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"The thing with feathers" is the basis of the absurdist anecdote, it means something else to the independent artist in his own subculture. The rambler is a recovering loudmouth, his vow of silence allows for Warren Oates' marvelously loose-limbed pantomime, a certain kinship with the pugnacious fowl in the sandy pit. "Anything that can fight to the death and not utter a sound, well..." The loser is unceremoniously thrown into a dumpster, the rival (Harry Dean Stanton) scoops up his car, trailer and girlfriend (Laurie Bird). Down but not out, he visits sister (Millie Perkins) and brother-in-law (Troy Donahue) and leaves with their house on a flatbed truck, the perfect place for training "the most stupid creature on earth, and the most intelligent fighter." In Monte Hellman's The Lusty Men, the rules of the game are to be observed. Cracked beaks and sharpened spurs, the plumage in need of trimming to meet the required weight, a documentary immersion in the details of backwoods combat. (Slow-motion gives the blood of the sport in montages at once abstract and visceral.) "The Junior Bird Man" and the striking portraits he meets—the partner (Richard B. Shull) with the gift of champagne, the challenger (Steve Railsback) going for illicit ringside stimulation, the hayseed (Ed Begley Jr.) hopping mad next to his mangled pet. Most tellingly, the hometown flame (Patricia Pearcy) invited to the grisly championship. (Their reunion is sketched with half-silhouetted figures before a stream consumed by sunlight, "the value of self-control" is the punchline of the yarn she recounts.) Néstor Almendros in Georgia, a tour of an underground derby in a motel room, a medal and a "substitute for a heart." The ending revises Huston's in The Misfits. With Charles Willeford, Warren Finnerty, and Robert Earl Jones.
--- Fernando F. Croce |