In the Deep South, because where else, Tom Eldridge (Mark Miller, Blonde in Bondage) runs a moonshine business on his 7.5-acre property … until the town sheriff (Christopher George, Mortuary) shows up to throw a wrench in the works. As Tom panics and tries to flee Johnny Law, he’s shot dead by a lummox of a deputy (Wes Bishop, who wrote and produced the film).

Daddy’s death is the first domino in a string of troubles in motion for Tom’s two daughters, Dixie (Jane Anne Johnstone) and Patsy (Kathy McHaley). They face eviction from their home, thanks to the local greedy banker (R.G. Armstrong, Evilspeak), and can’t find a job — cue the montage of the ladies walking past multiple “NO HELP WANTED” signs. When close family pal Mack (Warren Oates, Stripes) fails to win the $1,000 grand prize at The Moto-Cross Big Race — seriously, that’s what it’s called — the Eldridge girls decide to resort to the ol’ standby. No, not prostitution: revenge.

A knee-jerk reaction would be amazement that Dixie Dynamite works as well as it does. But Bishop and frequent director Lee Frost made B-movie magic almost every time at bat in their long and fruitful partnership, which included horrors that shocked (Race with the Devil), schlocked (The Thing with Two Heads) and stripped (House on Bare Mountain). This proto-Dukes of Hazzard entry into the hicksploitation contender is no different. In fact, it’s one of the better ones, comfortably forming a wheel-centric companion to Chrome and Hot Leather, Frost/Bishop’s 1971 biker pic.

Plus, with Oates as something of a third-lead ringer, Frost/Bishop were able to anchor the film with more talent than the duo’s lesser efforts. If Dixie Dynamite holds any sort of surprise, well, it actually has two. The first is that one of the racing cyclists is Hollywood legend Steve McQueen; don’t bother looking for him, because he’s hiding uncredited underneath a helmet. The other, larger surprise is not that Johnstone and McHaley had zero movie credits before this, but that they had zero afterward, as both women are radiant. The screen clearly adores them, making their vanishing act from it all the more criminal. And speaking of, the final reel’s heist sequence cleverly pulls a Quick Change/Inside Man trick years before either had the chance. —Rod Lott

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One of the great good films to come out of the 1990s action boom, this Russell Mulcahy caper stars Kim Basinger as Karen McCoy, quite possibly the hottest felon ever to walk out of a woman’s prison, complete with makeup and hair did. After a multiyear rap for a botched burglary of an Atlanta bank — complete with high-tech gear that must’ve cost more than she would’ve made from the heist – she’s now looking to reconnect with her son and walk the straight and narrow.

But, of course, because Kim Basinger is so hot, every man she comes across wants to wrap their slimy tentacles around her, especially her grimy parole officer, who I’m pretty sure was in plenty of Ernest P. Worrell flicks. Add in the equally slimy Terence Stamp, as a crime lord clad mostly in a terrible Southern accent, who kidnaps her kid, leaving her with no other option but to return to the robbing life. Along the way, she meets affable J.T. (an affable Val Kilmer), a bumbling driver who seems out of place in this movie, but oh, well, it was the ’90s and we threw caution to the wind and hired Val Kilmer whenever we could.

Watching The Real McCoy for the first time in 20 or so years, it’s a bit strange now to watch these Joel Silver, Andrew Vajna, Don Simpson or, in this case, Martin Bregman-produced flicks in the era of #MeToo, because throughout most of the movie, Basinger takes beating after beating from various men and never once fights back — until the very end, of course, when she all of a sudden unleashes kung-fu kicks left and right.

A lot of this probably wouldn’t fly today and you’d have to wonder if Basinger, whose star has waned a bit, would do it all differently today. And while it would be easy to call for a remake, this was quite the bomb at the box office, earning about $6 million in receipts. Maybe it didn’t fly so well back then, either? —Louis Fowler

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