The Road to Salina (1970)

          This sultry European melodrama/thriller exists somewhere between classic film noir and the psychosexual explorations of Nicolas Roeg and David Lynch. Like classic film noir, The Road to Salina concerns an everyman who drifts into trouble because of an irresistible woman. And like many deliberately perverse movies perpetrated by Roeg and Lynch, The Road to Salina plays wicked games with chronology and morality. Also adding to the film’s allure is an offbeat cast and a potent musical score. In fact, the score has undoubtedly led many curious viewers to this picture, because Quentin Tarantino repurposed some music from The Road to Salina for Kill Bill: Volume 2 (2004). Yet unlike grungier offerings to which QT often leads his acolytes, The Road to Salina has a somewhat elegant quality even though the subject matter is sordid.

          Per the noir playbook, the movie opens in media res, with a young man fleeing a remote location while a middle-aged woman screams for him to stay. The young man makes his way to a police station, reveals to the authorities (but not the audience) that something awful has happened, then reluctantly agrees to head back where it all went down. The remainder of the movie comprises the young man’s return trip, intercut with flashbacks while he explains past events to a cop. Via the flashbacks, we learn that Jonas (Robert Walker Jr.), an American drifting through Mexico, happened upon a gas station operated by Mara (Rita Hayworth). Mara mistook Jonas for her long-missing son. Upon determining that his hostess seemed harmlessly delusional, Jonas decided to indulge her fantasy for a few days. Then a neighbor named Warren (Ed Begley) showed up and he, too, mistook Jonas for Mara’s missing son. Things got really weird when Mara’s sexy daughter, Billie (Mimsy Farmer), became the third person to believe Jonas was someone else. This juncture shifts the movie into Roeg/Lynch territory, because Jonas learns that Billie was unusually intimate with her brother. It should come as no surprise to hint that Jonas’ strange erotic idyll eventually takes some dark turns.

          Given the twisted interpersonal dynamics of The Road to Salina, it’s a wonder the movie never becomes confusing. Director/co-writer George Lautner keeps the plotting as simple as possible, allowing viewers to marinate in bizarre moments—and to gradually unravel the film’s many mysteries. This streamlined narrative approach gives Lautner room for extended carnal vignettes, which Farmer and Walker perform without inhibition. Both actors essay familiar types well; Farmer’s dangerous impetuousness strikes believable sparks against Walker’s dopey recklessness. Meanwhile, the impact of watching faded screen icon Hayworth in a poignant role compensates for the shortcomings of her passable performance—the sense of a woman failing to reconcile comforting fantasies with intolerable reality is palpable. The Road to Salina is not for every taste, to be sure. The pacing can be leisurely, the plot requires suspension of disbelief, and the ending doesn’t quite achieve the impact it should. Nonetheless, there’s a lot to admire here in terms of boldness, heat, and style, so it’s heartening that the film eventually found a second life after briefly passing through American theaters back in the day.

The Road to Salina: GROOVY

The Naked Zoo (1970)

While some folks might take perverse pleasure in watching World War II-era screen goddess Rita Hayworth star as a sex-starved housewife who dives into the drug culture of the late ’60s and early ’70s by taking a decades-younger lover and emulating his controlled-substances habits, most viewers are wise to avoid The Naked Zoo, which is among Hayworth’s final films. Although the movie’s production values are passable, the only thing worse than The Naked Zoo’s discombobulated editing is its pointlessly lurid script. Most of the scenes feel unrelated to each other, strange things happen without explanation, and vast stretches of the film comprise montages of dancing and partying that fail to advance the storyline. The Naked Zoo is not unique, in that many other unhip movies about the counterculture devolve into shapeless sequences depicting wigged-out kids drugging and screwing, but The Naked Zoo achieves and sustains a noteworthy level of incoherence, ensuring that the few logical scenes are like islands in a sea of nonsense. The basic gist is that Mrs. Golden (Hayworth) wants stud service because her husband, Harry (Ford Rainey), is a crusty old dude in a wheelchair. Enter golden-haired swinger Terry (Stephen Oliver), who can’t seem to make it through a conversation without drinking or popping or snorting or toking. Not that it matters much to the narrative, but Terry has a lover of his own, African-American beauty Nadine (Fleurette Carter), whom he offensively calls a “pickaninny.” (Terry also does things like starting indoor bonfires, so racial insensitivity is merely one of his flaws.) By the end, The Naked Zoo devolves into a soap opera replete with betrayals and tragedies, though anyone watching the flick unironically is likely to have checked out long before that point.

The Naked Zoo: LAME

The Wrath of God (1972)

          Not to be confused with the amazing German film Aguirre: The Wrath of God, which was also released in 1972, this American production is a routine action picture starring the venerable Robert Mitchum as a gun-toting con man wreaking havoc in South America during the 1920s. Notwithstanding Mitchum’s top billing, the lead character is actually portrayed by workaday Scottish actor Ken Hutchison. He plays Emmet, a ne’er-do-well European stranded in a dingy Latin American nation. Emmet reluctantly accepts a job from corpulent gringo crook Jennings (Victor Buono) to drive a truck filled with illegal liquor to the U.S. Along the way, Emmet meets an amiable priest named Father Van Horne (Mitchum). Next, Emmet gets into a hassle while preventing banditos from raping a native woman, Chela (Paula Pritchett). Unexpectedly, Van Horne comes to his new friend’s aid—by unleashing the machine gun hidden in his luggage. Yet somehow, the storyline gets even more random after that turn of events.

          A powerful military official, Colonel Santila (John Colicos), recruits Emmet, Jennings, and Van Horne for a suicide mission to depose Thomas De La Plata (Frank Langella), the crazed aristocrat controlling a small town, so the movie’s climax involves a violent showdown between the “heroes” and De La Plata’s ruthless gang. Featuring all of these disparate elements plus other incidental flourishes, like Rita Hayworth’s tiny role as De La Plata’s mother, The Wrath of God is diffuse in the extreme. Produced and directed by the proficient Ralph Nelson, the movie can’t decide on a consistent tone or a main character: The picture vacillates between black comedy and bloody action while the Emmet and Van Horne characters compete for prominence. Nonetheless, some of what happens is mildly exciting, and some of the actors deliver enjoyably florid performances. Buono’s sardonic volatility complements Langella’s over-the-top intensity, for instance, although Mitchum is Mitchum, to the degree that he sometimes seems as if he wandered in from another movie. Poor Hutchison gets lost in the shuffle, particularly since his character’s motivation seems to change with every scene. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

The Wrath of God: FUNKY