Poor White Trash (1957)

Original title: Bayou

Director: Harold Daniels

Writer: Edward I. Fessler

Composer: Gerald Fried

Starring: Peter Graves, Lita Milan, Douglas Fowley, Jonathan Haze, Ed Nelson, Eugene Sonfield, Evelyn Hendrickson, Milton Schneider, Michael Romano, Timothy Carey

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Somewhere, a 15-year old girl may be a teenager... in the Cajun country, she's a woman full-grown! ...and every Bayou man knows it!

Plot: A community of Cajun fishermen living around a remote bayou includes one authentic beauty, Marie, who wants to better herself but must deal with the unwelcome attentions of storekeeper Ulysses. When she meets Martin Davis, visiting New York architect, they hit it off at once; but the sinister Ulysses is not inclined to suffer a Yankee rival.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

I kinda figured, this being from '57, it wasn't going to deliver what the title suggested.  The story is pretty simple.  Ulysses (Carey) is a dangerous asshole that takes what he wants and no one in this little Cajun community will stand up to him.  He rapes Marie (Milan) and gets jealous as hell when Martin (Graves), an architect from NYC, takes a liking to her but there's a hurricane a-brewin' that's sure to shake things up even further.  There isn't much reason to see this except that it's got Peter Graves, Jonathan Haze (Seymour from THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (1960)) and a wild performance from Kramer!

Nope.  It's Timothy Carey but he is definitely a wild card when it comes to acting. This 6'4" guy often times acted his way into being the oddest or most memorable character in a lot of the pictures he did.  In this one he's off the charts again (did you see that dance in the video above?) as the asshole rapist.  He definitely stands out, that's for sure.  Here's something salacious for you, Marie is 15 years old and the adult Martin never questions her age; he just goes along with the flow...even when that river moves him down to nailin' her during a hurricane.  That scene is just awful, too.  The lovemaking (mostly kissing from what I can see) is superimposed with the rough, crashing waves created by the hurricane.  And there's the horrendous trumpet/mariachi-esque music where the theme lasts a few seconds but it's repeated at least 10-20 times.  It's an assault on the eyes and the ears. That's the hurricane sex scene.  After that Martin finally shows some balls (he's a pacifist that doesn't want to fight) when he's forced into battling it out with Ulysses.  There's no surprise who wins.  There's a tiny bit of nudity near the beginning when Ulyysses is chasing Marie and rips a piece of clothing off her as he catches up to her two or three times.  You see her backside but that's it.  Everything else is cleverly concealed even though the chase lasts a lot longer than you'd expect.  Great job on the editing.  I'm a sucker for these sleazy Southern pictures so it was worth my 83 minutes.