Joe (1970)

 Rick Perlstein's book Nixonland makes extended reference to the 1970 film 'Joe' as a movie that avatars a kind of white rage at the culture change occurring in America at this time. Upper class Dennis Patrick's only child, played by Susan Sarandon in her film debut, lands in the hospital from a drug overdose courtesy of her drug pushing boyfriend Patrick McDermott. Dennis goes to the urban slum where his daughter lived with her boyfriend to collect her stuff, there he has a confrontation with the boyfriend and accidentally kills him. A panicked Dennis does a pretty good job covering his tracks the heads to a nearby bar for a drink and to collect his bearings.

At the bar Dennis meets Joe, played memorably by Peter Boyle. Joe is an angry and resentful blue collar type who enjoys monologeing about his disgust at the state of the world. In there conversation Dennis let's slip what he had done, then trys to pass it off as a joke. Later when he sees a report on TV about the death of a young drug pusher in the area and reads more about it in the newspaper, Joe puts together that Dennis was the killer. He then tracks down Dennis who finds Joe dosen't want to blackmail him for money, but rather force him to become his friend. Dennis's wife and daughter also figure out what he has done, and while the wife is content to keep quite about it the daughter runs away. Joe then joins Dennis as they comb the city looking for Susan and have encounters with the subculture that they to varrying degrees despise. It dosen't end well.

A strong eviction of Nixon era culture war, I'm a little surprised that this film is largely forgotten, it's basic thesis taken up and subsumed by the better known Deathwish that came out a full four years later. ***1/2