Though usually pretty laid-back, easy rider Peter Fonda jumps into the role of a two-fisted action hero, surprisingly ready to take on a quartet of small-town goons when they try to run from a fender bender in the first few minutes of Fighting Mad.
Directed by future Oscar winner Jonathan Demme for, of course, Roger Corman, here Fonda is farm boy Tom Hunter, returning from the city with his bratty kid after a relatively painful divorce; within minutes of a happy reunion, his brother Charlie (Scott Glenn) is murdered by the aforementioned goons who work for a local land developer.
Taking a page from the book of Brad Wesley, this developer Crabtree (Philip Carey) thinks he owns the town, disinterring an old lady’s makeshift cemetery, causing a rockslide that destroys a family’s home, beating up Hunter’s dear old pop and setting his barn on fire.
At first, Hunter was merely mad — but now he’s fighting mad, hence the title.
Shot and edited in that atmospheric style many of Corman’s New World pics had, Fonda is at his most energetic here, whether he’s running from killers on a dirt bike with his son on his lap or shooting various guards outside of Crabtree’s dwelling with a bow and arrow, delivering a country-fied revenge flick that actually gives us a happy, if mostly nonsensical, ending. —Louis Fowler