Tucked into the deepest crevasses of the ’70s-cinema landscape are a few low-budget obscurities that are interesting because of their aspirations even though the films are amateurish and unsatisfying. Johnny Vik, for example, aligns with familiar tropes by centering an emotionally disturbed Native American who endures PTSD and socialization problems following service in Vietnam. Yet the picture differs in an important way from others that explore similar terrain—Johnny Vik is almost completely devoid of onscreen violence. Instead, the clumsily rendered picture tries to reveal the turbulent inner life of its protagonist, with writer-director Charles Nauman occasionally employing bizarre hallucination scenes to show viewers how the title character sees the world. The fact that you’ve never heard of Johnny Vik, together with the fact that Nauman’s only other credit is a documentary released in 1968, rightly indicates that Johnny Vik doesn’t achieve its goals. The movie is alternately confusing, dull, melodramatic, silly, and weird, without ever committing strongly enough to any of those sensibilities to make a strong impression. Nonetheless, Nauman and his collaborators deserve some credit for inverting the paradigm that yielded so many disposable flicks about crazed vigilantes.
When we meet him, Johnny (Warren Hammack) comes across as a small-town simpleton who can’t hold down a job. Typical of the muddled first act is a scene of Johnny pointlessly watching two guys vandalize a cop car to the accompaniment of music that sounds like the Benny Hill theme. Eventually, circumstances compel Johnny to become a fugitive/recluse hiding in the forest outside his hometown, and once Nauman reveals the transformed Johnny—long hair, thick beard—the movie finds a bit more focus with scenes of Johnny experiencing visions in the wilderness. (In one vignette, he imagines a faceless figure of death sitting atop a pile of branches.) Meanwhile, Johnny befriends local teen Pola (Kathy Amerman), who takes horseback rides near Johnny’s hiding place. Hence her delivery of ponderous voiceover lines (“The emptiness followed him, haunted him, like a caravan of death”). None of the metaphysical stuff makes much sense, but one can feel Nauman grasping for profundity. Despite performances that range from inept to pedestrian, and notwithstanding his lack of cinematic prowess, Nauman conjures a handful of oddly soulful moments when he’s not distracted by nonsense including gratuitous nudie-cutie scenes.
Johnny Vik: FUNKY
