Dave takes in a USA Network potboiler that found actor Gerald McRaney donning the producer’s cap for the first time.

After playing a Marine Corps veteran on hit detective show Simon & Simon, firearms fetishist Gerald McRaney started abiding by the rule ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. Major Dad came next for the Mississippi born actor, and here he took the part of – yes – a Marine Corps Major, albeit one serving. When the opportunity arose for McRaney to produce his first feature, BLIND VENGEANCE, with his company Spanish Trail Productions, it’s perhaps no surprise that the hand-picked script (which he oversaw rewrites for) paints him as someone with – you guessed it – a Marine Corps background.

The white Garland Hagar Jr. (the sole acting role of McRaney’s son, John) heads to the Deep South to reconnect with a black friend, Freddie Mace (Michael Dyer). Both boys are shot in a racially motivated attack, and the perps are freed on a legal nicety. All such exposition is neatly thrust upon us in the opening three minutes, which allows Garland Sr. (McRaney) to spend the next eighty-nine journeying to Hicksville, weeding out the bastards who murdered his boy, and doling out vigilante justice.

Seemingly, part of the draw for McRaney was the chance to make Blind Vengeance within a stone’s throw of where he grew up, in Collins, Mississippi [1]:

“I did that to give myself a little luck,” admitted the star-cum-mogul. “I wanted my first self-produced movie to be shot there, and it was extremely satisfying. Wearing two hats is a mixed blessing. It’s easier to get things accomplished, but it’s harder to actually do all the work.” [2]

Considering the multiple plates he was spinning, credit is due to McRaney for delivering a solid and focused little picture. It might not be cool to like him today; his political leanings and advocacy for the NRA leave a sour taste in the mouth. However, McRaney was a powerful and consistent force in the small screen landscape of the ’90s. And watching Blind Vengeance, I was left with the feeling that this USA Network schedule filler is the sort of obscure revenge caper Quentin Tarantino would reverentially namedrop in the middle of a podcast – though before it goes as far as the more exploitative entries in the form, the telepic framework inevitably softens its harder edges.

Still, the film retains a degree of bite, and it doesn’t shy away from shining a light on the institutionalised racism of the American south. Cast-wise, James Parks and Richard Lineback are good – if cliched – as two bigoted stooges, but it’s the peerless Lane Smith who steals the show. Playing a despotic landowner, a key scene finds the snarling and much-missed performer swelling with pride as he tells of the slaves that used to serve on his sprawling, generation-spanning ranch.

Today, it’s not cool to like McRaney. His political leanings and thirty year plus advocacy for the NRA don’t sit too snugly in modern Hollywood. However, as an actor whose presence is woven through the fabric of the small screen landscape of the ’90s, he delivers every time.

USA ● 1990 ● Thriller, TVM ● 92mins

Gerald McRaney, Lane Smith, Don Hood, Richard Lineback, James Parks, Marg Helgenberger ● Dir. Lee Philips ● Wri. Howard Rodman (as ‘Henri Simoun’) and Curt Allen, story by Howard Rodman (as ‘Henri Simoun’) and Jerry McNeely

[1] The town actually organised a ‘Gerald McRaney Day’ prior to filming.
[2] A Major Success by Leslie R. Myers, The Clarion-Ledger, 22^nd August 1990.