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Good start, but then it gets ruined

In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The only point that seems worth adding here is that the writer William Hjortsberg later wrote the screenplay for Angel Heart filmed by Alan Parker in 1978 with Robert De Niro and Mickey Rourke, based on Hjortsberg's novel Falling Angel.Aside from this and the aforementioned air boat race and gator-wrestling church it was pretty much business as usual for David Carradine and Kate Jackson at the time. I enjoyed it when it first came out, when there seemed to be car chase movies every week at the local flea pit (recently I was surprised to see just how few Carradine actually appeared in!)

One of the cable channels ran this the other day and I sat and watched it. For a B-movie, it's pretty good, although the plot kind of meanders around before working itself out. The dialog is stereotypical and goofy in places, too. But it's mostly an excuse for a batch of stunts, first with the boats in the swamp, then mostly featuring Harley's black '57 Chevy 4-door hardtop. The stunts sometimes stretch the limits of credibility - jumping from a parking garage to crash through the roof of a car dealer across the street, landing on the showroom floor and driving through the plate glass window, without a flat tire, without a cracked window, without a scratch - while not even wearing seat belts. Also, the same '57 Chevy that outruns a '69 or so Corvette, can't get away from a '59 Ford with a six-cylinder engine (could hear it in a couple places) earlier in the movie. From the looks of things they had some trouble with a few shots, I doubt they intended to smack the side of the Volkswagen Rabbit in the one scene (which must have been just about a brand new car at the time). Another scene cuts away from the car sliding trying to make a tight turn where the car catches the edge of the road and rolls over, I'm still not sure if I'm supposed to think he made the turn like normal (and they used the footage they had to avoid re-shooting and wrecking another car), or if I'm supposed to think he rolled the car and landed on the wheels and kept going.About the only thing missing was for Kirk and Spock to show up after Hunnicutt (Carmel) - Moonshine on the side of a legit soda bottling business is entirely within character for Harcourt Fenton Mudd. "Three to beam up, Scotty, there's no intelligent life down here!" In any case, for the guy who likes these types of movies, it's worth watching, it's not exactly art, but it was never intended to be. And it's worth reading through Carmel's IMDb bio page for another ironic twist to this film.

David Carradine, sporting an earring and a short, severely cropped coiffure which makes him resemble a rough trade Greenwhich Village gay leatherbar regular, is his customary lean, laconic, stoical, stubbornly nonconformist self as Harley, a fiercely independent and self-reliant moonshine runner who locks horns with fat, odious slimeball rival Hunnicutt (a broadly mugging hunk of overripe ham by Roger C. Carmel) over who has exclusive dibs on a lucrative Florida illegal whiskey business. Naturally, there are further complications; Harley's fretful, peevish'n'pettish steady girlfriend (comely brunette Kate Jackson, who looks like she just sashayed off the set of "Charlie's Angels") just happens to be Hunnicutt's firebrand daughter, two bickering, bumbling New York mafia hit men are trying to rub out Hunnicutt, and Harley has to intercept a shipment of poisonous rotgut before the driver makes a potentially lethal delivery. Directed with workmanlike efficiency by Corey Allen, bookended by a rousing air-boat chase at the beginning and a similarly stirring extended car chase in the last reel, with Andy Stein's sprightly bluegrass score and James Pergola's sunny, golden-hued cinematography adding additional spice to the already tasty mix, this affably lightweight drive-in item certainly hits the satisfying spot somethin' solid. Moreover, the dense, marshy Everglades swamp locations are suitably picturesque, the pace clips along at a speedy rate, there's a smattering of nudity, everybody talks with extremely thick'n'heavy drawling good ol' boy Southern accents, Pat Cranshaw and Sterling Holloway are very funny and engaging as a pair of amiable old fuddy dud moonshine makers, and late, great crime novelist Charles Willeford has a nice cameo as a shady, shifty bartender. Better still, the flick overall offers a cheery, good-natured, basically harmless and entertaining celebration of that quintessentially 70's grind-house anti-hero: the carefree, firmly individualistic and autonomous "I just wanna do my own thing" uncompromisingly free-spirited loner. Best scene: Carradine uses his patented martial arts prowess to beat the living tar out of scruffy, bellicose cracker Charles Napier, which prompts Napier to snarl the following deathless zinger: "Hey a**hole, knock off that kung fu s**t!" Fun stuff.

Thunder and Lightning is an interesting movie, it's an action movie with a plot! The characters actually have reasons to do what they do. David Carradine stars as a bootlegger and Kate Jackson is his fiancee. Her father is a soft-drink manufacturer who is secretly making and distributing large quantities of moonshine. The conflict starts when her father's goons decide to close down Carradine's operation. It is pretty much an adventure comedy from then on, with lots of car chases, fights, banjo music, rednecks, hillbillies and moonshine. Watch for the gator-wrestling church!