EDITOR’S NOTE: Bad Georgia Road was on the CBS Late Movie on January 23, 1981.
Released around a month after Smokey and the Bandit to drive-ins across the American South by Dimension Pictures, this played double bills with The Great Smokey Roadblock or Hi-Riders. It follows city slicker Molly Golden (Carol Lynley), who learns she’s inherited a farm down South. Molly learns that she can cash out the estate for a cool $100,000 if she signs the papers in person, so she packs her bags and heads down yonder.
Surprise! It’s a trap. A slippery local lawyer tricks her into handing over the cash to settle her late uncle’s massive debts. Her actual inheritance? A rotting house, some dirt and a fully operational, highly illegal moonshine empire. Left with no exit strategy, Molly decides to embrace her inner bootlegger, relying on local farmhands Leroy Hastings (Gary Lockwood) and Arthur Pennyrich (Royal Dano) to do the heavy lifting. Naturally, rival backwoods distillers take offense, local law enforcement starts sniffing around, and a full-scale moonshine war breaks out.
Directed, written and produced by John C. Broderick, this has all the ’70s redneck things you want: brawls, cheap beer, shotgun blasts, skinny-dipping and rural posturing. But despite checking those boxes, this Georgia/Alabama-set picture was actually shot in the West, around Lake Piru in Ventura County, California. Those rolling hills and dry vistas belong way more to Hollywood than Dixie.
In many of these breezy drive-in romps, a little friction between a Yankee high-and-mighty lady and a good old country boy is par for the course. But Bad Georgia Road veers straight off a cliff into the grotesque by playing a literal sexual assault off as a lighthearted seduction technique to win the heroine’s heart.
You can watch this on Tubi.
