WATCH NOW
I bet at the back of our minds, we’ve all had that one idea for a perfect movie or even a band name, but never actually attempted to create one. James I West, the Georgia State Representative on the other hand, had an idea for a movie that literally dropped at his doorstep. He capitalized on it. In August of 1975, someone sneakily landed a Douglas DC-4 airplane onto the top of Treat Mountain in Polk County, and the flight intended for runways of over 3000 feet was forcibly stopped at 500 due to a lack of space. The airplane was left with scratches from pine trees as it was coming in, and still had needles stuck in the prop. The plane stripped in light bulbs and was cleared of by bulldozers a few hours prior to the landing. It was filled with 3260 pounds of marijuana and 75 pounds of hashish, which authorities collected from a rental truck a few miles away. Even though many people were arrested, most of them were let off including Robert Eby, the owner of the plane because no one had the evidence that he was flying at the time.
While these developments made headlines throughout Georgia, in regard to the situation Jim West had an idea for a film. Luckily, he managed to execute it perfectly as he transitioned it from the former into the latter. The authorities had taken the plane into custody as evidence, but there was confusion about how to handle it seeing as it was not in a flying condition. In the end, they sold it to the highest bidder on the steps of the courthouse. Before the bidding started, West purchased the 300 acres around that plane, put up fences, and stationed armed guards to prevent would-be buyers from looking at it. After he won the bidding, he employed people to extend the runway to 3500 feet and used JATO bottles to take the plane into the sky. With the plane set and prop, he started a production company called Westco Productions, wrote a screenplay, and with the help of everyone he knew, he tried to convince them to be part of the film. There was no need for prior experience and by the look of things, there was little of that available.
What strikes me the most, apart from the context of the narrative itself, is how far West was able to go. There must have been complete faith in his words. He was friends with a house mover, so he quickly recruited him to act as the house mover who rings in one of the biggest gags in the picture. Howard Smith and Bob Deyton, as Clayton County police chief and sheriff, played those roles purely for the fact that they were. When Oosh and Doosh, the main characters, are taken off the roof of the Clayton County Jail by helicopter, they are, in fact, taken off the roof of the Clayton County Jail by helicopter. What’s even more, like everyone else in the film, they perform their own stunts since, probably, West just did not know any stuntmen. These are enormous stunts and I’ll emphasize the point that these people are not even professional actors, much less stunt actors. For the more perilous stunts, they were grabbed by the ‘liquid courage’ first. So, to my knowledge, there were no injuries.
To be sure, West was just as inexperienced in the making of a film as any of the parties involved, which, in his case, happened to be a whole lot. This is the only production he made and it shows. Although he is simply listed as a producer and a director, it has been claimed that every place a Jim or a James appeared in the credits, they were rightfully him: from Jim Clarke the writer to Jim Young the camera operator. I am not sure if this is right or not, but it is certain at least that he is Jim Whozitt as Big Jim Elliott, the DC-4 pilot who is the first to land the aircraft at the opening of the movie. He carries out the task fairly well. One might expect it to be completely bland, but it is realistic and sets the tone for the rest of the movie, which, by the way, suffers from the same lack of performance. Ands outhern drawl. This is very much welcomed, one of the movie’s charms besides the never-ending spectacle and chase scenes. The charming aspect of the film is that nothing in it does people’s head in a vice of pretension.
Even if one couldn’t comprehend it before, during the first ‘car chase scene’, it becomes obvious that no effects work is being done here such as CGI, or any other photorealistic effects. Oosh and Doosh are seeing driving their pot-laden camper van, and they are indeed doing it at peak speed. Whenever we see them shoving police vehicles off the roadway, that is precisely what they are doing here. The same goes for the incident where their camper van hits a bulldozer’s blade mounted on the back of a lorry’s truck in the opposite direction, resulting in the ripping off half of the auto. While bracing oneself for the re-enactment of the real event, it is almost impossible to fathom that the story is inexorably fictional. But, for all intents and purposes, the story is real. There is no doubt that these guys would get away with periodically sabotaging vehicles but in the same breath, they had to pay for it somehow, which could explain why the only professional on the production team, Angelo Ros, edited this. As a matter of fact, he was part of the editing crew for the 1977 series: Smokey and the Bandit.
The overarching story of the plot is not its stronger parts by far. Oosh and Doosh are under Joe King’s employ and he mainatins them as good children who he needs around. They are easy enough to involve all four of their team in gags and throw them in Clayton County Jail but clever enough to convince the sheriff to let the four of them jaunt out on a roof to work first thing the next day, complete with street clothes beneath their prison attire. With the help of the Oosh and Doosh ‘liquid courage’ cocktail, the boys are thrown into a helicopter, with the plan to escape their prison and the boys never planned to get out even with the liquid courage bound to their veins. Joe’s place is a literal war zone with Sandy shooting their pilot and the boys put back to work guaranteeing that the new load from the DC-4 out in the eighteen wheeler which state troopers chase them in. The cops are clearly crook hunters who will stop at nothing to capture and throw in a chang to a prison cell.
The following entails a comical story that is violent in parts. There is no character development or acting skills that are described in the movie, which is mostly a collection of automobiles. Although it has a runtime of 90 minutes, one third of it is dedicated to car stunts and vehicle pursuits. From an individual’s perspective, the quantity and quality can be considered impressive in most films, however, this one is eye opening due to the shortage of stunt double. If we catch a glimpse of it, they did it for real. The cop car that tumbles over the back of the truck did exactly that. The one that dives straight under the truck and comes out without a roof also did. And last but not the least, the eighteen wheeler that charges straight through the prefab house, which is set up in the center of the street, absolutely did. There’s absolutely no clue on how much of the budget was spent on ‘liquid courage’, but a decent chunk of it was without a doubt, utilized on automobiles. Each time I rewatch, I tend to forget the number of vehicles that get destroyed, but it’s a high number.
This is exciting but then these are only the exciting scenes. The difference is while the surroundings include a lot of non thrilling vehicle scenes, which are by no means exciting. While a third of the movie consists of the chase and stunt scenes, around the same third or even slightly more is composed of non action vehicles with no chaser. Car A is followed by car B, who is accompanied by the armored car, while cars C and D are also on the road. There are trucks A, B and C on the roads. We see the armor truck too. Next in line are the loading and unloading docks, finally, we have the parked cars waiting for us to take them along. There are cop cars, drones and bulldozers, everything is in queue. There is also a multitude of cars pursing a single bike, aggressively pushing it in different directions. Using the helicopter and the DC 4, we are shown the aerial views of the land. The overhead shots from the helicopter and the DC-4 are the cherry on the cake. These moments give me the impression that the whole motion picture was crafted artless by the combination of a toy car and a 6 years old dreamer.
It’s good in a refreshing way that this is not just another mediocre action film from the seventies, or step further, another seedy exploitation film of the period. The absence of any sort of competent direction makes the film feel like nothing else in existence and while the end product may be fundamentally broken, that is always a positive thing. While the building blocks may resemble poorly constructed mental memories of films or TV shows, they are in reality placed together in new designs that apparently made sense at some point in time. Much of this film has no dialogue, and instead, is interspersed with music from the past that aids in portraying an almost mute style of hilarious fiberglass slapstick. It transforms into a heist film when Oosh and Doosh steal an armored car in order to repay Sandy for all the debts, loses, and damages they inflicted on her. On its core, it is a chase film and in reality, it is a snapshot of the south in the 1970s, heavy Georgian accents, and so tight jeans that the outline of testicles is visible, and hair styles straight out of Lynyrd Skynyrd.
At last, all this initial fluff brings us to the focus of the story, which is of course embellished. Big Jim is looking to make the biggest shipment to date and, regardless of the history of the business, wants Oosh and Doosh as his ground team. He is planning to import $10 million worth of marijuana and cocaine from Colombia to the United States. He is going to sponsor them with $250,000 each as operational costs. The mission requires us to carve a 2,500 foot long runway on the top of Treat Mountain in Polk County and 5 two ton dump trucks to transport the drugs and as loony as it sounds, he wants it done within five days. No one’s gonna lose a job over it and it doesn’t look like a labor auction either, the ground statics aren’t cutting off as much as they should be and even Big Jim rolling in a couple of hours earlier than he should have, but that just tells us we sit and watch the plane toward us, that which we think is flying in while clipping trees and wondering how on earth Jim West got to pull off everything he put in this flick. Without having a single stunt man on the payroll. The picture’s slogan is evidently, ‘Just do it!’ and that is what they did.
The aerial shots shown to us during the finale may very well be the first to be recorded footage of the real plane in the real area before Jim West purchased the land. They could, in fact, be news footage captured post the event, just as the radio announcements made by the authentic Atlanta DJ, Van Q Temple, are probably from the same period. However, the uniqueness of this film is that fiction shifts into reality and somehow becomes a new reality. For instance, when Jerry Burnam and his bulldozer crew clear land for Big Jim to fly onto Treat Mountain in the story, it is indeed Jerry Burnam and his bulldozer crew clearing the land for Jim West to take off with his newly purchased item to make the rest of the film feasible. He returns in the airplane, or back to the set, already in the replica, and we are wowed by his dexterity because he is actually in the plane in the location he is meant to be. No doubt we admire his abilities as a pilot, but what truly left us in awe was the unknown pilot who did it first, during the night, and did a lot less runway.
I must say, the Polk County Pot Plane, which was repackaged and sold as In Hot Pursuit, is one of the best movies I have ever watched. In my opinion, it is not a great movie but once again we see an amateur going about their professional life. Jim knew how to circumvent his restrictions, and managed to work around them throughout the film. He did not have professional actors because all of the people assisting him were his friends or family. Jim’s solution was to write scenes that did not necessitate any acting. It was also evident that he did not possess a team of stuntmen, so instead, he worked his magic on the cast, and using his charm he managed to persuade them to perform insane stunts. The outcome is very honest, almost unreal. Contradavicting what we have grown accustomed to, this film is very real. It is as honest as it gets, not because Jim did everything in his power, but rather because he did not know how to approach it differently. He made a plan, and meticulous executed it. Maybe Jim’s ‘liquid courage’ was always meant for him.
To watch more movies like Polk County Pot Plane (1977) 123website.
Also Watch for more movies 123movies.
