[Originally published in Movietone News 58-59, August 1978]
Corey Allen is best remembered as the Nick Ray actor whose sleeve got hung up on a car door handle during the chickie run in Rebel without a Cause. Last year he directed a Roger Corman programmer about moonshiners and badder cats in the B-movie South where cheerful corruption is about as plentiful and as conspicuous as sweat on a fat red neck. It was called Thunder and Lightning and, to the best of my knowledge, it never saw service in the greater Seattle area until this summer, when it was laid on as second feature to another 20th Century–Fox release with revving engines in it, The Driver. I trust no one will be overprimed with anticipation if I suggest that Thunder and Lightning is probably the most slaphappily endearing low comedy since Russ Meyer’s The Seven Minutes; on the other hand, other self-flattering slummers like me who can handle that sort of endorsement are advised to file the title away and take note of it if and when it fills out another double bill in the future.