Oh boy, do we have one that I picked up along the way last year at a convention that I couldn’t wait to feature on B-Movie Enema!

This week, we go to the mid-70s and the first ever movie covered here starring a true American icon of the decade, Burt motherfuckin’ Reynolds. This past August at HorrorHound, I was visiting my favorite table where I often find several, ahem, gray market, movies that aren’t so easy to find in the flesh. Staring at me was this movie with Burt Reynolds smiling right at me. I looked at the title and read it aloud to myself… W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings. I chuckled to myself knowing that Burt was going to give me everything I could possibly want in this and more, especially because it was a comedy.

Before we discuss the man himself, let’s talk about who actually directed this film.

W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings was a 1975 box office hit (making more than $17 million on a $2.8 million budget) directed by John G. Avildsen. Avildsen, by the time he made this film, was already a success for directing Jack Lemmon to a Best Actor Academy Award win for 1973’s Save the Tiger. It was Lemmon who actually recommended Avildsen to Reynolds for this film. Interestingly, Avildsen says that he auditioned Sylvester Stallone for a supporting role in this film, but, the following year, the two would work together in one of the most all-American masterpieces in film history… Rocky.

Rocky launched Avildsen (and Stallone) into the stratosphere. Avildsen would win the Oscar for Best Director, and Stallone became the premier action star for the next, oh, 20 years or so. In the 80s, Avildsen would be involved in another pretty popular franchise when he directed 1984’s The Karate Kid. Because they are sooooo funny, in 1989 and 1990, the Razzies nominated Avildsen for Worst Director for The Karate Kid III and Rocky V. Neither film was great, but I kind of feel like this is a classic Razzies situation where they like to kick a dead horse and pile on when a movie reaches critical mass in late night talk show jokes.

But the real star of W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings is Burt Reynolds. Reynolds appeared in a couple of episodes of the series Flight in 1958. He appeared in a few other series early in his career, including a Season 5 episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. He finished the rest of the 60s appearing on all the usual popular series of the decade. He appeared in a handful of films, but the year that changed everything was 1972.

In 1972, Reynolds appeared in two successful films. The first was Fuzz, an action comedy film that co-starred Yul Brynner, Tom Skerritt, and Raquel Welch. The film mostly received pretty darn good reviews. The film that followed Fuzz, by about two months to be exact, was the thriller by John Boorman, Deliverance. Made for a scant $2 million and co-starring John Voight, Ned Beatty, and Ronny Cox, the movie would rake in over $46 million. It would also go on to get three Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Editing.

It’s not just a particularly important and scary film, it is also culturally important when it comes to making references to hillbillies. I’m not just talking about the “squeal like a pig” thing. If you’ve ever talked to someone and you’re crackin’ wise about hillbillies or whatever, and you hum a particular song as if you’re playing a banjo… That song you’re humming is “Dueling Banjos” and it came from Deliverance.

Anyway, Deliverance is the movie that basically made Reynolds the biggest star of the 70s. Sure, there were a couple hiccups, but for the most part, Reynolds was racking up box office hit after box office hit. And then came 1977’s Smokey and the Bandit. That became his next culturally significant film. That film was made for a little over $4 million and brought in $126.7 million in the United States alone. It finished second only to Star Wars for the year. The two films were released two days apart too.

The 80s and the first half of the 90s would be a rough decade for Reynolds. He was expensive, but the films he made were often panned by critics even if they did somewhat well at the box office. He probably made too many movies with the same people like director Hal Needham. He could be the big dog on set but the movies just weren’t able to support what a good and compelling actor he was. He did have a decent television series for four seasons, Evening Shade. For that series, he won Best Actor in a Comedy Series at the Emmys.

1997 changed his career again… He got the juicy role as Jack Horner in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights. The role awarded him his only Academy Award nomination. Sadly, it was also the year he was nominated against other powerhouse performances from Robert Forster in Jackie Brown, Anthony Hopkins in Amistad, Greg Kinnear in As Good as It Gets, and the eventual winner, Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting. Nevertheless, it was the culmination of a massive career and one of the most likable and recognizable actors in modern Hollywood. Interestingly, Reynolds really did not like Boogie Nights or working on the film.

Sadly, Burt died of a heart attack in September 2018. To prove his immense popularity over his entire career, the number of tributes was incredible. Whole stations changed their programming to pay tribute. There are few actors who starred in films that embedded themselves in the Baby Boomer and Gen-X person’s life quite like Burt Reynolds.

But! Let’s stop with this sad shit! Let’s remember the man as he was in 1975 at the upward trajectory his career was on. Let’s see what this quirky little comedy has in store for us.

The movie opens like a fairy tale. In fact, it even has the fairy tale font and tells us that “Once upon a time in the carefree days of 1957, a legendary hero roamed the southern United States in search of romance and adventure…” And then we get the sweet mouth harp and pluckin’ guitar of good old-fashioned country and western music on the soundtrack. It’s wild that within just the first few seconds, we get the fairy tale wonder of the “Once upon a time…” text card and the pluckin’ and the pickin’ of good ol’ boy music. I think we’re already off and running on a kind of unique little flick.

This is also a sans-mustache Burt Reynolds movie too. It’s safe to say that most people know Burt for having a mustache. It’s kind of his defining physical attribute. It’s the mustache, his laugh, his manly voice and delivery of lines, chomping of gum… That’s the image most people have of Burt. However, at this stage of his career, it was not guaranteed that he would have the mustache in every movie. Certainly he didn’t have it early in his career, but by 1975, he had it in At Long Last Love, which made it to theaters before this movie’s release by a couple months. After Smokey and the Bandit, there would never be another Burt Reynolds film where he wouldn’t have his trademark cookie duster.

Alrighty… Burt plays W.W. Bright. He roams the southern United States, apparently, looking for love and adventure. His favorite pastime is holding up gas stations. In particular, he likes knocking over Southland Oil Systems, or SOS, stations. He drives a gold-colored “Golden Anniversary” Oldsmobile Rocket 88. That car itself is kind of notable as, supposedly, only fifty of them were ever made. It catches the eye of an SOS attendant when W.W. pulls off the road for a fill-up.

A fill-up of both his gas tank and his wallet.

W.W. seems to have it out specifically for the SOS stations because of their greedy executives. He asks the attendant what he makes working at the station. The attendant says he makes about $40 a week. W.W. says that the bigwigs at SOS rake in about a million bucks a day. He sees that as a literal shame while the attendant seems to just think it’s just the way of things. W.W. says he can make it right. He’ll make it right by politely asking the attendant to empty out the register because he’s robbing the joint. He flashes his gun but assures the attendant he won’t use it on him.

He gives the attendant a couple Hamiltons to buy something for his wife. He then tells the attendant to go in and call the police. When he does, he is to say that it was a big ol’ Buick that came in full of Yankees. They cleaned the place out and hauled off. The attendant even graciously tells W.W. to come back and see them again.

Later that night, W.W. takes his best gal to the drive-in to watch a film starring Errol Flynn. He has a deep appreciation for Flynn. So much so, that his gal asks if he’s queer for the actor. He says that if he ever does go queer, it will be for Errol Flynn. I’m guessing W.W. sees himself as something of a Robin Hood type and, back then, the mere visage of Errol Flynn recalled the image of Robin Hood on the big screen. After dropping his girlfriend off at her burger joint job, she asks where he lives. He says they’re sitting in his home. So he doesn’t have any roots. He’s always going from town to town and just roams the highway.

W.W. sees a cop pull into the burger joint’s parking lot. It’s soon revealed the cop is looking for him and he has to drive off quickly and try to lose the fuzz at a local dance in a high school gymnasium. Inside, a band called the Dixie Dancekings, led by the beautiful Dixie, is performing. W.W. is instantly taken by the pretty songstress.

Dixie’s played by Conny Van Dyke. She actually had a brief singing career and recorded a couple songs at Motown in 1963. After her singing career kind of fizzled before it began, she went into acting. By 1969, she appeared in Hell’s Angels ’69. She made a few appearances on TV shows. She passed away just this past November at the age of 78.

Now, W.W. also catches Dixie’s eye. When the song ends and the dancefloor clears, W.W. sees the cop looking to close in on him. So he has to think quick and offer a $25 prize for a dance contest. He convinces the Dancekings to play a few more songs. He chats up Dixie while Jerry Reed, best known for being Burt’s sidekick in the Smokey and the Bandit movies, sings “Johnny B Goode”. Dixie offers an alibi saying that W.W. is with them. She believes W.W. is from Nashville and says to Wayne (Reed) that they should let him hang around because he must be in the music business.

The next day, W.W. goes to a diner where Dixie’s mother, Della knows he must be the fella from Nashville. Wayne, eating breakfast at the diner too, is suspicious of W.W. and thinks he’s a flim-flam man. He says that if he puts a nickel into the phone booth at the diner, they could have a show in Nashville that very night. Leroy, a member of the band, decides to call his bluff and gives him a nickel. With the rest of the band and Dixie’s mother looking on, he makes a call, but he does his fast-talkin’ schtick to no one on the other end.

This is Burt Reynolds at his very best. He talks fast to get most of the sham out before a complete stranger picks up the phone and he finishes his schtick while the guy on the other line starts hollerin’ about a prank call. Burt even flashes a little bit of concern to the back of the phone booth before putting on another smile and continuing the ruse. He’s obviously grifting them, but dammit if you don’t also really like Burt Reynolds in this type of role anyway.

You do feel kind of bad for the band because they believe him. They had every reason to not believe him at first, and now they have enough reason to believe him. They go 500 miles in a single day to show up at Rosie’s New Talent showcase in a mostly empty bar/diner. Wayne even says he thinks this is a sham once they get there, but W.W. says that they are indeed new talent so he didn’t lie. While you do have sympathy for this band desperate to make a splash, you still just can’t bring yourself to dislike W.W. That’s Burt Reynolds’ power, man. That smile, his confidence… He’s just so damn likable.

Now, he also is on the make for Dixie. He asks her if she and Wayne are “attached” but she says they aren’t necessarily attached, but they are goin’ together. That’s just enough for W.W. to try to slide right in between them. The band gets on stage and it’s pretty rough. People are getting up to leave while Wayne is trying to lighten the mood with a light-hearted introduction to their band. When W.W. gets on stage to hype them and Rosie’s Nashville Corral (where they are playing) up, Rosie, who just met W.W. herself, tells him that his attitude and the fast one he pulled on the band and the audience is exactly what the band needs.

He begins to think that she might just be right… he might just be best for the band.

W.W. tells the band that they need a little better “packaging” for them to go even further. He says he’s got some money and pulls into another SOS station. W.W. realizes the attendant is working alone. The attendant says he has continuously asked for help but the bigwigs at SOS won’t send him any. So W.W. robs the place, right in front of the band, and instructs the attendant to call the cops and tell them that a big pick-up truck came along with four black guys to rob the place. That will surely get him all the help he needs to run the gas station. Just as before, he gives the guy 20 bucks and hopes that will be the start of a better life for the guy.

While Wayne and the rest of the Dancekings worry about W.W.’s actions and how the attendant will have to call the cops and can identify all of them, W.W. says the thing he likes about the South is that if you’re nice to someone, they’ll be nice back to them. W.W. says the attendant will indeed call the cops because he’ll be fired otherwise. However, with the story he told the attendant to tell and the 20 bucks he gave him, they aren’t going to be implicated.

Not only is it revealed that W.W.’s gun is nothing more than a squirt gun, but W.W. also says he used to work for SOS. He’s got it out for that company in particular. He doesn’t like their greed and their practices in how they treat their employees. When Leroy says he sounds like a Communist, W.W. scolds him by giving a big ol’ speech about how he fought in Korea against the Communists. Winning over the band, he says that beginning the next day, they are going to take Music City by storm.

Unfortunately, the good vibes are slightly ruined just a little bit after the band shares in the fried chicken that W.W. bought with some of the money from the SOS station. W.W. and Dixie are talking about how nice it was for all of them to sit around and eat chicken like a big family. He then decides to make his move on the singer by pulling her on the bed and trying to kiss her and, you know… Rub some of his things on some of her things. Dixie is kind of awesome. Not only does she fight him off, but she overpowers him by pulling him off her and setting him straight by saying she might just be a simple country girl, but she’s tired of him trying to take advantage of her.

She then tells him that when the right man does come along, she’ll be more woman than any of them will be able to handle. W.W. certainly believes that to be true.

There’s more trouble a-cookin’ for W.W. The CEO of SOS, played by Mel Tillis, has brought in some big guns to deal with W.W.’s rash of robberies. In walks Academy Award-winner Art Carney as Deacon John Wesley Gore. The Deacon is a former lawman and he’s incredibly religious. To say he’s bible-thumpin’ would be an understatement. He dresses somewhere between an Old West lawman and a late 19th-century preacher. The CEO tells the Deacon that the Devil has set up shop right there in Nashville, Tennessee. The descriptions of the robbers are different types with different cars and vehicles. He believes the attendants have been bewitched, so he needs the Deacon to battle this Devil.

Mel Tillis turns out to be something of a point of contention between Reynolds and Avildsen. It was known that Tillis had a stutter in his speech. According to Reynolds in a memoir, he was particularly contemptuous toward the director. Avildsen thought Tillis could actually control his stuttering. It was obvious that the speech pattern was a point of frustration for the director and he had very little knowledge of what a stammer or a stutter was like for people who were inflicted by them. Considering Reynolds specifically chose Avildsen to direct the movie and Reynolds was already one of the biggest stars on the planet by 1975, I’m guessing it was not good to be on his bad side, even if you were the director of the film.

W.W. takes the band to get a new set of outfits to look more like a professional band. He then takes them to the Grand Ole Opry to get a taste of what it’s like to be on the stage of the Tabernacle of Country Music. Later, they try to stick up another SOS station, but this time they come across a surly older attendant who isn’t all that interested in their shenanigans. When ordered to go get the money from the register, he returns with a shotgun. The gang tears off and creates enough havoc that it causes several cars to crash into the station, utterly destroying it.

When the Deacon arrives to begin his investigation, there is now going to be a description of the car, W.W., and the Dixie Dancekings.

W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings return to the Grand Ole Opry to see a performance by famed country singer Country Bull Jenkins. Jenkins is played by Ned Beatty. This would be one of many movies Beatty and Reynolds would appear in together. After the concert, W.W. and crew basically force their way backstage to meet Jenkins, introduce the band to him, and try to ingratiate themselves to the star singer. Wayne is not too pleased with Jenkins wanting Dixie to sit on his lap. W.W. asks Jenkins if he’d write Dixie and the Dancekings a hit song. He says that he would do it for a thousand dollars if he feels like it, and when he makes a sort of clumsy pass at Dixie, W.W. tries defending her honor, but that doesn’t get too far. However… Jenkins apologizes for how he’s acted. He offers them a chance to play for him and if he likes it, he’ll give them a shot. W.W. tells him they don’t want anything given to them, they want to earn it.

Still, W.W. doesn’t dislike the idea of raising the grand to pay for a song by Jenkins. The problem, though, is he needs to get the money. While W.W. seeks opportunity, Gore goes on the radio to ask for people to help find W.W. and his gang. He doesn’t give too many details. He just says the guy is flashy, he’s got a flashy girl with him, they have a flashy gang, and they drive around in a flashy car. So he’s just kind of casting the line to see what he can catch by fishing with the locals.

W.W. goes into town and discovers the grand opening of the Golden Goose Savings and Loan Bank. The Golden Goose is a subsidiary of SOS. Now, you might think that is goofy as all get out that an oil company that owns gas stations across a portion of the United States would also end up running a bank, but come on, man… This is the United States. This seems eerily familiar in the 21st century.

W.W. explains what his plans are for robbing the Golden Goose. Wayne initially says that they won’t go into the bank robbin’ business with W.W. He says that’s fine. Sometimes a man just has to do some things on his own. His dejection, while still being set on committing the robbery, gets Dixie a little weepy. She asks the rest of the gang what if he doesn’t return. This gets Wayne to say that W.W. might just be a dummy but dammit… That’s why they need to help him out and everyone gets on board to rob the bank.

The plan? The band wears goofy disguises. The bank is the first totally drive-through bank. That means that they will have to pull up, in their goofy outfits, and ask to rob the place through the window.

W.W. asks the teller they need $1250 or they will blow the place up with TNT. Originally, they were going to just take the $1000 they need for Jenkins, but W.W. thinks on it for a second and asks the band if they think they could use a little extra. The plan goes awry and they have to hightail it out of there as the police begin chasing them.

With the bank robbery failure, W.W. hears on the radio that authorities are now aware of the very specific car that he drives. He realizes he needs to part with his beloved custom automobile. After he and Dixie gives the car one last wash, W.W. lights the car on fire. He fixes up a car from the junkyard that is much less distinct.

As he works on getting this new car in drivable shape, Gore arrives to inquire about the husk of that car in the yard. W.W. tries to get Gore off the trail of the band practicing indoors, but he’s only able to get rid of the religious lawman when Leroy arrives with a shotgun to tell Gore to get lost. Later that night, W.W. realizes he’s taken this as far as he really can. He realizes he might just have to separate himself from the band so they are no longer implicated in W.W.’s crimes.

Dixie attempts to keep W.W. with the band with her body by trying to get him to make love to her in the backseat of his car before he tries to leave. It’s not Dixie that brings W.W. back. It’s Wayne’s brand new song that he recently finished. He rushes back to the band and tells them that he wants to take them back to Nashville. The band plays their new song for Country Bull Jenkins and he is so impressed by it, he gives them a chance to play on stage at the Grand Ole Opry and takes them under his wing.

Part of the deal for Country Bull to listen to this new song from Dixie and the Dancekings is for him to listen without W.W. in the room with them. W.W. decides to go outside for a smoke. As he does that in the alley behind the Opry, he’s confronted again by the Deacon. The Deacon doesn’t just want W.W., he wants the rest of the band too. W.W. wants to give the Deacon a signed confession of his own crimes in exchange for the release of the band. When W.W. and the Deacon see the band celebrating their new agreement with Jenkins, the Deacon accepts that he’s got the real criminal of the group.

W.W. assures the band he will see them later, and as they go off to their newfound fame, the Deacon makes W.W. get in the front seat of another special Oldsmobile to drive them both to the police station. W.W. tries turning on the Grand Ole Opry, but the Deacon makes him turn to the religious station. When he does, the bells chime to ring in Sunday. Because it’s the Sabbath, the Deacon is so religious that he opts to rest instead of finishing to bring W.W. in for his crimes. He tells W.W. to leave with the car because his work cannot come at the cost of his immortal soul.

W.W. drives off victorious and tunes back into the Grand Ole Opry in time to hear Dixie and the Dancekings performing on the big stage for the first time.

This is an extremely charming movie. Burt Reynolds is fantastic as he always was. He’s a scoundrel but you just can’t dislike him. I like the naive Dixie and I appreciate her standing her ground on W.W. when he tries to make a play on her. In fact, there was never a reason to really believe the two of them were going to get together and the fact they don’t is even better.

While the movie is a comedy, it’s not so broad a comedy that it takes swings and misses at all. It could have been really easy to turn this into over-the-top slapstick for every joke. Yes, there is a slapstick scene in which the band and W.W. fight against each other as a way shortcut to them earning respect for each other. Yes, there are silly car chases that happen in two pivotal moments that ultimately bring everything W.W. was trying to do with the grift involving the Dixie Dancekings crumbling down, but the comedy comes from a kind of charming place. It’s charming that W.W. is a scoundrel. It’s charming that Dixie and the Dancekings are kind of naive while also being steadfast in their morality. It’s charming that the CEO of the oil company and his hired gun to stop W.W. are so overly religious they can barely think straight. It is absolutely a movie that is sold and stands on the performances and these interesting characters.

And, to provide you an extra bonus for coming along for this ride, you do get a little bit of interesting undertone about greed in capitalism and how the higher up you go on the ladder, the more likely you will step on the heads of the people underneath. In each scene in which you see W.W. successfully rob an SOS station, he has won over the attendant by being congenial, yes, but also showing that he does actually see the true victims of his crimes are people whom he really can’t hurt monetarily. What he can do by way of committing the crimes is offer up something that he hopes will improve the lives of the underlings toiling away for the bigwigs. There is something here that would kind of be revolutionary for the time, and DEFINITELY so for the era in which the movie is set.

I’m not terribly surprised this one is kind of forgotten in the Burt Reynolds catalog of movies. It’s not the deeply serious Deliverance or the big production of Smokey and the Bandit. However, it showcases a lot of what people will remember Reynolds for. His laugh. His cool demeanor. His witty charm. His driving cars. It’s all here and dammit if I don’t think this is just a fun, charming movie.

Next time, we go back to horror for a movie that has been living in my memories for 40 years since the first time I caught glimpses of the movie on cable TV as a very young lad. Join me in seven days as we pack a bag for One Dark Night!