Country Cuzzins

1972 directed by Bethel Buckalew

by Klon November 17, 2025

The Legacy of RKO pictures in the history of film is assured; their buzzing radio tower logo is attached to movies that will be watched for as long as movies are watched at all - Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles), King Kong (1933, Merian C Cooper), Bringing Up Baby (1938, Howard Hawks), films by Alfred Hitchcock, Val Lewton, Roberto Rosselini, and Howard Hawks, and they threw stars on the screen like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Katharine Hepburn, Robert Mitchum, Marlon Brando, Gloria Graham, Cary Crant, Ida Lupino. They were pioneers of high-end low-budget films, innovating within genres by allowing talented technicians to explore new approaches to time tested material. They turned the crime thriller into film noir, horror was taken out of foggy castles and brought into the 20th century and sexual tension was introduced to the previously chaste western. But today RKO is best known for being out of business, unable to weather changing market forces after the United States Government brought antitrust suits against many studios which disrupted monopolistic practices. This was only a setback for most of the studios, but RKO was purchased by eccentric millionaire Howard Hughes and ground down to nothing by the end of the 50s through legal disputes, divestments, and piecemeal acquisitions. The story of RKO is fascinating in its own right, its downfall coincided with the end of the studio era and the opening up of opportunities for independent filmmakers and one RKO employee made the jump from the studio system to the grindhouse with gleeful ease.

Harry Novak started his career as an ad man in the Chicago offices of RKO, learning how to book and market films to audiences all over the world. In addition to their own in-house productions, RKO was the distributor for Disney and it isn’t hard to imagine Harry, the tried and true perv, suggesting that Tinkerbell’s skirt be just a little shorter on the Peter Pan (1953, Clyde Geronimi) poster. Much like Roger Corman starting out at 20th Century Fox, this time in the mainstream gave Harry all the skills he’d need to strike out on his own. Once the studio shut its doors he could’ve gone in any direction, but Harry was a red blooded smut peddler. Starting with what he knew, Novak went into distribution by snatching up steamy foreign items and dubbing them into English and slapping them with lurid titles and posters. Harry’s toupee couldn’t handle the windy city, so he headed to Hollywood and teamed up with director Pete Perry and theater owner Max Gardens to form Boxoffice International and they began producing their own films and continued distributing exploitation films from all over the world.

Boxoffice International weren’t innovators, they were followers and they weren’t hiding it, riding coat tails was the business model. Taking whatever the public was interested in and throwing it on screens as cheaply and quickly as possible adding lots of softcore sex. If they had been making movies in the 1920s they’d have flappers doing the Lindy Hop topless and if they could’ve been bangin’ ‘em out in the 2010s they would’ve had naked girls rolling around on piles of Silly Bandz. They also relied on evergreen topics of exploitation cinema like teenage runaways, women in prison, blaxploitation, fake sexual health documentaries, and, what else? REDNECKS

Throughout the 70s Harry Novak and company made a handful of lighthearted pastoral romps set in the dirty south, Tobacco Roody (1970, Bethel Buckalew), Midnight Plowboy (1971, Bethel Buckalew), The Pigskeepers Daughter (1972, Bethel Buckalew) among others. It was an unusual time to bet hard on hick flix, they were very much OUT at the box office. Sleaze auteurs like Russ Meyer and Herschel Gordon Lewis had turned away from the topic five years earlier after lackluster returns on Mudhoney (1965) and Moonshine Mountain (1964) respectively. And it would be years before Deliverance (1972, John Boorman) and Walking Tall (1973, Phil Karlson) would become hits. But Harry knew there was gold in them thar hills.

Country Cuzzins centers around the Peabody family reunion, an event that has the whole brood peeling off their dungarees and rolling around in the burlap, but poor Billie Jo just ain’t built for the farm life. Played with effervescent enthusiasm by Rene Bond, Billie Jo spends most of her days hosing herself down and letting her cuzzins Jeb and Jeter cop a feel in exchange for a few swallers of moonshine. Highfalootin Cousin Prudence comes in from the big city with her nose in the air, and young Leroy is asked to show her around the farm. Leroy is played by Boxoffice International regular John Tull. He was arguably the best actor in the Buckalew troupe, his affability and good looks somehow made him the perfect handsome hillbilly and he would play the lead in Midnight Plowboy, Below the Belt (1971, Bethel Buckalew), Sassy Sue (1973, Bethel Buckalew) and a handful of others throughout the 70s. But back to the Peabody Farm, After a few turns on the rope swing and tugs off a jug of mountain dew, Prudence winds up winning a game of catch the chicken. She has such a great time that she invites the whole Peabody family down to her pad in the city. As the date of their visit approaches, Prudence begins to get cold feet and thinks it would be a laff to tease her cuntry cuzzins by having her friends dress up in comical hillbilly garb. But the Peabody’s are no squares, they charm the pants off the hipsters including a young George Buck Flowers. So if you’ve ever wanted to see the bum from Back to the Futures pork and beans, find a copy of this movie right away!

You might be tempted to think that director Bethel Buckalew was using a pseudonym to direct, but, no! He proudly emblazoned his government name on a number of Boxoffice International pictures. Getting his start on the set of Herschell Gordon Lewis movies, he would move his way up to the director’s chair for Harry and he’d even act in one or two movies. In an interview for the seemingly defunct website Rock Shock Pop, actress Sharon Kelly had this to say about her early career working with Buckalew:

“Buckalew was the perfect director. He was very even-tempered, mellow. I think he was good at editing in his head while he was shooting. These movies were so low budget raw stock was a major expense, so shooting efficiently was a valuable skill. He was also arguably the best looking director doing sexploitation in the 70’s. But by now, of course, he’s dead or worse - way-creepy old. Sigh. Young Sally was shot in chronological order. Day one was the opening scene in the back of a van, doing that monologue I’d burned into my brain. Before the first shot Buckalew leaned in and quietly taught me everything he wanted me to know about movie-making. He pointed and said, ‘That’s the microphone, and that’s the camera. Don’t look into the camera.’ I never did.”

Perhaps taking the themes of Country Cuzzins seriously, Bethel would use his family on the set of his films. His wife Marlene was a script supervisor on many films and even an editor and his daughter gets credit for wardrobes on one of his final films, Mag Wheels (1978). Most notoriously, son Mark Buckalew appears onscreen in Country Cuzzins oogling Rene Bond’s breasts. Mark has had a long career behind the scenes working as a camera operator and lighting tech on some of my favorites like Miracle Mile (1988, Steve De Jarnatt) and Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (1988, James Signorelli). As a fun side note Bethel and young Mark would make national news in 1963 when their Great Dane Shadow scared a high strung Shetland Sheep Dog who died a few days later. The Sheep dog’s owner sued for damages but the case was dismissed after Mark testified that Shadow had never been in a fight before and was his pal, he even hopped on his back and rode him like a pony.

Buckalew worked in film throughout the 70s, after his time with Novak he worked with the legendary Matt Cimber as an assistant director and production supervisor. He’d find his way into forming a production company with brooding 50s tough guy actor Ralph Meeker and his wife Colleen Meeker. They would only make two films together after which Bethel would fold up his director’s chair for good. Amazingly, he’d live until 2023 when he died at the age of 94. Country Cuzzins isn’t that much better or worse than any of Harry and Bethel’s collaborations, but it features a juicy role for the Something Weird superstar, Rene Bond. Her girl-next-door looks made her a favorite in the early days of adult cinema and perhaps one of the most recognizable transitional performers of the era. She starred in softcore features but was just as eager to appear in hardcore material which drove some actresses away from the business. A native Californian, Rene was at ground zero when the LA sex film industry hit its stride. There’s some missing pieces to the story of her introduction to the film world, but it’s generally agreed upon that she got her start at the suggestion of a boyfriend or husband. At this point I’d like to give credit to Robin Bougie’s 2 part feature on Rene in his Cinema Sewer books numbers 3 and 7. Robin is a dedicated pervert and he managed to dig up hard to find info about her and even interviewed her childhood best friend. He fleshed her story out remarkably, but even with all his research there are still plenty of mysteries in Rene’s story and that’s just fine with me. Besides, who CARES about timelines? Rene was living in a Los Angeles swinger house in the 70s, porno just HAPPENS!

The boyfriend she’s most identified with is Ric Lutze. The two would appear together countless times in both softcore and hardcore films and offscreen they were a well loved couple on the LA porno circuit. Ric was a walking hard-on and every bit a swinger with his Neil Diamond haircut and tobacco grey grin. Rene was a hard working entertainer, in addition to her film work she appeared in adult magazines and danced at the notorious but air conditioned Ivar Theater in Hollywood. She was an innovator for her era, she was one of the first porn stars if not THE first to receive breast enhancement surgery, unfortunately it was a botch job in more ways than one. Harry Novak described her sensitively in a 1999 interview with Femme Fatales magazine:

“Of course, during the hillbilly series, you’ll notice in the early stage that Rene had no tits on her,” “She was a nice girl and she came to Pete Perry and asked if we’d loan her the money to get her tits blown up. She was very cooperative and did whatever was necessary. She’d help the crew or whatever had to be done.” Rene was also one of the first to start a fan club and she’d even sell gently soiled panties. Unfortunately her business model may have influenced the unborn baby Zuckerberg as this item from the April of 1980 issue of Hustler magazine explains:

“MISSING SKIVVIES

Last year Rene Bond Company (P.O. Box 4261, North Hollywood, California 91607) ran an ad that said: ‘I’ll send you my slightly used PANTIES, personal LETTER and PHOTO for only $7!’ We wanted to check these dirty drawers out, so we asked one of our operatives, code-name Eddy, to order a set for us. Eddy sent Rene a money order, and it was cashed almost immediately. Four months later, still waiting, we mailed Rene a letter asking what had happened to the shit-blasted bloomers we’d ordered. No response, no skivvies, no nothing. We’re still waiting for a word or a whiff. In case you didn’t know, companies like Rene Bond Company are shills to find out who the suckers are so that their names can be put on a list and sold to other mail-order houses. One dealer, who used to run grab-bag and warehouse-clearance ads in several men’s mags, told us, ‘These names are like gold to us. You know that if they’re going to bite for a girl’s dirty underwear or somebody’s promise of $20 worth of smut for $3, they’ve got to be easy marks. And the big company will trip all over itself trying to buy their names from us, because some porn dealers figure they’ve got a moral right to separate suckers from their money.’ Of course, we’re just guessing. We still haven’t received our panties, and neither have several other angry people who ordered them, according to our mail. Worse yet, Eddy is starting to complain about all the junk mail he’s getting from every two-bit dealer in the country.”

While this is a weird chapter in the story, it seems like Rene was only guilty of lending her name to sleazy businessmen. She had begun to move on from the world of film by that point and exited the public eye. Amazingly, she reemerged in 1986 on a game show called Break the Bank where she claimed to be a Bankruptcy Specialist and over the course of a few episodes she would win $9000 dollars worth of cash and prizes. Rene re-married, converted to Judaism and helped to raise two sons. She spent her time breeding yorkies and persian cats unfortunately not with each other. Sadly her career in the sex biz reemerged when her silicone breast implants began to leak and deposit in her liver, eventually causing cirrhosis which killed her at age 45. Today we still have more Rene Bond than we can handle in one lifetime thanks to the producers that recognized her talent, the audience that wanted more, the preservation efforts of Something Weird Video and her own drive and joyous spunk.