to a sweet & serious romance, Goin’ South remains consistently amusing all the way through, and better than that if you’re a Jack Nicholson fan. Whether or not he’s a great director is arguable, but Nicholson manages a decent entertainment against the odds. He has better luck here than he got on The Two Jakes, a picture on which everything seems to have gone wrong.

Cinématographe’s 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray of Goin’ South yields a video presentation to match the fancy packaging, with the cloth-bound book cover, etcetera. Most of us remember the movie from 1980s cable presentations, when it was shown in flat, dull NTSC. It got a reputation for its fall-down funny opening scenes.

The label says that the Blu-ray included is locked as Region A.

Nicholson attracted top filmmaking talent, including one of the editors from Star Wars. His big score was the the world-class cameraman Néstor Almendros, whose soft, natural lighting was admired by the best in the business. Almendros had worked for Eric Rohmer, Barbet Schroeder and François Truffaut before making waves here with Terrence Malick’s  Days of Heaven. The glowing images for the Malick movie do not repeat in Goin’ South, which fronts a ruddy western feel without overdoing the sweat and grime. Ms. Steenburgen comes off as a desert bloom, the kind of petite beauty who can maintain poise in any environment. But the art direction drabs down most of what we see. The scenes within the gold mine can get pretty dark.

Does the drab realism fail to communicate ‘comedy’ to average audiences?  Western comedies from Blazing Saddles to Support Your Local Sheriff were usually bright and clean-looking, while Nicholson’s direction and Almendros’ images say ‘drama.’

Cinématographe’s disc producer Justin LaLiberty gives the extras plenty of attention starting with a commentary by the capable critic Simon Abrams. Samm Deighan contributes a video essay on Néstor Almendros, and Daniel Kramer a career piece on Jack Nicholson. The filmographies of both are illustrated with an abundance of film clips; Kramer’s piece is at least half-hosted by director Henry Jaglom, who talks almost as much about himself as he does Jack Nicholson. The essays in the colorful book are light but quite thorough.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Goin’ South
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Very Good +
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
Audio commentary with film critic Simon Abrams
Video Essay Néstor Almendros: A Man with a Camera with Samm Deighan
Video Essay Jack of Three Trades with Daniel Kremer
Book packaging with 36-page color illustrated insert with essays by Marc Eliot and Chris Shields.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One 4K Ultra HD disc + one Blu-ray in custom book packge in heavy card box
Reviewed: August 3, 2024
(7172goin)

^*  In 1997 or so I personally received the Steenburgen smile in an elevator at MGM, also with her husband Ted Danson. They both checked me out, looking over their shoulders. He looked down at me and went back to thinking about business. Ms. Steenburgen looked up over her shoulder at me, saw my happy expression, and just beamed. Fifteen seconds that brightened my entire outlook. (We’ll save the story of my brief but amazing elevator encounter with Jaclyn Smith, around 1985).

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