While the general idea is the same, the original Walking Tall movie more closely resembles the events of the man that inspired the film, Buford Pusser. The story is about a man that returns to his hometown to find it overrun by gambling, moonshiners and prostitution, and when he becomes Sheriff, he goes to extreme measures to clean up his town.
Actually, this DVD release contains all three of the original Walking Tall films, the others being Walking Tall Part 2 and Walking Tall: The Final Chapter, and in my opinion, the first one is the best of the trilogy and the others feel like needless continuations of Pusser's ever-more-fictionalized story.
The Walking Tall Trilogy's first film features Joe Don Baker as the hard-lining, stick-wielding Sheriff with Elizabeth Hartman as his wife Pauline, and his kids portrayed by Leif Garrett and Dawn Lyn (who are actually brother and sister). When Buford returns home and ends up in a bar brawl that is ignored by the local officials, Buford realizes that the local gambling establishments seem to have the current Sheriff in their pocket.
When he decides to run for, and win, the Sheriff's job, he inspires his officers to help clean up the street, and he does so by leading by example. Armed with a massive club, Buford is able to take down the criminal organizations infecting his town, as well as garner the respect of his neighbors.
The town doesn't fully rally to his side though until an attempt on Buford's life ends up with Pauline's death. Normally I wouldn't reveal such an ending, but this event is the driving force behind the last two movies in The Walking Tall Trilogy.
Walking Tall Part 2 (1975) starts off just when Buford (now portrayed by Bo Svenson ) gets out of the hospital after recovering from the injuries he sustained from the same attack that killed Pauline. In this film, Buford attempts to get back to his duties of taking down the various local illegal activities, but it seems his work with the organized crime ring that Buford dealt with in the first film isn't done.
While Buford's deputies want him to trace down the people responsible for Pauline's death, those responsible are frustrated by the fact that he survived the assassination attempt. A good bit of Walking Tall Part 2 feels like a rehashing of the first with Buford carrying his big stick into more places and using it to perform his unique brand of law enforcement even more. While it is just more of the same, it doesn't quite have the same draw is the original. That being said, the third film has a drastically different feel to it and, upon some Wikipedia research, turns out to be pretty close to how Sheriff Pusser's last days actually went down.
Walking Tall: The Final Chapter (1977) takes place a year after Pauline's death and it's time for re-election. The problem is, while Buford has done a great job of cleaning up the county, many feel that they don't need his particular skills anymore. Unfortunately, Pusser is not re-elected and is forced to consider how he will live no longer in an authoritative role. He finds people he previously put away no longer respecting him and he is no longer able to retaliate in the same way anymore.
An interesting twist happens in Buford's life though when a film producer approached him to make a film about his life. In an odd cyclical and meta fashion, Buford then helps the producer film the original Walking Tall movie and even use the first film's audio (at least it sounds like it) in a scene with Buford watching the movie. Like in real life, Buford negotiates the rights to play himself in the second movie, Walking Tall Part 2, but also like the movie, he dies in a tragic car accident before filming begins.
Where the first two films show Sheriff Pusser as a cop with a big stick, The Final Chapter actually takes a more personal look at the man and makes the character more three dimensional than the others. While the first tells the story that has the biggest impact, there is a good bit of Hollywood revision done to the story, and the third feels much more like an actual biography of the man ... too bad it wasn't of the story that started it all.
Most of the special features in The Walking Tall Trilogy consists of trailers and commercials, but there are two featurettes. One is an eight minute piece filmed at the time with interviews of the people who knew Pusser, while the other was produced much more recently and interviews the real Dwana Pusser (Buford's daughter), as well as many of the actors and actresses from the films. This featurette not only talks about the filming of the movies, but how the two main actors portrayed Sheriff Pusser and even a bit about the man himself.
In the end, The Walking Tall Trilogy is for an audience that is already familiar with the films. The first and third are okay, but the whole collection is really dated. For the most part, I felt like the second film was unnecessary, and there seemed to be a lot of issues with the film itself. The most evident of these issues was the sound. There are frequent pops and crackles and it frequently sounds like the whole audio track was re-recorded in a studio and the syncing wasn't quite right. All that being said, the people that have even a slight interest in the Buford Pusser story should watch these films, just don't expect the best acting and production quality.
