The Sugarland Express (1974) on Netflix
Lou Jean Poplin breaks her husband Clovis out of a Texas prison to reclaim their baby son from foster care. The highway patrolman who stops them becomes their hostage.
- Netflix3.2/5
- IMDb6.7/1022,533 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes87%
Trailer
Plot summary
Lou Jean Poplin has served eight months in Texas for petty crimes, and her husband Clovis still has four months left on a one-year sentence in a minimum security unit. Child welfare services have placed their infant son, Langston, with foster parents in Sugarland for good, so Lou Jean talks Clovis into walking away from the prison. They accept a ride from a couple leaving the grounds; when Patrolman Maxwell Slide stops the car, they seize it and drive off. Captain Harlin Tanner leads the pursuit, and once the chase reaches the airwaves, Texans form strong opinions about the couple and how to help or hinder their mission.
Cast
- Harrison Zanuckas Baby Langston
- A.L. Campas Mr. Alvin T. Nocker
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Sugarland Express (1974)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The Sugarland Express was the start of Steven Spielberg's long collaboration with composer John Williams, who has scored all but five of Spielberg's films since.
SPOILER
The film's story departs from the real case of Ila Fae and Bobby: in real life Ila Fae never broke Bobby out of prison, he had been released two weeks before the chase, and when he was shot he was captured and died an hour later in a Bryan hospital; Ila Fae served five months of a five-year sentence.- John Williams re-recorded the main theme with Toots Thielemans and the Boston Pops Orchestra for a 1991 album, but the score itself was not released as an album until June 15, 2024, the film's 50th anniversary.
- The Sugarland Express won the Best Screenplay award at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival, but lost the festival's top prize, the Grand Prix (later the Palme d'Or), to Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation.
- The Sugarland Express was the first movie to use the Panavision Panaflex camera, a distinction no earlier film could claim.
- A 50th-anniversary screening at the 2024 Tribeca Festival was, according to Spielberg, the first time since its initial release that the film had been screened publicly in a theater in front of a live audience.
- With $6.5 million in the United States and Canada and $12 million worldwide, The Sugarland Express is the lowest-grossing film of Spielberg's career, and Universal pulled it from theaters after just two weeks.
