Road Movie (1973)

          Telling the grim story of two truckers who travel across America with a tough hooker as their passenger, Road Movie epitomizes the New Hollywood aesthetic, even though its level of notoriety is infinitesimal compared to that of similar films by, say, Monte Hellman and Bob Rafelson. As cowritten and directed by the adventurous Joseph Strick, Road Movie is a dark meditation on the circumstances of unfortunate people whose pursuit of independence leads nowhere. There’s a reason the blunt title works—for the characters in Road Movie, life is all about leaving the pain of yesterday behind while chasing the possibilities of tomorrow.

          Road Movie opens by introducing Janice (Regina Baff), a jaded young woman new to the skin trade. Older hookers laugh as she hustles drivers at a truckstop, and she pathetically drops her price in half just to turn a trick. Janice quickly discovers the danger of working the trucker circuit: Since drivers feel invulnerable inside their rigs, many of them abuse Janice as she moves from town to town, one rough ride at a time. Enter Gil (Robert Drivas) and Hank (Barry Bostwick), two young partners trying to make a go of their independent trucking operation. They hire Janice, and then Gil—a cocksure bastard who rants about not wanting to pay union dues, because why should he pay to support other people’s healthcare—slaps Janice around for a thrill while screwing her. Hank has a gentler way about him, but Janice rightly calls him on his choice to align himself with a son of a bitch.

          As Road Movie trundles along, the three have experiences that can’t rightly be called adventures—more like travails. Janice punishes Gil by yanking the power cord on the refrigerator car the boys are hauling, ruining an entire load of meat. And when the guys get into a brawl with other truckers, Janice comes to the rescue by whipping out a straight razor and slashing the guys’ attackers. Gradually, we learn what pushed Janice onto the road, and what compelled Gil and Hank to start their own business. One of the film’s tricky implications is that Janice, the character who endures the most self-inflicted humiliation, might be the only one who sees the world clearly—until she goes completely insane, that is.

          It’s hard to say whether Road Movie “works” in any conventional sense, because it seems Strick was after something more than a morality tale, although Road Movie has that sort of a narrative shape. The picture achieves its greatest impact by presenting specific characters in specific situations as a means of asking difficult questions. What is ambition? What is freedom? What is human connection? Is the portrayal of Janice feminist or misogynistic? Are Gil and Hank antiheroes or merely facets of the same prism as Janice? Is the horrific finale literal or figurative? To some degree, the answers to these questions don’t matter, because sparking the viewer’s imagination is an accomplishment in and of itself.

          Aiding Strick greatly in his peculiar endeavor are the leading performers, each of whom commits to an unsympathetic character. Yet it’s Strick’s seemingly endless directorial curiosity that drives this piece: Frame after frame of Road Movie juxtaposes vignettes about three sad people with disheartening POV shots looking out truck windows at ugly commercialization littering Middle America’s thoroughfares.

Road Movie: GROOVY

Movie Movie (1978)

          A gently satirical tribute to the corny double-features of Hollywood’s Golden Age, Movie Movie begins with a short introduction from George Burns, continues into a boxing picture called Dynamite Hands, shifts gears for a fake trailer, and concludes with a showbiz-themed musical called Baxter’s Beauties of 1933. Replicating the way contract players were rotated through interchangeable roles during the studio era, many actors appear in both features (and the fake trailer), with George C. Scott playing all the lead roles. As written by comedy pros Larry Gelbart and Sheldon Keller, Movie Movie cleverly spoofs every contrivance common to movies that were cranked out a weekly basis, from plots predicated on absurd coincidences to completely implausible happy endings.

          Many of the subtler jokes, like the gimmick of having the same actor (Art Carney) open both features by giving a dour medical prognosis that triggers the plot, may be lost on viewers who aren’t steeped in old-school Hollywood cinema. However, the very funny dialogue, which riffs on the way studio hacks used to jumble clichés and metaphors into a stew of verbal nonsense, is terrific even without knowing the context. One example: “It’s funny, isn’t it, how many times your guts can get slapped in the face.” Or: “With the woman you love at your side to stand behind your back, a man can move mountains with his bare heart.” One gets the impression Gelbart and Keller spent their youths groaning through lines like these every Saturday at the local movie palace, only to hurry back for more the next week; whereas some cinematic satires falter because contempt for the subject matter makes the comedy seem mean-spirited, Movie Movie shines because its humor stems from nostalgic affection. So, with venerable director Stanley Donen playing to his strong suit of smoothly choreographed light comedy, Movie Movie becomes first-rate escapist silliness.

          Of the two features, Dynamite Hands is marginally better because the focus is on delivering verbal gags and spoofing clichéd storytelling. However, Baxter’s Beauties of 1933 has song-and-dance numbers that Donen stages with his signature effervescence. Appearing in both features, Carney, Red Buttons, Trish Van Devere, and Eli Wallach have a blast sending up the mannered acting of studio-era hams. Scott manages to be sweetly affecting in his dual roles, as a gruff boxing trainer in the first picture and as a Broadway impresario in the second. Kathleen Beller, Harry Hamlin, and real-life Broadway hoofer Ann Reinking are featured in Dynamite Hands, while Rebecca York costars with Bostwick in Baxter’s Beauties. They all get into the spirit of the thing, investing their performances with golly-gee-whiz enthusiasm. Also working in Movie Movie’s favor is zippy pacing—two features, a trailer, an introduction, and credits get crammed into 105 fast-moving minutes.

Movie Movie: GROOVY

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

Its status as the ultimate midnight movie unassailable, Rocky Horror has become critic-proof by this point, because people who love this campy musical and its accompanying audience-participation circus couldn’t care less whether the film meets anyone’s standard of “quality cinema.” Seen with the right crowd, Rocky Horror is a blast, because exuberant fans in fishnets cavort onstage while toast flies through the theater and everyone interacts with the movie’s dialogue. Seen without a crowd at all, the movie loses much of its appeal, if not its debauched singularity. The insipid story, which writer-costar Richard O’Brien and director-cowriter Jim Sharman transposed from O’Brien’s stage musical, is a pervy mash-up of horror-flick clichés, replacing the usual mad scientist with Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a “sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania.” (That’s the planet Transylvania, of course.) The songs are fun, especially the irresistible “Time Warp,” but the jokes are groaners and the wink-wink “we know we’re in a bad movie” vibe gets tiresome. Still, enthusiastic performances abound. Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon play Brad and Janet, white-bread paramours who fall into Frank-N-Furter’s lascivious clutches, and both actors vigorously sell the movie’s gimmicks. Sarandon also looks amazing, spending much of the picture in various states of undress. Meat Loaf sings the hell out of his small role as Eddie, an unlucky biker, and Charles Gray is droll as the movie’s caustic narrator. But it’s really Tim Curry’s movie, because he’s outrageous as Frank-N-Furter. A drag queen with bulging eyes and an overripe libido, Frank-N-Furter might be cinema’s most cheerfully obscene character. So while Rocky Horror may not be “quality cinema,” it delivers enough demented pleasure that it’s worth seeing at least once—especially with diehard fans who know the movie’s raunchy routines by heart.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show: FREAKY