If you've never heard of South of Heaven, West of Hell, there's an excellent reason. If you have heard of it, it's probably because you stumbled upon the information that it marks the directorial debut of singer-actor Dwight Yoakam, who managed to sweet-talk a spectacularly quirky cast into abetting the enterprise: current girlfriend Bridget Fonda and her papa Peter; indie-world luminaries Vince Vaughn and Billy Bob Thornton (for whom Yoakam made a memorably loathsome villain in Sling Blade); character-acting stalwarts Bo Hopkins, Matt Clark, Luke Askew, and Scott Wilson; and such icons of the florid fringe as Bud Cort, Paul Reubens, and Michael Jeter. All should file for workman's comp and alienation of audience affection because they got themselves mired in one of the dumbest, most inept, most tediously self-indulgent messes in the history of showbiz hubris.
Yoakam stars (you guessed?) as a U.S. marshal whose tiny Arizona town is literally annihilated by a clan of outlaws from his past. He and they used to be family. Now he has to track them down, even as they go on making life hell on earth for anyone in their path. That includes a hapless government man (B. Cort) whom they're keeping alive for sport, and a traveling lady (B. Fonda) who ... well, who's blonde and is mostly photographed in slow motion because she's the director's girlfriend (see above). It is beyond the scope of mortal man to describe how primitive are Yoakam's notions of dramaturgy (mostly there is just shouting and hair), how any coherent grasp of time or geography eludes him, how little difference it makes whether these gargoyles start killing each other in any given scene. It's just awful. And while we're at it, offal. --Richard T. Jameson
2.
Christmas Eve 1907 is quiet in the Arizona Territory under the supervision of steadfast marshal Valentine Casey (Dwight Yoakam). Suddenly, with shocking brutality, the violent adoptive family from whom he has separated himself, led by no-nonsense patriarch Leland Henry (Luke Askew), rolls into town and commits a fatal robbery. One year later, Valentine has relocated to another town, where he begins a courtship with the mysterious and beautiful Adalyne (Bridget Fonda). Before long, the haunted marshal is being sought out not only by a bumbling government man (Bud Cort), whose records show that Val was killed a decade earlier in the Spanish-American War, but also by the outlaw family from whom he can not seem to sever himself.
Country music performer Yoakam's directorial debut is a singular western oddity, taking the conventions of the genre and throwing in a large amount of black comedy and extreme violence. With a cast composed of seasoned character actors (Askew, Bo Hopkins, Paul Reubens, Bud Cort, Michael Jeter) Yoakam creates an atmosphere of the unexpected, falling somewhere between the films of David Lynch, the Coen Brothers, and Sam Peckinpah, in which a scene can quickly make the transition from idiosyncratic weirdness to startling bloodiness. Funny, brutal, and chaotic, SOUTH OF HEAVEN, WEST OF HELL, is a one-of-a-kind western that refuses to follow expectations.
3.
You've Never Seen The West This Wild!
In a desolate Arizona town, Marhal Valentine Casey (Yoakam) is threatened by a family of outlaws, who have just robbed the bank, murdering everyone in their path. The savage Taylor Henry (Vince Vaughn) marks Valentine for certain death. Valentine journeys out to protect his sweetheart, Miss Adalyne (Bridget Fonda), and to bring back the Henry Gang… dead or alive.
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