Console best movie i've ever seen.

AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Leofwine_draca Texas Lightning is one of those times where I had no idea what I was watching. The story is set in and around a bar where a bunch of ageing cowboys hang out and share dialogue a lot. There's no discernible story, just some coming-of-age guff and a load of nonsense besides. The viewer is treated to the somewhat unwelcome sight of Cameron Mitchell making a spectacle of himself - those shirts! - while the rest is a real bore.

horrorfilmx Probably not. Most likely (and I mean this in all seriousness) this movie just went over the heads of most reviewers. They were expecting a DUKES OF HAZARD romp and instead were presented with a scathingly accurate portrayal of the good ol' boy lifestyle in all it's Neanderthal glory. Also they saw a movie made on the cheap in the 70s, two very big strikes against it in the eyes of contemporary viewers. Sure, the garish colors and harsh lighting scream "cheesy" to audiences weaned on the kind of multi-zillion dollar Hollywood crap that lost touch with reality decades ago. The verisimilitude of this movie is stunning (again, no irony intended). The characters are dead on representations of their type, a very real type I assure you, and the cheap location shooting only adds to the realism. Even the girls in the wet tee-shirt contest don't look like models or actresses, they look like the kind of women you'd really find in a red-neck bar shaking their hooters for the amusement of a bunch of drunks (no offense to these ladies, wherever they are). And the most surprising thing about THE BOYS/Texas LIGHTNING are the occasional subtleties, the little nuances of character. The whole scene where they hunters are stopped in their pick-up truck (complete with gun rack, of course) by a black policemen is nothing but a small but revealing character aside. It's great. I never thought I could say this about a movie called Texas LIGHTNING but it's really an art film. It should be appreciated by more discriminating movie fans. Unfortunately I suspect most people only watched this movie hoping to see Marcia Brady naked. (Possible spoiler: they must have been sorely disappointed).

lazarillo A misguided father (Cameron Mitchell) wants to make his shy, sensitive son "into a man" (and it's about damn time since the young character, played by Mitchell's real-life son, looks to be about twenty five). He decides to take him on a hunting trip with his buddies, two of the sorriest excuses for "men" around. (Even in Texas this pair would be regarded as fat, dumb, redneck losers). The hunting trip/rite-of-passage involves getting drunk and driving into the 120 degree Texas summer heat to shoot at beer bottles and bunny rabbits (if this makes one a "man", then my friends in Wyoming and I would have achieved manhood at about ten). Later they go to a honky-tonk bar where the most pathetic wet t-shirt contest you ever saw is taking place, and a Hal Needham/Burt Reynolds-style bloodless brawl breaks out every five minutes. There the boy meets a pretty young barmaid and aspiring prostitute (Maureen "Marcia Brady" McCormick)and takes her back to the hotel room. They suffer some traumatic coitus interruptus, however, when the two redneck friends bust in a force themselves on "Marcia", I mean Maureen. The movie then turns into a REALLY tame and bloodless (in every sense of the word) rape-revenge flick.This movie started out as a more serious "Macon County Line" type of a film, a labor-of-love by talented cinematographer and not-so-talented director Gary Graver based on his own script called "The boys" (which certainly must have, given the title, recognized the irony of a group of immature middle-aged butt-wipes who everyone still refers to as "boys" trying to initiate ANYONE into manhood). The distributors renamed it "Texas Lightning" possibly to fit with the wretched country-music theme song (or vice versa)and re-edited it into a sub-"Smokey and the Bandit", sub-"Dukes of Hazzard" redneck-athon with a lot of alleged comic relief and an implausibly happy ending. The uneven (to say the least) tone will give you cinematic whiplash. Cameron Mitchell, who was the only really good actor in this, refused to participate in the re-shooting and just disappears entirely near the end. It's rumored that in the original Graver cut, still floating out there somewhere in terminal litigation, the two rednecks meet a much more unpleasant, if deserving, fate. (In MY cut they would receive shotgun enemas in the first five minutes and be left rotting in a shallow grave in the desert along with the "good ole boys" responsible for the crappy theme song). You'll have to take Graver's word for it that his cut is any kind of masterpiece, but the one under consideration here is certainly worthless dreck regardless.Most people today will no doubt see this for Maureen McCormick's brief "nude scene", but frankly you'd have better luck spotting subliminal ads for hot dogs and soft drinks from back when this played the drive ins. The only remotely sexy aspect of this movie involves a scene with the implausibly attractive young girlfriend of one of the rednecks dressed in a see-through teddy. McCormick is OK as an actress here, but she's pretty miscast as a tough honky-tonk Southern girl. She also "sings" at point, which will invoke, for those of us Americans of a certain age, traumatic and previously deeply repressed memories of the notoriously ill-advised "Brady Bunch Variety Hour" TV show (shudder!). Not recommended--at least until when (or if) the Graver cut is ever released.

fandangonoir This movie is baaaaaaaaaaaaad. It is also inadvertently hilarious at times. I mean, Marcia from the Brady Bunch has a part in it, so how good can it be? The video box for this flick says this film is the "warm, funny story of a boy growing up." Actually, it's the story of a wuss with an overbearing dad who wants "to make a man" out of his loser son. The son meets Marcia from the Brady Bunch at a bar when he's out on a hunting trip with his dad and his dad's two friends. Marcia and the son go to a hotel for some lovin' and then the dad's friends bust in, throw the son out and force themselves on Marcia. The next day the son begins to go psycho. He gets so angry at one of his dad's friends the director does a hysterical slow motion shot of the son throwing a plate of food in the face of one of his dad's friends. I guess the director thought it would be a more impressive shot that way. You get the idea...rent this if you like really bad, bad, BAD movies. Later gator.