Vitals

Kiel Martin as Bobby Lee Hagg, daredevil moonshine driver and part-time guitar picker

Georgia, Fall 1973

Film: Moonrunners
Release Date: May 14, 1975
Director: Gy Waldron
Costume Designer: Patty Shaw

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

Two rambunctious and fast-driving cousins speed through a fictional county in the deep south, running moonshine for their uncle Jesse while evading local sheriff Roscoe Coltrane and his connections to a corrupt local crime boss who drives a white Cadillac—all set to the music and homespun voiceover of outlaw country legend Waylon Jennings. And no, I’m not talking about The Dukes of Hazzard.

Four years before the Dukes debuted on CBS, Gy Waldron’s B-movie Moonrunners premiered in drive-in theaters across the South fifty years ago tomorrow on May 14, 1975.

Moonrunners could have been lost in the traffic jam of cheap ’70s hick flicks about moonshine and muscle cars until it was plucked from potential obscurity by Warner Brothers’ perplexing—but indeed prophetic—suggestion that it could form the basis for a successful TV show. Now best known as the rawer progenitor to The Dukes of Hazzard, Moonrunners has essentially all the same elements and characters but distilled into a dirtier, hornier jar of shine—seasoned with the visceral authenticity that comes from filming on location in rural Georgia and not a WB backlot. Continue reading →