331. Little Laura and Big John

331. Little Laura and Big John (1973)
Director: Luke Moberly
Writers: Luke Moberly and Bob Woodburn from a story by Philip Weidling
From:Cult Cinema

The story of John Ashley, a rum runner in 1920’s Florida.

Um… actually, that’s it. The blurb is the whole movie. We have a voiceover describing Prohibition and then the details of John Ashley’s birth and upbringing (which we don’t need). Then we cut to Laura’s mother who then tells us the story of John and Laura’s relationship, only it’s not. Instead, it’s the story of John’s career as a gangster. Only it’s not. Most crime movies focus either on one big score (think The Sting) or on the rise and fall of a criminal (think Scarface). Little Laura and Big John is trying to be the latter, but just doesn’t.

The story, what there is of it, is that John shoots his Seminole business partner in the stomach. The movie portrays this as an accident, although who knows? This is told, rather than shown, by the way. He and Laura go on the lamb to avoid getting arrested for the murder, but he finally turns himself in. His defense keeps vacillating between “I didn’t do nothin’” and “Who cares about a damn Indian?” which is really charming, and he’s convicted of the murder. Or of the bank robbery he pulls after he breaks out of jail before the trial. It’s not clear what the sentence is for. Anyway, he breaks out of jail again and starts running liquor in the Everglades.

Things escalate—the gang gets big enough that they start robbing the other bootleggers—and a rivalry is established between John and Sheriff Baker, the sheriff of somewhere that has a personal grudge against John I guess. It’s reciprocated and John decides he’s going to murder the sheriff. A snitch rats him out, though, and we have a big but undramatic shoot-out where the Ashley gang all get killed. Laura is left alone in a hotel room, drunk on whiskey, singing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” We return to her mother telling the story and end on a shot of John and Laura as children playing together. THE END.

The movie has no throughline and no rising action. All the plot and connective tissue is told by Laura’s mother, and even she vanishes from the final third/half. So little is going on that the middle of the movie stops for a music video of “Player Pianna Man.” This flick is deep in “is this a movie?” territory.

While this is trying to be a Scarface or Bonnie and Clyde-style crime flick, you never get a sense of risk, consequence, or time. The gang robs a bank and… so… what? We don’t know why they rob it except that they want to rob it, the job goes off without any particular planning or problems, and we don’t see what they do with the money. They don’t go crazy with it or invest in material for the next job or seem to have the money at all. Not only do we not see them spend it, we don’t see them counting or reveling in it. Now that I think about it, while there are several bank robbery scenes in the movie, I don’t think I ever saw cash at all.

I don’t have much to say about this movie because, like so many others in these sets, there’s nothing here. The one point of interest is that the sheriff is played by Paul Gleason, the principal from The Breakfast Club as well as many other films. You should watch his other films. He was awesome. This movie sucks. Skip it.