WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Johnny Firecloud (1975)

Johnny Firecloud (Victor Mohica, Don’t Answer the Phone) just got back from Vietnam and made his way back home to New Mexico. If he thought it sucked before he left, well, it sucks even more now. Colby (Ralph Meeker) runs the town and has a mad on for Johnny, probably because his daughter June (Christina Hart) lost her virginity to him and never got over the Native American getting drafted. The cops, like Sheriff Jesse (David Canary), are bought and paid for. So when the one person who believes in Johnny, his drunken grandfather and tribal chief White Eagle (Frank DeKova) is killed by the cops and some alcoholic rich punks and then the virginal teacher Nenya (Sacheen Littlefeather, who accepted the Oscar for Brando) gets assaulted in a way too long scene, well, Johnny is going to take everything he learned in the white man’s army and go nuts. 

Imagine: Billy Jack and Paul Kersey with no budget or restraint.

Produced by David Friedman, directed by William Allen Castleman (Bummer) and written by Wilton Denmark, this is a movie filled with wild moments like Johnny scalping people, slicing their eyelids off so they fry in the son, burying a dude neck deep and letting snakes crawl around him, putting George Buck Flower’s head inside a sack filled with poisonous snakes, blowing up trailers and plenty of bar fights. There’s also a bad guy who threatens, “One of these days, you and me gonna tangle assholes,” and I have no idea how to answer that.

I would 200% play this in a fancy art theater as a double feature with The Farmer, and that’s why no smart movie place should ever give me a chance.

You can watch this on YouTube.

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