A pretty obscure back country moonshine opus that's best left buried and forgotten. Carol Lynley, who breezed her way into 70's film buff's hearts by badly lip-syncing to Maureen McGovern's repellently sappy Oscar-winning pop ballad "The Morning After" in the deathless disaster classic "The Poseidon Adventure," strikes out big time as a snotty, uptight New York City corporate babe who inherits a backwoods moonshine operation from her recently deceased half uncle. Carol grudgingly takes over the illicit business, locking horns with sloppy, cocksure good old boy rotgut driver Gary Lockwood (a long way down from the glorious "2001: A Space Odyssey" and coming on something awful with a rather uncomfortably credible portrayal of a totally disgusting dirt-bag) over how the business out to be run. Further complications ensue when both the mob and the police decide it's time to either take over the bug juice business or shut it down entirely.
While the basic premise could have made for some delectably dopey down-home dumb fun, director James Broderick unfortunately blows it abysmally by allowing the pace to crawl at a deadly slow rate, failing to deliver any bang-up exciting action (the few car chases featured herein are too flatly staged to have any slam-bang stirring impact), placing way too much emphasis on the dreary, uneventful narrative which largely focuses on the very tiresome and redundant bickering between Lynley and Lockwood (what their romance fails to set off in sparks it more than makes up for in sheer underwhelming boredom), and, worst of all, displaying an overall highly off-putting lackadaisical attitude towards the film in general. Additional damage is wrought by the shameful wasting of an extremely solid B-movie cast: late, great crotchety fuddy dud character actor Ryal Dano as Lockwood's flaky, hooch-saturated partner, Mary Woronov in a "blink and you'll miss her" nothing bit part as Lynley's stuffy, bespectacled boss, John Goff as a power hungry local yokel mob capo, blundering fat guy favorite Cliff Emmich (Rip Torn's loyal, long-suffering chauffeur in the extraordinary "Payday") as a clumsy FBI agent, and the seemingly inexhaustible and omnipresent trash flick treasure George "Buck" Flower in one of his standard cantankerous old hillbilly cuss parts. Furthermore, although the technical credits are sound -- Don Peake supplies a spare, peppy score, Ron Wiggins belts out the lively country and western theme song "Runnin' Moonshine" with agreeable redneck panache, future big deal mainstream movie cinematographer Tak Fujimoto gives the film a nice slick'n'polished look -- even said up to par behind-the-scenes contributions can't compensate for the film's crippling, entertainment-killing dearth of both sorely needed wit and vitality. In short, don't waste your money renting "Bad Georgia Road;" buy yourself some moonshine and get mighty plastered instead.
While the basic premise could have made for some delectably dopey down-home dumb fun, director James Broderick unfortunately blows it abysmally by allowing the pace to crawl at a deadly slow rate, failing to deliver any bang-up exciting action (the few car chases featured herein are too flatly staged to have any slam-bang stirring impact), placing way too much emphasis on the dreary, uneventful narrative which largely focuses on the very tiresome and redundant bickering between Lynley and Lockwood (what their romance fails to set off in sparks it more than makes up for in sheer underwhelming boredom), and, worst of all, displaying an overall highly off-putting lackadaisical attitude towards the film in general. Additional damage is wrought by the shameful wasting of an extremely solid B-movie cast: late, great crotchety fuddy dud character actor Ryal Dano as Lockwood's flaky, hooch-saturated partner, Mary Woronov in a "blink and you'll miss her" nothing bit part as Lynley's stuffy, bespectacled boss, John Goff as a power hungry local yokel mob capo, blundering fat guy favorite Cliff Emmich (Rip Torn's loyal, long-suffering chauffeur in the extraordinary "Payday") as a clumsy FBI agent, and the seemingly inexhaustible and omnipresent trash flick treasure George "Buck" Flower in one of his standard cantankerous old hillbilly cuss parts. Furthermore, although the technical credits are sound -- Don Peake supplies a spare, peppy score, Ron Wiggins belts out the lively country and western theme song "Runnin' Moonshine" with agreeable redneck panache, future big deal mainstream movie cinematographer Tak Fujimoto gives the film a nice slick'n'polished look -- even said up to par behind-the-scenes contributions can't compensate for the film's crippling, entertainment-killing dearth of both sorely needed wit and vitality. In short, don't waste your money renting "Bad Georgia Road;" buy yourself some moonshine and get mighty plastered instead.