PRIME CUT went down raw and rancid in 1972 and its tastelessness hasn’t become any more palatable after five decades of cold storage. Reviewers—the sharp ones who recall the time and the Tarantinian pups who pretend to understand it—rhapsodize over the creative spirit that roamed the era. There’s certainly ample evidence for applause. But along with the harvest of gems there’s a hill of garbage to sift thru, and this patently ridiculous offal wallow, written by Robert Dillon, directed by Michael Ritchie, is rank enough to give a hog the trots. The sole redeeming feature is debuting soulful 22-year-old Sissy Spacek: kid, ya gotta start somewhere. *

Chicago vs. Kansas City. Suits vs. boots. Mick’s vs. hicks. Cadillac vs. combine, shotgun vs. machine gun, cowpies vs. bull puckey. A segment of the Irish-American mob based in Illinois sends cool enforcer ‘Nick Devlin’ (Lee Marvin, not breaking a sweat) to Kansas to collect five hundred grand owed by vicious KC kingpin ‘Mary Ann’ (Gene Hackman), who conducts prostitute auctions of young orphan girls, drugged, nude and displayed in cattle pens. He has an entire community under his sway, with a zombie-like platoon of shotgun-packing hayseeds. Nick’s a hardened killer, but he has at least a smidgen of compassion for one of the girls, guileless waif ‘Poppy’ (Spacek, with a disarming smile), who he decides to rescue while decimating Mary Ann’s minions.

Three venerated actors—one established, one emergent, one a fresh find—step into a steaming pile of vile in a script that revels in ugliness, misogyny and pain and direction that treats actresses like used Kleenex and action scenes with blithely illogical conduct and spatial incoherence, and whaddaya get? Not a helluva lot besides Sissy’s body, a harvester made for whacking corn that can magically chew thru a 5,300 pound car, portrayals of rural Midwesterners that would insult cavemen and the feeling that the writer and director hold the audience in as much contempt as the characters have for each other. Naturally, given the current embrace of hate and stupidity that’s become a movement gleefully jerking the country over a cliff into a swamp this bucket of swill has some reviewers hailing it as a ‘subversive masterpiece’. I give up.

The gross and box office position: $12,100,000 and 32nd. Shot in Alberta, Kansas and Illinois. With Gregory Walcott (as ‘Weenie’, Mary Ann’s repellent moron brother), Angel Tompkins (on hand for gratuitous nudity as ‘Clarabelle’, Mary Ann’s slut wife), Eddie Egan, Bill Morey, Les Lannom and Janit Baldwin (cruelly victimized for the hell of it). Lalo Schifrin’s score is the lamest he ever composed. 88 minutes that if nothing else may put you off eating meat after you watch the packing plant process during the opener.

* Sissy: “For someone who’d started out singing solos in church, that was real mortifying. But it was a huge break for me, a movie with big stars and all. So I got real skinny and hoped nobody would notice that I wasn’t wearing any clothes. Well, my mother noticed and she was appalled.”

Robert Dillon’s screenwriting credits flunk the inspiration test: Bikini Beach, Muscle Beach Party, French Connection II, Flight Of The Intruder. Michael Ritchie’s directorial resume improved: The Candidate, The Bad News Bears, Semi-Tough.