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By Robert Scucci
| Published
In the late 90s and early 2000s, Drew Barrymore was the ultimate girl next door. Films like The Wedding Singer (1998), Home Fries (1998), Never Been Kissed (1999), and 50 First Dates (2004) make you wish she wasn’t so brutally disemboweled during Scream’s traumatic opening sequence. In films like Donnie Darko (2001), she’s one of the cool teachers helping Donnie navigate the tangent universe he’s trapped in, and through her coded messages, she’s still somebody you’d want to approach because she has a warmth about her that’s hard not to gravitate toward.
Now, as a rationally thinking adult human being, I know that most acting talent gets typecast, and once they blow up, it’s hard to go back to their roots. In fact, it’s often discouraged. And while I’m familiar with her earlier roles in experimental films like 1980’s Altered States and the 1984 adaptation of Stephen King’s FirestarterI’ll shamefully admit that 1992’s Guncrazy was not on my radar until this past weekend.
Just like it’s hard to imagine a world where Reese Witherspoon goes back to starring in films like Freeway (1996) or Election (1999) after becoming a household name with Legally Blondethe same could be said about Barrymore’s career post-Guncrazya bona fide road thriller that portrays her as a morally gray teenager who gets mixed up with an ex-convict and embarks on an exponentially escalating crime spree.
A Barebones Road Thriller
Guncrazy is more of a character study in the sense that there’s not a lot to talk about regarding the plot. Drew Barrymore is Anita Minteer, a teenager who lives with her absent mother’s abusive boyfriend, Rooney (Joe Dallesandro), in his trailer home on the outskirts of town. Her class is tasked with finding a pen pal to write to for the semester, and she latches onto a man named Howard Hickock (James LeGros), a violent criminal who’s up for parole because of his recent good behavior.
Anita confides in her friend Joy (Ione Skye), whose cop father (Michael Ironside) just so happens to be Howard’s parole officer and has a thing or two to say about a hardened criminal striking up a relationship with an underage girl. Before picking up Howard, who admits he’s never had sex with a woman and instead prefers intimacy through sharing secrets, Anita shoots Rooney in the back of the head while he’s watching TV and hides his body on the property.
The new couple ties the knot thanks to a quick service from the snake-wielding local pastor, Hank (Billy Drago), and when Anita finally feels comfortable opening up, she confesses her crime to her new husband. The thing you need to know about Howard is that he was well on his way to being reformed. He’s so infatuated with Anita, however, that he’s blinded by the new romance and willing to play along.
Rooney had a huge stash of guns that Anita has been teaching herself to use, and one of the things she and Howard bond over is firearms. One thing eventually leads to another, and Anita’s reputation catches up with her. Namely, she’s garnered a reputation for being promiscuous, so whenever she’s cornered, she’s threatened until she puts out.
With a protective Howard in the mix, things quickly go off the rails and the body count starts to climb. As the couple continues to Bonnie and Clyde their way through life, they seek shelter in a vacant house, waiting for the heat to die down so they can plan their next move, but it’s evident that there’s no turning back at this point.
When The Corruptible Does The Corrupting
While nobody’s truly innocent in Guncrazythe power dynamic at play deserves praise for flipping the script. Anita was born a victim and dealt a very bad hand. Looking at her life from the outside is horrifying, and it’s no wonder she snaps the way she does. What makes things interesting, though, is how quickly she gains control of the situation. She doesn’t have a good reputation with her peers or authority figures, and the person who’s supposed to be her father figure treats her like a piece of meat rather than somebody he’s supposed to be taking care of.
The magic in Guncrazy happens when Anita takes matters into her own hands and needs somebody from equally morally dubious territory to help her clean up the mess. Howard is the perfect patsy because he’s served his time, seems truly reformed, and allegedly has never been with a woman before, despite the fact that Anita is still technically just a kid. He’s at the age where he’s romantically entangled against his better judgment, and the law in most states, but also old enough to want to be a father figure to her, which was probably the most upsetting sentence I’ve had to write in a while.
Once Howard realizes how deeply he’s sunk back into a life of crime thanks to his infatuation with a 16-year-old, there’s really no turning back for him. Either he’s been played, or he’s entered a co-dependent relationship with somebody who’s just as unstable as he is. Either way, he starts digging his grave the second he starts writing to Anita, and it’s only a matter of time before his last rites are read to him.
Guncrazy is an exceptionally well-made early 90s thriller that deserves more eyes on it. Even if you’re just curious to see how intense Drew Barrymore was before getting typecast in rom-com after rom-com during her peak, it’s worth your time. If you went into this film not knowing who Drew Barrymore was, you’d be hard-pressed to think she’d be working on any other kind of project because she’s just that good at it.
As of this writing, Guncrazy is streaming for free on Tubi.
