Classic Movie Review: Ride in the Whirlwind

Ride in the Whirlwind (1966)

Directed by: Monte Hellman.

Written by: Jack Nicholson.

Starring: Cameron Mitchell (Vern), Millie Perkins (Abigail), Jack Nicholson (Wes), Katherine Squire (Catherine), George Mitchell (Evan), Rupert Crosse (Indian Joe), Harry Dean Stanton (Blind Dick), John Hackett (Winslow), Tom Filer (Otis), B.J. Merholz (Edgar), Brandon Carroll (Quint Mapes), Peter Cannon (Hagerman), William A. Keller (Roy), Neil Summers (Ward), Bill Keller (Roy).

 

Monte Hellman shot Ride in the Whirlwind back to back with the shooting in the Utah desert in 1965 – with some of the same cast – and ended up producing two Westerns with the same kind of existential dread to them. Ride in the Whirlwind is not quite the film The Shooting is (that probably has some to do with the writers) – as The Shooting builds to some sort of strange, surreal climax that cannot be clearly explained. By contrast, Ride in the Whirlwind is a simpler story in many ways – full of dialogue that sounds like it was stolen from dime store Western novels, and a plot to match. And yet, that same weight is coming down on these characters – they are not getting away free.

 

Ride in the Whirlwind is about three cowboys on their way to Waco, Texas when they happen across a group of bandits hiding out in an isolated ranch house. We know they’re bandits because of the opening scene – where we see the group (led by Harry Dean Stanton) robbing the stagecoach – and the cowboys size them properly right away as well. Both groups of men figure that if they just stay out of each other’s way however, they can get through the night, and just go on their way – all the while pretending they don’t know what is really going on. It’s a plan that pretty much works – except for the fact that a rogue vigilante posse descends on the house early the next morning – and pretty soon, there is a lot of shooting going on. The cowboys cannot very well try and say they aren’t members of the game – even though it’s true – because who would believe them? Two of them – Vern (Cameron Mitchell) and Wes (Jack Nicholson) are able to escape – but the posse is behind them, and aren’t going to give up.

 

The screenplay was written by Nicholson himself – and it’s a fairly spare, basic setup. Not as spare as The Shooting – which is basically just four characters – but spare just the same. This time, he’s basically got four different groups – the innocent cowboys who are caught in a situation, the bandits who are responsible for them being there, the vigilante posse out to catch the bandits, and in the last act, a family unit that Wes and Vern have to take hostage in an effort to get out alive. Like The Shooting though, this is a Western devoid of things that populate other Westerns – there are no Sheriffs around, no real towns, no commerce, no regular people going about their lives. And everyone in the film is equally doomed. So much so that you could almost feel like this isn’t a Western as much as post-apocalyptic movie – there is no signs of civilization anywhere.

 

Compared to The Shooting, Ride in the Whirlwind clearly isn’t quite as good. That film is a mini masterpiece – a surreal, existential Western, that foretold much of what was come later in the genre, even if it’s hard to argue it influenced it because no one really saw it. This is a more standard – bare bones affair – but an effective one. It’s especially good both early and late – in the scenes involving the cowboys and the bandits, and later, the cowboys and the family – that show how things have been turned on their head. A sequence with the sound of chopping wood coming through the walls and driving Nicholson crazy is particularly effective.

 

So no, Ride in the Whirlwind is not quite The Shooting – but it’s cut from the same cloth, and is an effective, minimalist Western from Hellman and company. And while it’s not quite the top of his game – it’s close enough to make it a fascinating companion piece to a masterpiece.

Classic Movie Review: The Shooting (1966)

The Shooting (1966) 

Directed by: Monte Hellman.

Written by: Carole Eastman.

Starring: Warren Oates (Willett Gashade), Millie Perkins (Woman), Jack Nicholson (Billy Spear), Will Hutchins (Coley), Charles Eastman (Bearded Man), Guy El Tsosie (Indian), Brandon Carroll (Sheriff), B.J. Merholz (Leland Drum), Wally Moon (Deputy), William Mackleprang (Cross Tree Townsman), James Campbell (Cross Tree Townsman). 

 

Monte Hellman’s The Shooting wasn’t really released in 1966, when it was finished – outside of a few film festivals and a stint in European art houses. It garnered more a released in the 1970s, when one of its stars – Jack Nicholson – became the biggest movie star in the world, and its reputation grew steadily over the years – despite the fact that it wasn’t easy to see. Now that it is easily seen, it can take its proper place as one of the best Westerns of the 1960s – and a key film in the genre as a whole. It is seen as the first Acid Western – combining classic Western elements from American films (Anthony Mann is a clear influence), with the surrealism of the Spaghetti Western. It is an existential Western – clearly a product of the chaos of the decade that produced it. It also somewhat predicts the Westerns of that Sam Peckinpah would start making with 1969’s The Wild Bunch (his earlier films were leading to what he did with that, and Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia as well) and Clint Eastwood – about the dying Old West. Written by Carole Eastman – who would go on to write Five Easy Pieces – and directed by Hellman with a mixture of surreal and dread, The Shooting builds to a climax that you won’t forget – even if (or especially because) of its ambiguity.

 

The great Warren Oates stars in the film as Willet Gashade – a former bounty hunter, turned gold miner – who returns to his land to find one partner dead and buried, his brother on the run, and their simple minded employee Coley (Will Hutchins) scared and at a loss to describe just what happened – something about Will’s brother killing a little one – maybe a child in town – and the partner being shot dead out of nowhere. They are soon joined by a mysterious woman (Millie Perkins) – who offers them a lot of money to take her to a town a few weeks ride away. Will and Colely go along for the ride – Will is suspicious from the start, but feels he must see it through, and Colely mooning over Perkins. Will knows they are being followed by someone – and eventually, that someone will join them. It is Billy Spear (Nicholson) – a hired killer – who the woman has hired. Will figures out they aren’t really going to the other town – they’re on the hunt for someone up ahead – and when they take a turn into the desert, it increases the pressure on the group.

 

In many ways, The Shooting is structured like many a classic Western, and main characters are admittedly archetypes more than they are real characters. Hellman and Eastman are not really after the idea of upending the tropes of the Western, as much as they are twisting them. There is nothing glamorous or romantic about this film. There are strange, surreal touches throughout the movie – like Colely offering a dying man candy as he lays baking in the desert sun with a broken leg. Willet seems resigned to the journey – knowing it seems from the outset that only death awaits them, even as he says he’s along to try and stop the killing he knows the journey is for. It’s another great turn by Oates. Perkins remains an enigma throughout the film – while we will eventually learn who everyone else is, who they are chasing, etc. – we never really learn anything about her, not even her name, and certainly not why she’s on this journey – or why she seems sickly along the way. Had the film been released properly, perhaps it could have been the star making turn for Nicholson that Easy Rider would be three years later, although perhaps not. It is a great early Nicholson performance – but it’s a heartless and cruel one, with one glimpses of that dangerous charm he exudes. Here, he’s a killer – and not one you like.

 

The film moves on to its inevitable, yet still baffling, conclusion. You can probably figure out who they are chasing – even if you don’t know why – but the film isn’t really about that, not really. As the movie progresses, and this group turns on each other in interesting ways – and one by one, they end up walking through the desert instead of on their horses, the film turns more surreal and existential. What does this all mean after all? The movie is more powerful for not answering.

 

The Shooting is a great film – a key Western in the genre’s history (and on a side note, further proof that superhero movies are merely just modern day Westerns as some have argued – some me a superhero movie like The Shooting, and maybe I’ll change my mind). It’s one of my favorite genres, and it keeps surprising me with gems like this from its past that had somehow escaped me. It’s not quite the stone cold masterpiece that Hellman’s Two Lane Blacktop (1971) was – a kind of anti-Easy Rider that saw clearly the rot setting in, but it’s cut from the same cloth.

DVD Review: Road to Nowhere

Road to Nowhere *** ½

Directed by: Monte Hellman.

Written by: Steven Gaydos.

Starring: Shannyn Sossamon (Laurel Graham/Velma Duran), Tygh Runyan (Mitchell Haven), Cliff De Young (Cary Stewart \ Rafe Tachen), Waylon Payne (Bruno Brotherton), Dominique Swain (Nathalie Post).

If we lived in a more adventuresome, intellectually curious cinema culture, than Monte Hellman’s Road to Nowhere would be one of the most talked about and debated films of the years. But we don’t, which is why the aging auteur’s first film in over 20 years has been met mainly with silence from film critics, and audiences have not even heard of it. It’s a shame, because Road to Nowhere is such a fascinating film – one that draws you in deeper, even as it makes clear, from the title and what happens in the film, that the film really is leading us nowhere.

When a filmmaker makes a movie about movies, especially one like Hellman who has struggled his whole career, there is a danger of making a bitter or pretentious movie. But while Road to Nowhere maybe a little of both, it is still a movie in love with movies – the process of making them of watching them, and the single minded determination that both entail. This is one of those meta movies that have a movie within the movie, and perhaps even a movie within the movie within the movie. Or perhaps not. That’s really up to you to decide.

The movie opens with a scene of a woman (Shannyn Sossamon) with a blow dryer in her empty house, where an older man (Cliff De Young) enters, and we hear a gunshot. But then both of them emerge from the house separately. Who is dead? Is anyone? Then we see the man get into his plane, and the woman watch from her car as the plane crashes into a lake. Only then do we find out that the movie we have been watching is not Monte Hellman’s Road to Nowhere, but rather, Mitchell Haven’s (Tygh Runyan)’s Road to Nowhere. The woman is a young actress, Laurel Graham, who has been cast in Haven’s movie about a young woman who gets involved with a corrupt politician, played by movie star Cary Stewart, and apparently die in a double suicide. All of this is based on the a true crime case that Haven found on Nathalie Post’s (Dominque Swain) blog, about her small South Carolina town. Nathalie doesn’t believe the official story about the double suicide, and thinks the real life pair faked their own deaths. And it appears like Haven agrees, and the movie takes that angle up as well. And there is something strange about Laurel – she looks an awful lot like the real woman in the case, so much so that an insurance investigator (Waylon Payne) thinks she IS the real woman. But Haven is blinded by his own growing infatuation with her.

Hellman bounces back and forth between scenes of Haven and company making Road to Nowhere, and scenes from the movie they are making. There is no obvious break between these two story threads, and he only sometimes identifies which scenes are which, when he pulls back to show us the crew and everyone else, watching the scene unfold around them. Somewhere along the way though, I started to get the impression that what we were really watching was not Hellman’s movie about Haven making the movie, with the movie within the movie as a side plot, but Hellman’s movie about Haven making a movie about himself making the movie. Why else do we see two different versions of the plane crash, both apparently from Haven’s movie? And the finale leads me to believe that even more.

A movie like Road to Nowhere is tricky for actors, because they can never give too much away. Hellman obviously did not have the money to put any stars in his movie (although there is an amusing scene of Haven talking about casting Leonardo DiCaprio in his film –“He could do it with some makeup”), but for the most part the performances work. Especially Shannyn Sossamon, who is essentially asked to play at least three (four?) different characters all within her role, and never give away which one is which, while not being so vague as to appear clueless. A few years ago, Sossamon was an “It” girl, but after a few roles, she pretty much disappeared. Here though she proves that is willing to take on a challenging role, and can pull it off.

Can I explain everything that happens in Road to Nowhere? No, I can’t. At least not after only one viewing. This may well be a film like David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive or Inland Empire, which require you to go back and sort through all the plot threads to discover where each scene actually fits in the different versions of reality. I’m sure someone will do that, because Hellman has long since been a cult figure with a good fan base. But that exercise doesn’t excite me. I don’t even think unraveling the different layers of reality was really Hellman’s point. This is a film about our love for movies, and the complex relationship we have with them, as a viewer or as someone who pours himself into making them. While I cannot say it is a masterpiece on the level of Hellman’s Two Lane Blacktop, Road to Nowhere is a fascinating film – one that deserves an intelligent audience to give it their full attention.

The Best Movies I've Never Seen Before: Two Lane Blacktop (1971)

Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) ****

Directed by: Monte Hellman.

Written by: Rudy Wurlitzer and Will Corry.

Starring: James Taylor (The Driver), Warren Oates (G.T.O), Laurie Bird (The Girl), Dennis Wilson (The Mechanic).

Two-Lane Blacktop was supposed to be the movie event of the year in 1971. Before anyone saw the film, Rolling Stone called it an instant classic and Esquire put it on its cover, and published the entire screenplay. This was supposed to be the next Easy Rider, Bonnie and Clyde or The Graduate. Then it opened, and no one showed up. The film didn’t even come out in any form of home video until 1999. Now it is regarded as a classic – which it surely is – but in 1971 it was a flop.

Why no one showed up in 1971 becomes clear when you watch the film. This was never going to be the next Easy Rider – the film it most resembles of the three mentioned above – because Monte Hellman, the director, had no interest in doing a version of Easy Rider. The movie is actually the antithesis of Easy Rider. This is not a romantic version of two counter culture martyrs, who get high, hit the road, drop out of society, with a rock n’ roll sound track and orgies in cemeteries. Where Dennis Hopper’s movie celebrated its “heroes” (even giving them names straight out of Western – Wyatt and Billy, for Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid), Hellman sees their lives as empty and meaningless. The kids wanted fast moving, violent, sexy movies inspired by the French New Wave, and instead Hellman gave them a slower, more meditative film influenced by Antonini. Even something as simple as the direction they are travelling – from the West to Washington DC - flies in the face of movies like Easy Rider, where everyone always heads West. The question isn’t why no one showed up to see the film in 1971 – but why anyone ever expected them to.

But it’s these differences that make Two-Lane Blacktop seem so contemporary even 40 years later, and makes Easy Rider seem so dated. I like Easy Rider for what it is – a time capsule of 1960s cinematic style and attitude – but the film has never excited me as much as it did the kids in the ‘60s. It is from another time and place, whereas Two-Lane Blacktop still feels fresh.

Hellman’s movie doesn’t even bother to give names to its characters. Folk Singer James Taylor plays The Driver and Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson plays The Mechanic. They have hit the road in their supped up 1955 Chevy, driving along Route 66 from one desolate town to the next, making money by drag racing, in which they never lose. They pick up The Girl (Laurie Bird), who simply gets into the back of their car one day. By the end of the movie, she will have slept with both The Mechanic and The Driver, but this isn’t a love triangle – that would require at least one of the characters to feel something and I don’t think any of them do. Along the way, they meet GTO (Warren Oates), who yes, is driving a brand new GTO. He is older than the others, but he gets sucked into their game anyway. They agree to race across country to Washington DC. The stakes? The winner gets the loser’s car. But pretty much right from the get go, no one seems all that interested in the race. The Driver and The Mechanic have an opportunity to put themselves so far ahead in the race early on that GTO could never catch up, but they don’t take it. Instead, they decide to help him out. “I have no interest in being 600 miles ahead” The Driver says at this point. The winner of the race is never determined in the movie – they simply seem to give up on the race altogether once The Girl leaves with a boy on a motorbike at a diner – leaving her backpack behind her.

I’m not sure if Taylor and Wilson are actually poor actors, or if Hellman told them deliberately to deliver all their lines flat and emotionless. No matter the reason, it works here. The Driver and The Mechanic never really say much of anything to each other – just talk about the car and what needs to be done, and their current money situation. They don’t even turn on the radio because it would be a distraction. They seem to have hit the road in order to avoid all sort of human connection to anyone else – including each other. They simply do not care. GTO is different – he seems to have hit the road because there is nothing for him at home, wherever that may be, and being on the road gives him the chance to talk to people. Throughout the movie, he picks up hitchhiker after hitchhiker, and tells each one of them a different story of what he’s doing on the road, and how he got the GTO. The last hitchhiker he picks up, he tells that he got the GTO by beating its driver in a cross country race in his supped up 55 Chevy – thus adopting The Driver and The Mechanic’s story as his own. Oates’ performance is the best in the movie – one of the best of the 1970s really – because it perfectly captures his story – that of an older man, who seems to have missed out on the 1960s, but is trying anyway.

The film has, what Richard Linklater has called, the “most purely cinematic ending in film history”, and in a certain way, he is correct. The film, as I mentioned before, doesn’t answer the question of who won the race, because no one seems to be racing anymore. Instead, it ends with The Driver and The Mechanic involved in yet another drag race – this time though, we don’t even get to the end of that race. The film starts slowly down, and eventually, will catch fire and simply disintegrate in front of our eyes – as if the film itself caught fire in the projector. As Neil Young once said “It’s better to burn out than fade away”.