I wonder if this mid 70s drive-in actioner is still on the Bernadette Peters CV? near Sunday IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE? Perhaps MGM saw this and decided she HAD to be in PENNIES FROM HEAVEN....perhaps the Broadway casting office for her recent role in ANNIE GET YOUR GUN designed posters that read: "Bernadette (VIGILANTE FORCE) Peters now on Broadway in Irving Berlin's greatest musical triumph....." it's all as valid as "Stephen Boyd, star of BEN HUR now in his biggest film: JUMBO"............ anyway...
In the mid 70s, wasn't Jan Michael Vincent a major star! There was legions of action fans ready to roll up to the drive in and not molest their girlfriends because they would actually watch all the film! VIGILANTE FORCE is quite a brutal 70s action thriller and has some astonishing stunt fights with the added horror of baseball bats as weapons. I personally was really shocked by these wild fights and found them really upsetting. I think today this film deserves re appraisal for capturing the feel of tough nasty rural town lawlessness and drunken lout rule ...and all in a fantastic 70s time. The look of this film alone would get a big willing audience. Today these films don't exist instead we get disgusting mutilation crap like THE DEVILS REJECTS or WOLF CREEK. In the 70s this action drive in movie was a real action movie, a modern western with trucks and Jack Daniel bars and chicks in teeny weeny denim hotpants. Great fun. Occasionally thumping but not horrible. There is an unforgettable early scene in this film where the boys screech to town in their pickup truck and spin into the main street... it is a jamboree of hooter'n and holler'n and dust and yellin and screamin..all in camera crane sweep.. a whole street of wild Friday afternoon drinkin and crashing! What a stunt vista! unforgettable after 30 years...and a great way to establish what we are in for. DUKES OF HAZZARD meets BUCKTOWN. Hell then breaks loose even more...and poor Miss Peters has to dodge the baseball bats while trying to have a relationship. VIGILANTE FORCE was part of a great series of films - often most with JMV as well - like THE STREETFIGHTER, or BITE THE BULLET or WHITE LINE FEVER., BABY BLUE MARINE, BUSTER AND BILLIE, ALL THE BEASTS AND CHILDREN etc...all well worth seeing again for their purity in presentation...as lean as a Republic serial and as compelling. In the 50s there was a film called THE PHENIX CITY STORY made by Allied Artists as a noir drama. It too has similar themes in an urban setting, and is distinguished by it's tough ideology for the time.
