EDITOR’S NOTE: High Ballin’ was on the CBS Late Movie on May 15, 1981.

“Iron Duke” Boykin (Jerry Reed) is an independent trucker dealing with “King” Carroll (Chris Wiggins) and his gang, led by Harvey (David Ferry), who are trying to get every big rig driver to be part of his company. He’s joined by Rane (Peter Fonda) and Pickup (Helen Shaver) in an attempt to bring whiskey to a labor camp, thereby making enough money to be free of the monopoly.

But when Boykin is shot and Pickup is captured, Rane has to fight the gang with a posse — this movie is pretty much a Western with trucks instead of horses — and go one-on-one with Harvey.

Set in the U.S. but shot in Toronto, this also was released on video as Death Toll, which is a way more serious title.

Director Peter Carter also made Rituals and The Intruder Within, so he’s good in my eyes. It’s written by Paul F. Edwards, Richard Robinson (Kingdom of the Spiders) and Stephen Schneck (Welcome to Blood City). This has an amazing action scene with Rane launching cars off a truck onto the gang chasing Duke, as well as a tire iron fight outside a truck stop. Best of all, this was called Convoy II in some countries.Plus Clint Howard and Michael Ironside! How can you go wrong with all of these elements, as well as Jerry Reed singing the theme song, the same house at the beginning of Smokey and the Bandit in this opening and the stars of Smokey and Easy Rider teaming up?

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Survivor was on the CBS Late Movie on April 7 and August 3, 1988.

A man known only as The Survivor (Christopher Mayer) returned from space ten years ago to find the Earth looking like the cover of Defcon-4. And yes, that is Vance Duke, the man who tried to ruin many a childhood when Bo and Luke had a contractual dispute.

He’s met less than a handful of people in ten years of wandering the nuclear cursed lands and even meets a woman (Sue Kiel) who claims to know of a city filled with people. She’s kidnapped before she can tell him more, which leads to him searching for her.

Who kidnapped her? Well, seeing as how this was made in 1987, this movie is contractually obligated to have Richard Moll as the bad guy, Kragg. Don’t be confused if you saw the 1998 film The Survivor, in which Moll plays Kyla.

This movie may move a bit slow, as it is mostly told through narration and flashbacks. Kragg’s plan is to repopulate the Earth by taking every woman and fertilizing them, while encouraging suicides to keep the numbers low. He also wants to castrate The Survivor, which seems like a pretty rude way to deal with an enemy. At least let them keep their cock!

Director Michael Shackleton only directed this one film but did shoot two different Benji movies. It was written by Bima Stagg and Martin Wragge. Wragge produced another Stagg script for Black Trash and also wrote The Last Warrior, which sounds like an end of the world movie, but is not.

Shot in South Africa and distributed by Vestron, this is way more high falutin of post nuke movie than you’d expect from Vance Duke and Bull Shannon. Did you know Bull’s first name was Nostradamus? As slow as this plays, I can’t even imagine how long it seemed with commercials when it played the CBS Late Movie.

Byron Cherry, who played Coy Duke, never got to be in a post-apocalyptic movie. He did, however, show up in Blood Salvage.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Mr. Billion was on the CBS Late Movie on September 22, 1982 and July 1 1983. 

Jonathan Kaplan started his career by making movies like Night Call Nurses, The Student Teachers, The Slams, Truck Turner and White Line Fever. He’d eventually make acclaimed movies like Heart Like a Wheel and The Accused. On an episode of Trailers From Hell, he called this movie “the biggest failure of his career.”

Written by Ken Friedman (who also wrote several other Kaplan film, such as Bad Girls; he also wrote Death By Invitation),  this was an attempt by Dino De Laurentiis at making an American movie that starring Italian actor Terence Hill, who was already well-known to American audiences for They Call Me Trinity.

The result? According to Variety, Radio City Music Hall in New York sued 20th Century-Fox for $107,123 because the tickets sold so poorly.

”When a simple garage mechanic suddenly inherits a billion dollars, he gets more action, excitement, romance and riotous adventure than money can buy!” Yes, Terence Hill is Guido Falcone, an Italian mechanic who is the only relative that didn’t beg his rich American uncle for money. When he gets the entire estate, his uncle’s business manager John Cutler (Jackie Gleason) flies to Italy to try and con him. Despite his sweet nature, Guido is way smarter than he appears and wants to look over the estate; he has to be in San Francisco on a certain date to accept the offer. Cutler, wanting the money for himself, hires Rosie (Valerie Perrine) and her friend Bernie (Dick Miller) to distract Guido and keep him for signing his estate papers.

Lily Tomlin was supposed to be in the movie, but the studio didn’t want her. And Perrine, as urban legend tells us, introduced herself to the sweet natured Hill by telling her that she could light a cigarette with her vagina. They did not get along after that and had to play that they were falling in love.

The supporting cast includes R.G. Armstrong as a Southern sheriff, Chill Wills as a military leader, Slim Pickens as a rancher, William Redfield as a lawyer for the company, Sam Laws and Johnny Ray McGhee as a father and son with differing views on life and even Leo Rossi as a kidnapper. As I say, it’s the kind of cast I personally would call all-star, even if no one else would agree.

Hill would also appear in another box office bomb the same year, March or Die, which also had Gene Hackman and Catherine Deneuve in the cast.

I have no idea why Hollywood would hire Hill and have him play in a movie that’s nothing like what he did best. At least he was able to work with Bud Spencer again and make plenty of late 70s and 80s buddy movies, as well as Super Fuzz as a solo movie three years later.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Carny was on the CBS Late Movie on May 19, 1986 and June 16 and August 5, 1987.

Robert Kaylor made the documentaries Derby and Max-Out before this film, which he wrote with his wife Phoebe, Thomas Baum (The Sender) and Robbie Robertson. Yes, from The Band. He also plays Patch, the fixer for the Great American Carnival. This makes more sense than you would think, as when he was 14 and 15, Robertson worked summer jobs in the traveling carny circuit, which also inspired The Band’s song “Life is a Carnival.”

Patch’s best friend is Frankie (Gary Busey), who is also The Mighty Bozo, a clown who sits in a dunk tank and tries to get people mad enough to play his game. Then, in the middle of their perfect small life, Donna (Jodie Foster) meets and falls for Frankie and joins the carny.

She soon learns the ways of the carnival, even if Patch doesn’t want her in their world. She finally fits in when her work on the midway thanks to the training of Gerta (Meg Foster). But you know how young love goes, because soon enough, she ends up in bed with Patch, which adds drama to the carnival.

Luckily, everyone comes together after the local mob attacks the carnival and leaves their oldest member On-Your-Mark (Elisha Cook Jr.) dead and nearly kills Frankie, too. Patch, Frankie, Donna and Heavy St. John (Kenneth McMillan) get their revenge by pulling another scam on the criminals, then the carny leaves town again, but this time with Donna as her own woman, belonging to no one.

This movie also has small roles for some of my favorite actors, like Fred Ward, Tim Thomerson and Craig Wasson (as Foster’s townie boyfriend). As for Foster, she was 16 when she made this movie and had love scenes with Busey, who was 35, and Robertson, who was 36. There’s also a scene where she tries to seduce a lesbian mark that is nearly volcanic.

Everyone is uniformly great in this film and Robertson was a natural at acting. Sadly, it came out on the same weekend as The Shining and The Empire Strikes Back, so you can just figure how well it did at the box office. This movie also feels more like a hang out than a plot and that’s another reason why I liked it so much. You get the vibe of what it’s like to be part of the carnival. The freedom, as well as the issues, the way each city is different and how the relationships work. It’s really something.

You can watch this on YouTube.