Crude
Julie Christie and Karen Black turned down the role of Lena.,Mason: You don't like men much, do you?
Lena: No.
Mason: Maybe you're the kind who prefers women.
Lena: No. Women are even worse; they try to be like men, but they can't cut it. I'd like to be a member of a third sex.
Mason: Third sex? Mmm-hmmm. Well, which article would you have - the one that goes in, or the one that goes out?,Featured in Discovering Film: Faye Dunaway (2015),Send a Little Love My Way
Music by Henry Mancini
Lyrics by Hal David
Sung by Anne Murray
[Played over the opening titles, opening credits and end credits. It is also played as background music when Mase is trying to sleep in his leaky tent during the rainstorm.],Dismissed by critics as one of Stanley Kramer's later flops, OKLAHOMA CRUDE is not bad. It does, however, suffer from an identity crisis. Is it a comedy? Is it a drama? Is it a western? It's not really any of those. Nor, thankfully, is it one of Kramer's social issue epics. Faye Dunaway gives it her all as a demented wild-catter trying to get oil from a lone well while keeping the big time oil companies off her land. She's helped out by her ne'er do well father John Mills and a hapless drifter played by George C. Scott. Scott and Dunaway have great chemistry and Kramer wisely downplays any love story. However, although they make a scrappy team, they're not particularly likable. In fact, none of the characters in this film is very pleasant, therefore there's nobody to really root for.

Kramer, like his contemporaries Billy Wilder and Otto Preminger, seemed to have lost his way by the 1970s. OKLAHOMA CRUDE doesn't click as comedy or drama. The actors are poorly directed: Dunaway is completely humorless, while Scott plays his part as if he's in a broad farce. Jack Palance, as the villain, appears to be spoofing his own clenched jaw persona.,