The Dave Store is quite possibly the greatest retail
enterprise in American history. Selling everything from lawn
mowers to Pop Tarts to wine-cask-sized jars of dill pickles,
the Dave Store doesn't just dominate the retail market, it is
the retail market.
That is, until an employee at an outlet in
small-town Jackson, Missouri launches a wildcat strike. Then
company owner Dave Blandine, a retail legend known for
merciless cost-cutting and a glass eye the size of a doorknob,
decides to take a stand against organized labor.
He sends his half-witted son and heir, along with the
megalomaniacal head of a security company and nine heavilyarmed
agents to quell the unrest. They are met by Jackson's
sharp-as-a-blade lady mayor, and its laconic, marijuana-smoking
police chief who is famous for his two-gunned marksmanship.
Standing between these antagonists is the Dave Store's
local manager, a sycophantic nebbish with a penchant for
Byronic poetry, and his wife, a 15-year-old girl in a 25-year-old
woman's body.
As the strike deteriorates, both sides reach
for their guns. And the town moves inexorably toward mass
murder.
But cheer up. It's a comedy.
Loosely based on the story of the Matewan massacre—
the 1920 shoot-out between striking coal miners and armed
strike-breakers in small-town West Virginia—The Dave Store
Massacre is a satire in an American tradition that extends from
Mark Twain and Dorothy Parker to Christopher Buckley and
Paul Mooney.