Love For Sale

A Place as prosaic as Kansas City isn't often associated with movies, but the makers of Prime Cut chose it for two reasons: Long a center for meat packing, K.C. also shares a problem endemic to other American cities--mobsterism. In the film, Chicago gangland enforcer Nick Devlin (Lee Marvin) is sent to bring a K.C. clan into line. Led by Marion (Gene Hackman), the Mary Ann Meat Company is a front for a drug and white-slavery ring, and most of the "meat" sold by Marion is of the tenderloin variety: Teenaged girls are raised at a phony orphanage for auction to bawdy-houses. While at one such auction, Nick befriends Poppy (Sissy Spacek), a young thing bound for the meat rack. Prime Cut features Angel Tompkins (who enlivened our February issue) as Clarabelle, Nick's former mistress and Marion's wife. Suffice it to say that Nick and Marion resolve their personal and professional differences--with all the gentility of a stampede.