Blu-Ray/Movie Review: Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw

 

Bobbie Jo and the Outlaw is a 1976 action-thriller/crime drama starring Lynda Carter, Marjoe Gortner, Merrie Lynn Ross, Jesse Vint, Belinda Balaski, and Gene Drew. In the film, Carter plays Bobbie Jo, a waitress at a drive-in restaurant who wants to be a country music singer. She hooks up with a thief named Lyle Wheeler (played by Gortner). After they start running from the law, they meet up with Bobbie Jo's sister (played by Ross) and her boyfriend (played by Vint), and the four end up on a robbery and murder spree throughout the southwest while being pursued by a local sheriff. 

The A/V quality of the blu-ray is decent, but the film did not get an extensive restoration for the blu-ray release. It mostly looks good, especially if you like transfers that preserve a lot of film grain, but some film damage occasionally comes through. The extras include two different commentary tracks on the film, one by the movie's director, Mark Lester, and one by writer John Harrison. Lester discusses all aspects of the film and the process of making the movie. Harrison goes off on many tangents, including what many of the people involved in the movie did later in their careers. The extras also include separate interviews with Lester, Balaski, and Ross, the theatrical trailer, and two radio spots. The bonus content is quite interesting, including addressing the fact that Carter, who found religion after making the movie (and became massively popular because of the Wonder Woman TV series), did not want much to do with the movie and its promotion because of the nude scenes.

The movie is more of a cult classic than a great film. The best way I can describe its plot is that it is what you would get if you mixed the real-life Bonnie and Clyde and Billy the Kid stories with The Dukes of Hazzard. Much of the movie would have been written differently if it had been made today, including having Lyle follow Bobbie Jo home from work without talking to her and having her willingly jump in his car instead of calling the cops on him for stalking her. The movie's big attraction is that Carter was a couple of years removed from winning the Miss World USA pageant and had just filmed the Wonder Woman Pilot when the movie was made. Carter was absolutely gorgeous in her mid-20s, and the movie is one of the only (if not the only) times she went topless on film (and they are spectacular). Some of the dialogue is very cheesy by today's standards, and almost everything about it is unrealistic. That said, it is a decent low-budget action movie and is worth checking out.