Synopsis
You're in for the ride of a lifetime!
An old trucker steals his truck for one last cross-country run, with a madam and her crew on board.
The Great Smokey Roadblock
1977 Directed by John Leone
Cast
Henry Fonda Eileen Brennan Austin Pendleton Robert Englund Dub Taylor John Byner Susan Sarandon Melanie Mayron Leigh French Mews Small Daina House Gary Sandy Valerie Curtin Johnnie Collins III Bibi Osterwald Ben Freedman Lyman Ward Tony Cacciotti Dave Morick Rick Sandack Lesley Woods Herb Armstrong Hank Rolike Gary Downey Sander Vanocur Herman Rowland Ernie Paul Sherri Wheaton Jackson Baker Show All…
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Alternative Title
The Last Of The Cowboys
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Lifelong trucker "Elegant John" Howard (Henry Fonda) has his truck repossessed while in the hospital. Despite his ill health, Elegant John breaks out of the hospital and steals his truck, intent on making one last elegant run. He picks up a hitchhiker (Robert Englund), runs afoul of an old nemesis (Gary Sandy) and eventually reconnects with an old acquaintance and professional madam (Eileen Brennan) who has a proposition: Transport her and her six girls from Wyoming to South Carolina. An elegant mission, and one that John Howard is willing to undertake.
The Last of the Cowboys, aka The Great Smokey Roadblock is one of those "comedies" where not much funny is ever really happening. That doesn't make it a bad…
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Has very little to do with the titular police barricade and much more to do with a terminally ill Henry Fonda hauling a truck full of hookers cross-country. Amiable enough, not particularly exciting.
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Jimmy: Uncle Harley, I’m doomed, I am doomed!
Harley: If that’s the worst thing that ever happens to you during your life, I’m going to follow you to the ends of the world, because you gonna have a remarkable passage.
The poster would have you think this was a fairly raucous comedy, and it is a comedy, for sure, but it's a sort of bittersweet one. Henry Fonda plays Elegant John Howard, an ill sixty-something trucker who steals back his repossessed rig so he can do one last perfect run. If that sounds a little sad, it's because it is—don't be shocked when the movie starts off with a weird dream sequence of Elegant John wandering…
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As it turns out, the "great" roadblock is just four police cars and a couple pieces of wood. And yet who could dislike a film that costars John Byner as "Bobby Apples."
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John Leone’s comedy-drama. Aging trucker named Elegant John Howard (Henry Fonda) decides he and his truck Elenor has one more good run in them. Also starring Eileen Brennan and Austin Pendleton.
The story concerns an elderly trucker who chooses that he and his vehicle Elenor has another decent run in them, and with the assistance of a traveller and a few others to make it occur.
Henry Fonda gives an okay performance in his part as John Howard, the ageing trucker who, along with his vehicle Elenor, hopes to have another good lot of fun, with the help of some others along the way.
Elsewhere, Eileen Brennan, John Byner and Dub Taylor are all alright in their respective roles as…
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I don't know why the LB rating is so low for this, probably expecting more backwoods hijinks while a banjo or mouth-harp plays on the soundtrack. Good acting, likeable cast turns this into more of a hangout movie than your classic drive-in rednexploitation fare. Fonda and Brennan have great chemistry. The Ladies of the Oldest Profession have a Seven Dwarfs group dynamic with each allowed their own personality. There are stakes involved in sick old man Fonda's foolhardy quest for one more load and one last shot at dignity. Great location shooting. Nice stuntwork.
I don't see why this rates a 2.7? The movie has a lot of heart, some nice T & A, a great dope smoking scene with Austin Pendleton and Jon Byner, has young Susan Sarandon... I guess it's not so Grindhouse as some would like.
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I'd like to hear the story of how Susan Sarandon ended up being a producer on The Great Smokey Roadblock. It was her first producing credit, and it would be another twenty years before her next.
I sometimes bewilder myself in how I end up watching movies like this. For one reason or another, I've ended up with an interest in the cowboy myth and the different ways it can end up being interpreted in a movie. The Great Smokey Roadblock was originally titled The Last of the Cowboys. You can understand why 70-something old Henry Fonda was attracted to such a project. And you can understand why trucker movies briefly became an viable analogy for the cowboy -- the…
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One of the better trucker films I've seen. It's quirky and eccentric enough to be interesting. The oddly top-notch cast really helps. Henry Fonda driving a semi with Robert Englund riding shotgun is just incredible. It's doesn't push as hard as Smokey and the Bandit, but what movie really does, huh? They did manage to license a song by the Doobie Bros; no bluegrass here. It's got plenty of that decade's inappropriate playfulness but nowhere near as problematic as many films of the time. Prostitutes play a central role, yet there is no nudity. Weirdos and fringe folk are accepted here, whereas many trucker films run asunder with racist, homo- and/or xenophobic themes. The action meanders purposefully, and some of the characters' interactions seem like a precursor to Slackers. Thumbs up, I say.
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Fonda-thon Part 16
Fonda and Leone do great things together. Oh wait, wrong Leone. Extremely cheesy, yet shoehorns in very serious moments like Fonda’s character dealing with the heavy burden of his own mortality, at one point completely breaking down into tears. It doesn’t work. The movie climaxes with the truck barging through a police roadblock on a bridge in the most chaotic way possible - cut to Fonda and posse hippie dancing in a forest. I don’t know.
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Tout de même dramatique pour un film dans lequel Dub Taylor participe à une orgie folichonne dans une cellule de prison mais tout de même assez niaiseux pour un film ou un frêle Henry Fonda s’écroule en larmes sur le bord d’une rivière parce qu’il meurs du cancer. Je sais pas exactement ce qu’ils sont en train de faire (j’imagine qu’il y a eu des montages et des remontages à en pu finir) mais une chose est certaine: c’est pas le film de camionneur à la Burt Reynolds escompté.
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How often do you think Susan Sarandon thinks about this movie? It's very not bad and definitely an enjoyable trucker movie though Henry Fonda's sullen vibes really suck the life out of most of it. Oh, to be a trucker transporting consenting sex workers across state lines to stick it to the man.
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So I’ve been watching all the 1970s trucker movies I can get my hands on lately. I don’t know what it is, but I’m loving them. This has been my least favorite of the four I’ve seen recently, but there’s a great performance from a very young Robert Englund in this. I wasn’t expecting to see him, and he’s in most of the film. Original posters are cheap, and Robert is always at conventions........