DAVID CARRADINE DIRECTS 'AMERICANA' AKA 'AROUND'

David Carradine's AMERICANA Filmed: 1973 Released: 1983

Started in 1973 and released a decade later, AMERICANA is a nice-looking low-budget film about an ex military drifter played by famous KUNG FU drifter David Carradine who happens upon a small town with an abandoned merry-go-round (originally with a more aptly title AROUND) in an empty field, and how he goes about fixing it up and, most importantly, and quite symbolically, getting it working again. But it's no easy feat as he has to overcome more than manual labor, like the town sheriff and local bullies.

Along with his then-girlfriend (in the seventies, during the BOXCAR BERTHA era) Barbara Hershey, the movie flows in a spontaneous nature. And while some of the intentionally realistic-for-realism non-actor side-characters can be distracting at first, it's eventually overcome by the purposefully laidback aura: everything fitting into an non-contrived organic template about real life and real people... back then. Or in this case, back, back then.