Buster And Billie (1974) Popular Buster falls in love with wrong-side-of-the-tracks Billie Joe, thereby robbing his friends of their sole source of “poontang” (their words, not mine).

Theme Song:

“Billie’s Theme” by Hoyt Axton. Great ballad work from Axton, though the version included here is a re-recorded version from his album of the same year, “Life Machine.”

Interesting Dated References: Gang-bangs; People wanting to see movies that take place in the ‘40s; Robert Englund in his first movie role.

Best Line: Said by a guy who thinks defecating and making love have to be two separate things — “There’s two things I think ought to be private: Takin’ a sheeee-it and getting laid.”

Social Context: Buster and Billie is a sad love story with all the benchmarks of a post-Last Picture Show film: It takes place in the late ‘40s/early ‘50s, is located in the South, and features restless high school kids.

Summary: One of those kids is Buster (Jan-Michael Vincent), a well-intentioned athletic kid who is dating a popular girl (Pamela Sue Martin, Torchlight), who absolutely refuses to put out because it’s like 1948.

So Buster gets frustrated and decides to take out Billie Jo (Joan Goodfellow), the girl of ill repute from the poor side of town that literally ALL of his friends constantly get drunk and go make love to. Like, they get drunk and just all go stand around and bang her in the woods and don’t even bring a blanket or anything, and just sit there and cheer each other on. It’s a whole scene.

So Buster falls in love, breaks up with his girlfriend, and comes out publicly with Billie at church, much to everyone’s chagrin. Mostly the guys are all mad their steady stream of “poontang” (their words, not mine) is now cut-off. Then there’s a “falling in love” montage no one experiences in real life.

Then one day all of Buster’s friends get drunk, chase Billie through the woods, and proceed to force themselves on her after knocking her out. She comes to at one point and scratches the face of one of the guys, only to have him punch and choke her to death.

This all sounds very intense, but Buster and Billie is a little too soft-handed with the subject matter for its own good. Many of the scenes that should have emotional weight are run through devoid of character building, which leaves the entire movie feeling somewhat by-the-numbers and cheesy as there’s no real investment in this mismatch of a couple inexplicably having fallen in love in the first place.

Later that night in the pouring rain, Buster finds her body and goes to the weird pool hall/grocery store/bar where all the guys hang out and immediately bashes two of them to death. Again, this scene’s intention was to shock, but feels somewhat underwhelming since the entire story arc can be seen from miles away.

The day after Billie’s funeral, Buster makes bail and fills his pick-up with an entire bed’s worth of flowers and drops them off at her grave. Then the movie ends.

I had this movie on my fucking “must find” list for decades, but the entire thing is so middling it’s a giant shrug. Seriously, we all knew where this was going the second the movie started.

Worth Mentioning:
– Jan-Michael Vincent is so goddamn undeniably handsome in this movie, and his cool-calm performance is well-suited to his eventual climactic emotional outburst. Oh, and he does full-frontal nudity for really no reason at all, which apparently became a real pearl-clutching topic of conversation because nobody was flopping dongs around in mainstream cinema in 1974.

– Vincent was 30 when he played this role and looked 45.

– Robert Englund (The Fifth Floor) is also quietly good as the somewhat socially-dejected albino kid, “Whitey”.

– Director Daniel Petrie has a pretty nice career. He directed two favorites Lifeguard and Resurrection, in addition to Fort Apache The Bronx, as well as the second film in the trilogy of Cocoon films, Cocoon II: The Return.

– Jake, the owner of the weird grocery store/bar/pool hall, is played by Clifton James who previously played Carr in Cool Hand Luke, and appeared in Where are the Children.

– According to the imdb trivia, the story is loosely based on events that happened in the writer’s home town, but no word if he was one of the gang-bangers or a casual observer.

– Seriously, this place they guys all drink at. Grocery store, hardware store, random storage, deli counter, pool table, serves beer.

Poster and Box Art: The theatrical release poster (left) for this movie is awesome. Compositionally it’s very sparse and of-the-era, although I can find no credits for who created it. Dig that custom-type treatment, the textured photo, the looming gang. It’s incredible. The later theatrical poster (middle) took slightly more literal approaches with less visual success. Then there’s the weird one (right) that states a movie in which a girl with little economic resources is gang raped and killed “a truly wonderful experience!”.

The home video release does the job but fails to inspire.

Availability: Out of print, though there are some VHS rips on YouTube.