I don’t know about you, but when I think of James Taylor, I think of cocaine, bad balding pony-tails, and heartfelt (albeit lame) music (that I guiltily enjoy/have been known to cry in response to). When other folks think of him, and I am referring quite specifically to director Monte Hellman, they think of him as a drag race-hungry driver who, with the help of a companion is making his way across the country. Hellman put that particular vision of Taylor onto film 35 years ago in the form of Two-Lane Blacktop, and its now making its way onto a beautiful DVD transfer care of the Criterion Collection.

Forgetting that Hellman would make the second sequel of Silent Night, Deadly Night (”You Better Watch Out”) 17 years after releasing Blacktop*, he long ago made Cockfighter, a film that one IMDB commentator (whose credentials are unknown, though his opinion is appreciated all the same) calls “easily the best hicksploitation film ever made.” Take that, Deliverance). He would apply his craft to this transcendent car/country film in an era of 1970s-pre-embargo cheap gasoline, when telling a story about white guys, cars, the road, and the exploration of the United States was almost a rite of passage for celebrated American storytellers. As an extra treat, the film features Harry Dean Stanton, for whom Roger Ebert partly made the Stanton/Walsh Rule (”No movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad.”)

The DVD, as is most often the case with Criterion releases, contains a lot of cool, cool stuff including interviews with most of the folks who appeared in the film (and are still alive). Check it out here.

**Admittedly, I have never seen this film, though I am interested upon reading the description: Ricky Caldwell, the “Santa Claus Killer,” once thought dead, has been brought back to life by a crazed scientist. A blind woman finds that she is somehow psychically connected to the reanimated serial killer. Furthermore, Caldwell is portrayed by Bill Moseley, who has starred or appeared in the following gems: Evil Bong, Army of Darkness, anything Rob Zombie has ever made, and the classic 1994 Sega CD Classic, Corpse Killer.