It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Oklahoma Crude is Stanley Kramer's attempt at a western, semi-modern though it might be. It also is quite a different look at early statehood Oklahoma circa 1913. The movie kind of dates itself when a drunken George C. Scott and John Mills listen and sing along to a gramophone record of You Made Me Love You which came out in 1913.It's nothing like that other movie of Oklahoma's early days Cimarron, Edna Ferber's tale of pioneer women and Yancey Cravat who has an honored place with cowboy heroes. George C. Scott is no hero, but he's forced into a heroic mold because he doesn't like being spit on as Jack Palance the oil company man does.Three very estranged people Faye Dunaway who is one liberated and independent woman determined to hang on to her oil lease and bring in an oil well gusher. She has to accept help from her father John Mills and from George C. Scott who Mills finds on the bum so to speak. He certainly does have certain skills that he brings to bear. Palance is his usual rough customer as the oil company man.One ought to see Cimarron, both versions to contrast with this film. One ought to also see the MGM big budget film about the oil industry Boom Town that starred Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, and Claudette Colbert. The film is an ode to laissez faire capitalism and its attitudes are 180 degrees apart from Oklahoma Crude.The end also has one ironic postscript and more in line with real life than most of what you see. And George C. Scott is bad for the bad guys, but a cowboy hero he ain't.

I saw this movie in high school and have been waiting for a video release ever since. The screenwriter, Marc Norman, created a masterpiece, and Stanley Kramer directs one of his best movies ever. A great mix of intelligent dialogue, social critique, and sexual politics.If you're a fan of David Mamet or HBO's "Deadwood," then you'll love this vulgar and profane bit of Americana. The leads play against type and pull off some really great performances. Scott and Dunaway are terrific together; too bad they never paired up again.If you think this is a one-off, consider this: Marc Norman would go on to win an Oscar for "Shakespeare in Love." Mr. Norman, can you use your clout to get a DVD release?This is a great little allegory about the constant struggle between artistic filmmakers (drilling for oil) and the finance people who stand around the edge of the set, taking pot shots, while waiting for the gusher to pay off.

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.

For some bizarre reason, this excellent comedy drama was not released where I live in in Australia in 1975. As a drama with an interesting cast and spectacular visuals OKLAHOMA CRUDE is definitely an improved taste, rather like Mc Cabe and Mrs Miller or even Paint Your Wagon. Muddy Wild West and very grubby even sexually, this essentially three hander is essentially a sex farce with oil power play interwoven. Kramer films are always interesting, even if failures and for some reason beyond me, this film was not as gusher. The scene where Scott literally pees in Palance' pocket is genuinely funny, as is the hilarious scene where Dunaway explains her 'self reliance' sexually. This film deserves a re appraisal and a new audience.