Ode to Billy Joe 1976 Max Baer Jr.

Welcome to another edition of "Why The Hell Isn't This On DVD?".  The movie in question is Ode to Billy Joe.  It was made in 1976, was a big hit, and promptly disappeared.  Now it's back, thanks to Netflix Instant Watch, and it's pretty fantastic.

The movie follows in the grand tradition of films based on songs.  What's that?  No good movies were ever based on songs?  What about Convoy?  Or Take This Job and Shove It?  This movie's different, though.  I swear.  Yes, it was directed by Jethro from the Beverly Hillbillies, but still.  I'm not going to bother with the plot details - listen to the song, it's all there.

The film looks fantastic.  It was shot on location in Mississippi, near the spots mentioned in Bobbie Gentry's song.  I was surprised to see that the cinematographer basically did years and years of TV shows after this, which is a real shame.  It would look spectacular on Blu-ray.  Most of the extras in the movie appear to be locals, which adds to the realism of the film.

Then there's Robby Benson.  When I was a kid, Robby Benson was in everything.  HBO had a habit of running the same 10 movies for what seemed like months at a time, which meant that alongside the Robby Benson-free  Beastmaster and Young Doctors in Love, I saw Ice Castles, One on One, and Running Brave pretty much nonstop.  When I saw Kon Ichikawa's Tokyo Olympiad, which contains the real Billy Mills running his real gold medal race, I thought "Oh my god, he really does look like Robby Benson!"  And guess what?  Robby Benson totally comes through in this movie, too. 

That's not to say that his love interest, Bobby Lee Hartley (Glynnis O'Connor), is anything special, though.  Billy Joe does jump off the Tallahatchie Bridge, after all.  Bobby Lee does nothing except radiate overwhelming plainness.  Glynnis O'Connor is a good actress - she has a great scene near the end with the sawmill owner (James Best - Roscoe P. Coltrane, himself!) - but she doesn't seem to be worth all the trouble.

But it is a story about young lovers, after all, so maybe Robby Benson's uncontrollable urges are understandable in that light.  They even got Michel Legrand to do some appropriately romantic music for the film.  He did the score for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, one of the most romantic movies of all time, so he knows what he's doing.  In fact, they loaded up talented people on both sides of the camera for this film.  Not bad for a movie based on a hit song.

It's certainly better than Harper Valley P.T.A..