Each month, one of our writers will be sharing movies that were set and/or shot near where they have lived as a personal lens into these films…

by Matthew Crump, Staff Writer

I have a confession: When I first moved to Philly I almost always lied about my hometown. It’s not that I was ashamed necessarily, it’s just when it comes to North Carolina there are about two, maybe three different cities that most yankees will recognize. Okay, so maybe I was slightly ashamed. But thanks to a lot of self-introspection and this chaotic Alan Jackson music video I have started to appreciate my southern roots.

The problem is, in approaching what film to watch for this article, I was presented with the same dilemma; that feeling stirring in my chest when someone asks, “So where are you from?” Do I give the honest answer or the cool answer?

The honest answer is good ‘ol Morganton, North Carolina. See? You’ve never heard of it. Y’know, near Hickory? Lenoir? Still nope? Okay, how about Gastonia? Winston-Salem? Alright, fine. Charlotte. I lived in Charlotte. My favorite color is Tarheel blue, I have a Cardinal tattooed on my ass, and I eat BBQ for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

To avoid doing that same song and dance, I came up with the cool answer. Instead of explaining where I’m from by just inching east across the state until I hit a major recognizable city, now I would go up the mountain slightly west and pretend I grew up in the town I went to college in: Asheville, NC. 

See you’ve heard of that. Yeah, it’s super hip there. Lots of breweries, yep, got a pretty good music scene, uh huh, Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash— Wait, no that’s Nashville. Oh, but I’m the stupid one for never remembering how to spell Schuylkill (thank the lord for Google and copy/paste). See, the cool thing about Asheville is that on the rare occasion when someone hasn’t heard of it or mistakes it for the home of the Grand Ole Opry, I have plenty more material to work with.

But here’s my problem: I want to be this fully realized individual who picks a movie  based on honesty about where I'm from. I want to write about the deficit of small rural towns, how their general lack of educational resources and republican make-up create a breeding ground for misinformation and bigotry. I also want to write about how the South is often used as a scapegoat for all of America’s most pressing social problems—racist, xenophobic, pro-life, or anti-LGBTQ laws and bills—when in reality those problems are just as rampant in the North as they are anywhere else. How Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” targeted the poor, working class white people below the Mason-Dixon line to bring them into the republican party and used thinly veiled racist pedagogy to promptly pit them against their own, ultimately de-unifying the lower class and using systematically oppressive forces like policing and imprisonment to offer farce power to white southerners who had been in stark opposition to those very power structures a mere 20 years earlier.

But if I’m going to talk about Morganton that would mean I have to watch Last of the Mohicans. Ugh. This movie has plagued my entire childhood. After every curve in almost every road, someone would point to a lake, cliff, waterfall, or random patch of bushes and launch into how 10, 15, 20 years ago Last of the Mohicans was filmed there!!!!!!!! Oh my god, give it a rest. 

I’ve watched the preview for this movie multiple times over the last few weeks and still have not managed to bring myself to press play. It’s completely free on Youtube at the moment, I really have no excuses. I’m sure Western North Carolina makes a beautiful backdrop for a story that takes place almost entirely in Colonial Upstate New York, but I just truly do not care to see it. 

I think what rubs me the wrong way about it is, aside from there being a white man pretending he’s Native American, I really just see no representation of the place where I grew up. The amount of times I’ve had to listen to some white dude in my hometown try to convince me that he’s 8.25% Cherokee is almost as high as the number of times I’ve had to listen to someone explain to me the plot of Last of the Mohicans. Usually within the same conversation.

So, I guess what I’m trying to say is: I’m going to lie to you. Instead of talking about the movie I know I should finally watch, I’m going to pretend I’m from Asheville and talk about a much more obscure late-noir action film, which also happens to be the inspiration for the eponymous Bruce Springsteen anthem, Thunder Road. 

Produced, co-written, and, by popular belief, co-directed by Robert Mitchum, this 1958 film was clearly one of the noir actor’s passion projects. The story follows a Korean War vet as he returns home to the Appalachian mountains where he gets entangled in his kin’s moonshining business. As he navigates around police and gangsters on mountain roads in a souped up Ford, he also tries to deter his younger brother from picking up the family trade and leading the same life of crime that’s currently got him coming apart at the seams.

Not only was the film a cult favorite of drive-ins across the 60s and 70s, but it also is quite difficult to find. Much like the bootleg whiskey Lucas Doolin hauls between Tennessee and Kentucky, I had to buy a bootleg copy of the DVD off an old woman on Etsy. You might want to think twice before you come to a movie night at my place, because my DVD player is h-o-t, HOT!

Thunder Road has lots of fun tidbits of casting trivia. For example, the main love interest Roxanna (Sandra Knight) went on to be the first wife of Jack Nicholson. Even better is the younger brother Robin was originally going to be played by my cousin (Elvis Presley), but due to the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s manager demanding too much money, Mitchum decided to cast his oldest son instead (James Mitchum). 

Aside from all that, the story examines that complexity of our country’s southern states which I mentioned earlier much more closely than you might expect from a film of its era. Also, I’m not an expert of 1950’s cinema, but there were so many exploding cars in this film that I feel like Michael Bay owes the Robert Mitchum estate some money. I’m not usually one for action films, but I’ll take it from a movie released over 60 years ago playing out along the same roads my grandma used to drive me up and down throughout college. The way that woman’s speedometer flies, you’d think we were carting moonshine too (instead it was actually just a van full of my extensive collection of Goodwill sweaters).

So many scenes out of this movie felt eerily familiar. No, I may not be an outlaw behind the wheel of a Ford with detachable bumpers who throws lit cigarettes into the faces of my enemies during high-speed car chases. I can’t even drive. I have, however, grown up in those hills, crammed into those church pews, said the blessing around those dinner tables, hell, I even have wound up killing time in a few family mechanic’s garages. 

Toward the end of the film, the main detective who’s been diligently tracking Doolin sums up the common stereotype that Doolin’s act of selflessness and bravery has just proven wrong, saying “Mountain People… Wild-blooded and dead foolish.” This movie might be a little boring and more than a little hard to find, but there’s a lot going on here that made the little southerner in me who spent all those years dreaming of moving away finally find a little pride in being wild-blooded. Did I have a friend whose family made moonshine? On the record, no, definitely not. Off the record, leave a comment below if you want to borrow my bootleg copy of Thunder Road. 

And yes, I am actually related to Elvis Presley.