White Lightning

Burt Reynolds runs moonshine and hunts the corrupt sheriff who killed his brother, and the film is the blueprint for a decade of good-old-boy car-and-liquor pictures. It is more serious than the Smokey and the Bandit formula it spawned, with real Southern grit under the chases.

Reynolds is at his most likeable, the car stunts are practical and genuine, and the revenge plot gives it more spine than the comedies that followed. It sits on the line between the two strands of the genre.

The moment the Southern moonshine picture found its star and its formula.