Runtime: 97 minutes
Directed by: David Berlatsky
Starring: Gary Conway, Angel Tompkins, Michael Dante, George Memmoli, Timothy Scott
From: Columbia
Oh, what a backstory this movie has.
What I was going to see yesterday for discussion today did not occur; it's a long story but it was because someone unexpectedly came over for the night. Because of circumstances beyond their control they (someone who doesn't live in the area) needed a place to crash and as I did not want to be out for much of the time they'd be there... plans changed. At least this arrived in the mail earlier yesterday.
For awhile now I've known of this movie, released on a limited basis by Columbia in '77 but for some reason it never received an official home video release until literally a few weeks ago. It was mentioned on the Lost Media wiki due to Code Red going far enough in the process of putting it out way back in '06 that they included the trailer on a few DVD's they put out at the time. Then nothing happened for years. Suddenly-and this I somehow missed out on at the time-for a few days in November '21, someone on YouTube uploaded a VHS taping of when the film briefly was on pay cable way back when... they got that taping from eBay. It was taken down but not before someone YouTube ripped the file and put it on Internet Archive, where it can still be found. However, the quality is as poor as expected from a VHS copy probably recorded at least 40 years ago. Suddenly, not that long after Scorpion Releasing announced they were putting it out, and the Blu came out only 3 months after the YouTube kerfuffle... it's all very strange to me and the questions I have about it likely will never be answered.
All of this said-and the disc purchased because who knows when or if it will be legally streamed anywhere-what is The Farmer? What's it all about? Well, it is a 70's revenge thriller surrounding a poor Georgia soldier just returning home from World War II who tries to make a go of it on his late father's small ranch but runs into problems. This includes a drunk guy crashing his car right by him and that subsequently introduced him to “The Outfit”, so oh s***. Bad things happen (including a sexual assault) so this causes the titular farmer to get suitably angry and sweet, sweet revenge he gets. Our hero
While this is not as good as Rolling Thunder and-as others have noted-there's a scene involving a marching band which OBVIOUSLY looked 70's instead of the 1945 setting (you see someone in the background wearing shorts and those period high stripey socks!) overall this was pretty good. It definitely has a 70's drama/thriller vibe, from its serious nature and methodical pacing which always intrigued... to bloody violence in the final act and vicious bad guys that use such weapons as acid. The crew of character actors present-Gary Conway, Angel Tompkins, Michael Dante, George Memmoli, etc.-definitely was an asset; I enjoyed the Hugo Montenegro score even though I'm not 100% sure what to think of funky 70's music being used for a movie set in the 1940's.
Those that enjoy movies like Rolling Thunder may feel like it is worth the shot to pay for the Blu disc; the Scorpion Releasing release contained no errors (something I unfortunately have to mention after all the news of disc problems in the past year) and while it is scant on special features, at least it looks and sounds quite good. The trailer compares the movie to Taxi Driver, Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces... while not a perfect apples to apples thing and The Farmer doesn't rise to those heights, I am glad this apparently finally got an official release because of a random person's eBay purchase and subsequent YouTube upload.
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