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Prime Cut (1972)

Dir: Michael Ritchie

The bizarrely named Mary Ann (Gene Hackman) is a Kansas hoodlum who owes a fortune to The Mob in Chicago. After numerous attempts to get the money end in the death of the men sent (the last man ending up processed into a string of sausages!) they send for legendary Enforcer Nick Devlin (Lee Marvin) to get the money out of Mary Ann.

With 4 other men he sets off to Kansas. There he discovers that Mary Ann and his sausage chomping Brother Weenie (Gregory Walcott) are running a sex slave racket out of their ranch. In hay-strewn pens he finds naked, doped up teenage virgins (all raised in a dubious 'Orphanage') being bartered for.

It turns out that Devlin has a bad history with Mary Ann over Mary Ann's Wife Clarabelle (Angel Tompkins) and from their first meeting it is a battle of wills. Mary Ann agrees to pay the money the next day at the County Fair he is hosting.

As Devlin is leaving one of the young girls, Poppy (Sissy Spacek doing a good job with a difficult role in her first credited film), calls out to Devlin for help, so he decides to take her, much to Mary Ann's annoyance.

But the promised payoff to Devlin turns out to be a murderous double cross………

Directed by the late Michael Ritchie (whose career took in everything from bizarre horror/thriller "The Island" to the Chevy Chase comedy hit "Fletch") "Prime Cut" is a sadly neglected example of the gritty, hard-boiled thriller so prolific in the 70's. Packed with sleaze, action, tough guys tough chicks and in this case an almost surreal sense of the otherworldly in it's setting.

The opening credit sequence sets the viewer up for something unusual as we follow the production of sausages and Weenie personally taking off some of them as a 'special order'. Goodbye one Chicago Gangster.

This sense of the surreal pervades the whole film. On their way to Kansas one of the young 'Soldiers' with Devlin asks him to say hello to his Mother! From this we gather Devlin is a very important and respected man and the look of pride that the Mother gives her Gangster Son for being in such esteemed company speaks volumes about the accepted social set-up of being in The Mob.

This drive out of the big city is wonderfully scored by the king of 70's thriller music Lalo Schifrin ("Dirty Harry", "Enter the Dragon") who provides some laid back laconic grooves that trip into a delightfully cliché 'hoe-down' as Kansas opens up before them. Fans Schifrin will recognise some of the cues from his excellent "Kelly's Heroes" score incorporated into the excellent 'tough funk' that accompanies Devlin as he heads for the final showdown.

Mary Ann is a sadistic thug who metaphorically wears the American flag on his arm. He's a rabid 'All American' who has twisted the American dream into his own mini-empire of murder, rape and slavery.
Summed up in two great pieces of dialogue that he delivers to Devlin about what he does; "Cow flesh, girl flesh. All the same to me" and on what feeds America; "I give it all it wants. Dope and flesh".
It's a wonderful turn by Hackman who resides over the sex slave auction (with free meat buffet for the clients) like a king at a banquet. Seated in the middle of a big table with 'his boys' eating boiled offal.
Much to Devlin's disgust;
"You eat guts"
"Yeah. I like 'em".

Mary Ann sees himself as some kind of hoodlum pioneer. He sees Chicago as a rotting corpse with no future and as such cares not one bit about paying them back their money.
He is the self obsessed fanatic, with delusions of grandeur at his standing in the community, to Marvin's cool, laid back, ruthless Enforcer.

And it goes without saying that Lee Marvin strides through the film like the hard man legend he is. Devlin is a zinc haired, smooth suited professional with no sense of ego at all. He acts cool and hard because he knows he can back it up. It's not a semi-psychotic show like Mary Ann. It's subtle and real.
But Devlin is also an enigma. The 'rescuing' of Poppy is very strange at first. Why has he? As a tough professional it seems unlikely he would let his own feelings out in such a public manner.
Has he really been touched by Poppy's plight? It certainly seems that what Mary Ann is doing to the girls goes above and beyond what he finds acceptable, or is this initial action more to do with giving Mary Ann a very public snub? A macho show of whose got the biggest balls.

Things are even more confused when Devlin takes Poppy back to his hotel. He is certainly caring towards her but the fact that he dressed her in a completely sheer black dress, with no underwear.
A great scene follows when he then takes her to dinner much to the shock of the other guests.
Is this arrogance on his part? Showing her off, letting them all se that this pretty girl is with him.
Or is he letting her be seen as a pretty young woman and not the pathetic piece of 'meat' that Mary Ann turned her into?
In any case her obvious naive state and almost child like mentality and innocence seems to make the whole set-up reek of exploitation.
Later on we definitely see that Devlin can be noble and really does care for her. But it's a rough type of caring that is perhaps all he can show.

One of the films main strengths is the contrast between the suited Chicago Gangsters and Mary Ann and his boys who are decked out in some kind of 'Good Ole Boy' uniform of faded denim dungarees over bare chests or white T-shirts. They are in every way the opposite of their big city counterparts.

Kansas seems like an alien planet. Another World outside of the 'norm' of big city America.
An Alien World which Devlin and his men seem dangerously out of step with.
This is best shown in the excellent County Fair sequence. After Mary Ann springs his trap (resulting in a wonderful pun/threat by Devlin, "You just bought the farm") his 'boys' open fire on the Chicago collective with shotguns and yet no one takes any notice. They find there is no help anywhere. The fair is a surrealist fantasyland of pig showing, cow riding, pie eating, milk chugging wholesomeness that cannot and will not be disturbed by 'hassles' with outsiders. Gun battles or not.
It's a bizarre situation that adds a genuinely creepy atmosphere to the film Devlin and his ill-prepared men are somehow alone in an Alien culture where everyone is an enemy (by attacking them or ignoring them) and nothing quite makes sense anymore.
And when farm equipment is unleashed on them in the form of a car chewing combine harvester their sense of confused hopelessness is palpable. And the result of the harvester's handywork adds some nice humour.

Mary Ann and his men's World seems to orbit around livestock selling, wheat growing, sadism and a gratuitous amount of meat eating.
The almost child like, but very violent, play fight that Mary Ann has with Weenie, as the accountants try to add up the takings from the sex slave sale, is another surreal bit of Good Ole Boy, chest beating, macho ball swinging.
This weird joke environment has its ultimate black comic payoff during the finale where a close-up what is clutched in Weenie's hand sums up the whole damn bizarre thing perfectly.

But this dark fantasyland is always carefully brought back into harsh reality by the plight of the girls. And the scene where one of Poppy's friends, Violet (doe-eyed Janit Baldwin from "Ruby" also in her movie debut), is lying in the corner of a dirty room and tells Devlin that Weenie let the men '"love her for a nickel". When she opens up her clenched fist to let a pile of nickels drop out the anger that Devlin and his men feel is shared by the viewer.

The long cat 'n' mouse shoot out in the huge sunflower field during the finale is another unique and surreal set up where the sea of yellow heads hides a horde of shotgun toting killer farm boys. It's a laid back but exciting lead up to the final confrontation between Kansas Hoodlum and Chicago Enforcer all to the accompaniment of snorting cows and squealing pigs.

And the fairy tale ending "Prime Cut" serves up works purely because the whole enterprise has been a bizarre other-Worldly trip. And it's a trip that you won't regret taking. Seek this little gem out.