What’s the matter with Kansas? Well, lots of things, but in the case of Dark Before Dawn, its farming community of Milo is being destroyed by corporate shenanigans. In the opening Senate subcommittee hearing that plays like a campaign ad full of phony testimonials, we hear the farmers’ plight. “I ain’t gettin’ a fair shake,” complains a guy who should be credited as Old Coot, if he weren’t already ID’d as one Francis Zickefoose.
Redneck reporter Roger Crandall (Paul Newsom, 1996’s Public Enemies) suspects much of the blame falls on the Dallas-based Farmcor (not Farmcorp, which would make sense). The company’s up to sumthin’ and, by gum, by minute 13, he has it all figger’d out: Farmcor is falsifying reports to control grain futures.” Then he’s killed, pushed off a tall metal thingamajig to his death (before dawn) in a grain elevator.
Crandall was correct; as Farmcor bigwig J.B. Watson (Morgan Woodward, Supervan) tells the board, he’s cooked up a 12 billion-buck plan that’ll allow them to snap up foreclosed farms for pennies, then sell bread for $6 a loaf! Crandall’s romantic partner, “big TV lady” Jessica, heads to Milo to investigate. For the record, Jessica is played by Reparata Mazzola, of whom three things should be noted:
1. She constituted one-third of Lady Flash, Barry Manilow’s backing vocalists.
2. This is not only her one try as actress, but her one try as screenwriter.
3. “Reparata Mazzola” sounds like either a cooking oil Florence Henderson might shill or a place where they fix wheels of cheese.
Anyway, Jessica’s snooping around is aided by yet another reporter (Buck Taylor, The Legend of the Lone Ranger) and yet another farmer, Jeff (Sonny Gibson, Underground Aces). Jeff’s John Deere mesh-backed cap is Dark Before Dawn’s equivalent of Superman’s chest insignia; heck, he even saves Jessica from being chopped up by a combine, six years after Superman III.
But he sure can’t squeeze a diamond out of this lump of coal. There’s an irrefutable reason moviegoers no longer see conspiracy thrillers centered around the price of wheat: because they didn’t see this one. Good reason exists there as well: because Dark Before Dawn is terribly dull, indolently written and hokily acted — an irrational, fist-measured mix of political chicanery and your local station’s 4 a.m. farm report. Other than one instance of bulldozer DUI, a scene of Silkwood-style intimidation night driving and a suicide by truck and tree at 85 mph, not much happens that isn’t told in dialogue rife with jibber-jabber about “subsidies,” “surplus,” “harvest,” “commodities” and “I’m interviewing the grain inspector this afternoon.”
Ben Johnson appears as the sheriff who says, “You ain’t got the brains of a soda cracker” with absolute conviction and professionalism, knowing his Last Picture Show Oscar can’t be repo’d. Rance Howard (Busted) carries out crop arson and other nefarious acts on behalf of Farmcor. Doug McClure (Satan’s Triangle) and Billy Drago (Delta Force 2) are also compensated, less for their acting skills than for having to shoot in the heat of Kansas and Oklahoma.
If Dark Before Dawn succeeds anywhere, it’s only as a piece of agri-agitprop. Robert Totten (1963’s The Quick and the Dead) directs its big speeches like he might approach a military recruiting video, but instead of trying to convince you to don a helmet and storm foreign land, it’s to don denim suspenders and plant legumes. —Rod Lott