Prime Cut

Author Charles Taylor will sign copies of Opening Wednesday at a Theater Or Drive-In Near You: The Shadow Cinema of the American ‘70s before the screening.

Prime Cut  (1972)

Grindhouse motifs enter the slaughterhouse for a Nixon-era satire encased in the timeless language of mob pictures.  When Chicago tough guy Nick Devlin (Lee Marvin) arrives in Kansas City to collect on a debt from meatpacker Mary Ann (Gene Hackman), Nick quickly learns he’s bitten off more than he can chew: this packing plant is also home to a human “meat market,” selling doped-up young girls (including Sissy Spacek) into sex slavery.  As the war in Vietnam comes to a close offscreen, director Michael Ritchie posits the American heartland as a fertile battleground in the ongoing war of everyday existence.

Charles Taylor will be joined on stage by Los Angeles Times film critic Justin Chang for a post-screening conversation.

35mm, IB Technicolor, 88 min.  Production: Wizan Productions; Cinema Center Films. Distribution: National General Pictures.  Director: Michael Ritchie.  Producer: Joe Wizan.  Screenwriter: Robert Dillon.  Cinematographer: Gene Polito.  Editor: Carl Pingitore.  Music: Lalo Schifrin.  Cast: Lee Marvin, Gene Hackman, Angel Tompkins, Gregory Walcott, Sissy Spacek.

Watch the conversation with Charles Taylor and Los Angeles Times Film Critic Justin Chang: