Poseidon Quickies: "Truckin' " Along

Somehow, maybe even against my will, I've been caught up in several drive-in level 1970s flicks, most of them about mountain distilleries! (Like Moonshine County Express and Whiskey Mountain, both 1977.) Along similar lines, I stumbled into the quite atrocious Truckin' Man (1975), which, after six months, was re-titled Trucker's Woman in order to draw in a broader audience. A homegrown production, filmed in Florence, South Carolina and written by a resident there who generated several movies of this ilk, I was surprised to find a few notables sprinkled in the cast. (Many of the players were local residents, making their "acting" debuts.) As this is a "Quickie," I'm only touching on a few points. Even those may not interest you! LOL You may be thankful I didn't delve further into the movie...

Almost all of Truckin' Man is lit with the subtle ambiance of an all-night supermarket. The story concerns this man, Michael Hawkins, who plays a college student (at 37!) who comes home when his semi-driving father dies in an "accident." He keeps the trucking business going while also discovering that his old man may have been deliberately killed by a competitor.

Hawkins also discovers this hot young lady Mary Cannon. She spends virtually the entire movie in this frosted, plastic wig.

Even in the shower!

Cannon is presumably who the distributors were referring to when they re-dubbed the film Trucker's Woman. Here, she's resisting the attention of Hawkins, who has followed her from the diner to her motel room (a Ramada Inn!)

Eventually he barges in, tosses her around a little and then she gives in to his torrid advances. Note the string of nylon "hair" hanging near her neck! I am using a lot of quotation marks in this brief post!

These two indulge in some of the most awkward kissing I have ever witnessed on screen. His lips never open or really even move, so she has to do most of the work, including hooking on to unusual portions of his mouth!

A later love scene with a different actress is also uncomfortable and icky. In this one, the two share a cigarette before kissing and a strand of spittle is seen as their lips part!

It may be difficult to spot, but it is there.

I'm not finished with Hawkins just yet, but I'm going to move on for the moment to someone else.

On the left here is a man named Doddles Weaver. Weaver was a comic actor who found success on radio, the stage and in movies from the mid-1930s on.

His "comedy" in this film is something beyond excruciating... Not all routines that worked in the '30s & '40s translated through the '70s. Weaver was the younger brother of high-ranking NBC television executive Pat Weaver, whose daughter Susan later gained considerable fame as... Sigourney Weaver! Doodles Weaver, having grappled with an alcohol problem and enduring physical pain in his later years, took his own life

The husky auto mechanic that Weaver is speaking to above is also someone of note. One of the villains of the piece, it is he who tampered with Hawkins' father's semi and who also does a number on Hawkins' truck.

At one point we're treated to a love scene between him and a nude blonde.

She apparently felt that a nice, stiff belt of booze was in order! If you haven't recognized this guy yet,

This may help. The character of Benny Stulwicz from L.A. Law was a showy part. The mentally-disabled character figured into story lines across a seven year period.

Larry Drake won two Emmys and was nominated for a third as Benny. (His costar Jimmy Smits won that third time.) Drake also appeared in Darkman (1990) and many other TV shows and movies.

At one point in the movie, Drake has finally been caught up with for his horrible actions.

Hawkins grabs a rifle and takes aim at his nemesis.

Drake takes a bullet in the leg as he's trying to escape and falls to the ground.

As he careens to the ground, we find that he has split his pants (which, if you look at the prior photo, were raggedly in this area to start with) and the camera spots his inner thigh and (thankfully!) his jockey shorts! Drake worked up through the late-2000s, but was discovered dead in 2016. It was determined to have been cancer of the blood. He was 66.

Now back to Hawkins. You know what a completest I am. He takes a shower in the movie and I nearly always document such instances here.

It's the morning after he has seduced Cannon and he's chatting with her from the shower as she's packing to leave in the main room.

He wants her to wait (and, in fact, doesn't even know her full name!), but she's ready to roll.

He calls to her, but she's heading out.

Aggravated, he decides to leave the shower and chase after her.

I have been known to do towel posts, too, so this also qualifies on that score!

Finding that she's departed the motel room, he continues to chase after her.

As he trots out the door to her convertible, he barely has on more than a large diaper.

She has no intention of hanging around.

He asks her how she can just leave him like this...

...which prompts her to say that she is actually going to leave him like THIS, and promptly yanks off his towel and begins to speed off!

In a nearby room, an old woman is peering out into the parking lot and tells her husband that she thinks she just saw a "streaker!"

In a nod to a big hit song of the day ("The Streak" by Ray Stevens), the woman's name is, of course, Ethel.

This scene is edited very swiftly and carefully, to avoid any nudity on Hawkins' behalf.

But there is this moment where he backs into the room again, using those dastardly blue-green curtains as his only protection against immodesty.

I suspect that not too many of you are overly familiar with Michael Hawkins. He wasn't a household name for most, but prior to this he'd enjoyed featured roles on several soap operas from As the World Turns to Love is a Many Splendored Thing to The Doctors to How to Survive a Marriage.

This same year (1975), he was handed another principal role on another soap.

He was cast as Frank Ryan, one of the key members of the central family of Ryan's Hope. Unfortunately, the wheels were starting to come off. He was battling an alcohol addiction and had trouble memorizing his lines. He was fired at the end of the show's first year. After that, it would chiefly be bit roles in movies from The Amityville Horror (1979), Mommie Dearest (as a Pepsi executive) and Looker (both 1981.) He hasn't acted on screen at all since 1988.

He'd been married since 1966 to his wife Mary Jo, a very successful casting director, but that also came to an end in 1976. His life careened into one of unemployment or menial jobs, manic-depression and substance abuse. Their little tree-hugging son went to live with his mother and when she reverted to her maiden name, the child took that as well.

Mary Jo's maiden name was Slater and her son Christian went on to a highly-successful movie career. Christian, despite his busy in-demand career, had his own battles with alcohol and drugs, but managed to survive it.

Not only did Slater pop-up briefly on Ryan's Hope (long after his father's departure), but one of his early roles came on L.A. Law, too, though it was an episode in which Drake didn't appear. The father and son were estranged for years and at one point Hawkins was suing Slater for a hefty sum. However, more recently, Slater has relayed that they've been in contact, rebuilding some sort of relationship. The father is 83 while the son is now 52.

I will leave you with this one last bit of lunacy... Around the 1:09 mark of the film, Hawkins is checking the brake lines of his semi, following a near accident. For what's probably less than a second, a shot featuring a pepperoni pizza suddenly appears!! It's believed that perhaps it was meant to instill subliminal hunger to the drive-in crowd and help form a stampede to the snack counter...!

I did nothing to help relieve this shot of it's scratches, dirt and other anomalies. What a scream...! I think you've probably all had your share of cheese by this point. Till next time.