Vanishing Point (1971)

          Although I’ve never really grooved to this particular counterculture artifact, as many friends who dig the same cinematic era have, all it takes to explain the appeal of Vanishing Point is to describe the close parallel between the film’s minimalistic storyline and prevailing early-’70s social concerns. Barry Newman stars as Kowalski, a drifter who makes his living delivering cars across long distances. After accepting a job to ferry a hot rod from Denver to San Francisco, Kowalski jacks himself up on speed and blasts down open highways with legions of cops in pursuit. Meanwhile, an enigmatic, blind radio DJ going by the handle “Super Soul” (Cleavon Little) narrates Kowalski’s journey for his listeners, framing the driver’s ride as a principled fight against the Establishment. The sympathetic reading of this material, of course, is that Kowalski just wants to be free, man, so when society tries to trap him with laws and rules and speed limits, he strikes a rebellious blow on behalf of rugged independence. And if you can’t anticipate how a story comprising these elements will end, then you haven’t seen too many counterculture flicks—as the song goes, freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.

          Viewed as historically relevant symbolism, Vanishing Point is interesting, because it presents a lone-wolf protagonist whose existence comprises nothing but early-’70s signifiers: He’s an alienated Vietnam vet, he self-medicates with illegal drugs, and he’s determined to force a confrontation with what he perceives to be the oppressive forces of law and order. Heavy shit, no question. It seems safe to say that writers Guillermo Cain, Barry Hall, and Malcolm Hart—as well as director Richard C. Sarafian—deliberately infused their story with of-the-moment dimensions.

          But very much like another existentialist road movie of the same vintage, Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), Vanishing Point plays an iffy game by using ciphers instead of fully realized characters. For instance, certain conventional narrative elements, such as backstory and well-articulated motivation, are largely absent from Vanishing Point. So, even though Vanishing Point provides ample fodder for post-movie interpretation games, the actual onscreen events are repetitive and superficial. It doesn’t help that Newman, who enjoyed a very brief run as a leading man in movies and television, is a bland persona. (Conversely, Little exudes casual-cool charisma and delivers his on-air monologues with smooth style.) It also says a lot that many Vanishing Point fans dig the movie because they’re entranced by the Dodge Challenger muscle car that Newman drives in the movie. After all, the Challenger has the film’s most fully rendered characterization—especially compared to the cringe-worthy portrayals of two gay hitchhikers whom the hero encounters.

Vanishing Point: FUNKY

Eat My Dust! (1976) & Grand Theft Auto (1977)

          Although these silly car-chase romps produced by Roger Corman should not be mistaken for quality cinema, they enjoy footnote status in movie history because they allowed Ron Howard to become a director. By the mid-’70s, Howard was a veteran TV star, having appeared in over 200 episodes of the ’60s favorite The Andy Griffith Show as a child actor, and having successfully transitioned to grown-up fame in Happy Days, which hit the airwaves in 1974. Additionally, he’d gotten a toehold in features, thanks to American Graffiti(1973). But what Howard really wanted to do, as the saying goes, is direct—so he agreed to star in Corman’s Eat My Dust! if the producer let Howard direct the follow-up. And though Grand Theft Auto is not a sequel (Howard plays different characters in each movie), both pictures traffic in vehicular mayhem.

          Eat My Dust! was written and directed by frequent Corman collaborator Charles Griffith, who always brought gonzo humor to his work. The picture stars Howard as small-town kid Hoover Nievold, the car-crazy son of a world-weary country sheriff (Warren J. Kemmerling). Hoover’s desperate to make time with a sexy blonde named Darlene (Christopher Norris), and she’s a speed freak infatuated with a racecar owned by Bubba Jones (Dave Madden). Hoover steals the car and takes Darlene for a joyride so he can get laid. That’s pretty much the entire story. Bystanders lose property as Hoover blasts through the countryside,  the sheriff makes chase, police cars crack up in spectacular ways, and Griffith throws a few weird sight gags into the mix, but nearly the only thing differentiating Eat My Dust! from other Corman car flicks is the lively bluegrass score by ace mandolin player David Grisman. Still, Howard is appealingly peppy, Kemmerling is entertainingly cranky, Norris is wholesomely pretty, and the movie is basically harmless.

          As for the sequel, one must strain to find indications of Howard’s future directorial talent in Grand Theft Auto—the picture was made in the same quick-and-dirty fashion as Eat My Dust!—but great things often come from humble beginnings. Howard co-wrote Grand Theft Auto with his dad, character actor Rance Howard, and the sequel is more plot-driven but slightly less enjoyable than its predecessor, largely because it lacks the freewheeling abandon of Eat My Dust! In Grand Theft Auto, Howard plays Sam Freeman, a young California man of modest means who is eager to marry his wealthy sweetheart, Paula (Nancy Powers). Her folks object to the union, however, so Paula steals her parents’ Rolls-Royce, collects Sam, and makes for Vegas with authorities and her parents in hot pursuit. The story starts to mimic It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) when word gets out that a reward has been placed on the kids’ safe return—random people join the chase and make the situation even more chaotic than before. Eventually, Paula and Sam become folk heroes by defying the oppressive dictates of the Establishment. (This is one of those pictures in which commentary from radio DJs is used to illustrate public sentiment, making Grand Theft Auto a watered-down version of the 1971 cult classic Vanishing Point.) Naturally, the movie concludes with an overwrought demolition derby. Alas, whereas Eat My Dust! has a certain crude charm from beginning to end, Grand Theft Autoruns out of gas well before it crosses the finish line.

Eat My Dust!: FUNKY

Grand Theft Auto: FUNKY

Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (1974)

          While not actually a good movie in terms of artistic achievement and/or narrative ambition, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry is in some perverse ways the epitome of its genre. Throughout the ’70s, filmmakers made innumerable ennui-drenched flicks about young people hitting the road for crime sprees that represented a sort of anti-Establishment activism. In the best such pictures, the wandering youths articulated their angst so well that their actions felt meaningful; in the worst such pictures, the basic premise was simply an excuse for exploitative thrills. Since Dirty Mary Crazy Larry exists somewhere between these extremes, it’s emblematic of the whole early-’70s road-movie headspace. The picture also has just enough cleverness, reflected in flavorful dialogue and oblique camera angles, to validate the existence of genuine thematic material, even in the context of a trashy lovers-on-the-run picture.

          Peter Fonda stars as Larry, an iconoclastic driver pulling crimes to earn money for a new racecar. Riding shotgun during Larry’s adventure is Deke (Adam Roarke), an accomplice/mechanic. During the movie’s exciting opening sequence, Deke breaks into the home of a grocery-store manager (Roddy McDowall) and holds the man’s family hostage while Larry waltzes into the store to collect the contents of the store’s safe. Unfortunately, Larry’s most recent one-night stand, Mary (Susan George), tracks Larry down during his getaway—she steals his keys and threatens to tell the cops what he’s doing unless she lets him tag along. Thus, Deke, Larry, and Mary form an unlikely trio zooming across the Southwest with police in hot pursuit. Working from a novel by Richard Unekis, director John Hough and his assorted screenwriters do a fine job of balancing talky interludes with high-speed chase scenes, creating an ominous sense of inevitability about the drama’s impending resolution.

          Still, the characterizations are thin—although the crooks’ main pursuer, Sheriff Everett Franklin (Vic Morrow), is an enjoyably eccentric small-town lawman—and the performances are erratic. Roarke anchors the getaway scenes with a quiet intensity that complements Fonda’s enjoyably cavalier persona. Englishwoman George, however, is a screeching nuisance, presumably impeded by the task of mimicking redneck patois. She’s so annoying, in fact, that it’s easy to laugh when Fonda berates her with this bizarre ultimatum: “So help me, if you try another stunt like that, I’m gonna braid your tits!” Dirty Mary Crazy Larry zooms along as fast as the cars featured onscreen, delivering several nerve-jangling crash scenes and generally setting an interesting trap for the reckless protagonists. Yet the movie’s ending changes everything, and the finale is so quintessentially ’70s that it’s reason enough to check out this hard-charging romp.

Dirty Mary Crazy Larry: GROOVY