By Geno McGahee
In the 1970s, a career as a trucker was romanticized. It was a different time where a trucker was more than a job…it was a brotherhood. It still exists with bikers, I guess. I always see them wave at each other. “Hi there, I own a motorcycle too!” Times have changed for the once mighty trucker, but in the 1975 action/drama WHITE LINE FEVER, it was the prime time for the group.
Carrol Jo Hummer (Jan-Michael Vincent) has returned from the Air Force to meet up with his wife, Jerri (Kay Lenz). A young couple ready to start their lives together and they make the decision to invest in the “Blue Mule”, a tractor to begin a career as a truck driver. I don’t know if I would hire a trucker named “Hummer.” Then again, I might be more likely to hire them if they had that name. I guess it depends on my mood.
Hummer gets a job immediately working for an old family friend, Duane Haller (Slim Pickens), but some illegal things are going on. Hummer finds out that there is gambling, illegal cigarettes and more being transported through the company and he is being asked to be a part of it. Despite the good money, Hummer is outraged and demands that is truck is unloaded. One of the workers, Clem, played by Martin Kove of KARATE KID fame, doesn’t like Hummer’s attitude and makes him pay. He unloads the truck, but when Hummer returns, it’s full of cow shit. Hummer ignores it and just takes off, but that’s when he realizes the error he has made.
A crooked cop pulls him over and handcuffs him to the truck and drives away. Clem and the boys show up and beat him to a pulp. Has Martin Kove ever played a good guy? I guess it’s his natural swagger. Whatever the case, Kove owns this role and stands out. I wish they gave him a more significant bad guy role in this.
On top of a beating, Hummer gets blacklisted and can’t find work. He grabs as shotgun and storms into Haller’s office and demands work. That’s when he meets the head of the company, Buck (L.Q. Jones) a man with wonderful hair and style. I assumed that his hair was a wig but it was all him and he becomes Hummer’s biggest issue. It now becomes a showdown between the brotherhood of good truckers and Buck and his gaggle of goon truckers, leading to a one on one between Hummer and Buck.
With Buck fucked, the good guys won, but there is still the big corporation that wants to continue the illegal shipments, leading to another big showdown with Hummer and Cutler (Don Porter) and a great visual of the blue mule jumping through a huge sign. The film goes out with a whimper not a bang as well as some curiosity as to how things will turn out.
WHITE LINE FEVER is obviously inspired by WALKING TALL, and was capitalizing on the popularity of the truck-driving profession. It is absolutely worth a watch, but it falls under more drama than action and fails to stand out in any category. It’s about as tame as a made for TV movie and there are elements that are sort of confusing. In the end, I recommend it, but if you have to choose, WALKING TALL is the way to go.
Rating: 5.5/10
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