The Great Smokey Roadblock

A dying trucker (Henry Fonda) throws caution to the wind by stealing back his repossessed semi and venturing his last haul across the country with a Bible-spouting sidekick (Robert Englund), a madam (Eileen Brennan) and her six girls.

"The Great Smokey Roadblock" (1977) was originally titled "The Last of the Cowboys" and was presumably changed to take advantage of the success of "Smokey and the Bandit." While this one focuses on a trucker and a band of prostitutes, it's just as entertaining as that more popular road farce and maybe a smidgen more.

The movie repeatedly points out that Fonda's character is 60 years old, but he was actually 71 during filming and looked it. Don't get me wrong, he looked good for his age and had his usual charisma, but he didn't look 60, unless he had lived a very hard life.

Curvy Daina House is the highlight on the feminine front, but I strangely found grumpy Alice (Mews Small) notable too. Susan Sarandon is also on hand before she made it big. Actually the entire female cast is entertaining because they're fleshed out as individuals.

The geography is disingenuous as Northern California is passed off for places like Missouri, the Smokey Mountains and the Carolina coast. Yet even big budget movies back then did this, let alone small flicks like this one.

The film runs 1 hour, 44 minutes, and was shot in Oroville, California.

GRADE: B-