Ride in the Whirlwind

Director Monte Hellman

Writer, co-producer, and actor Jack Nicholson

Lake Powell in Glen Canyon today

RIDE IN THE WHIRLWIND          B                                                                                     USA  (82 mi)  1966  d: Monte Hellman

Shot back-to-back with The Shooting (1966) in the Utah desert outside Kanab during a combined six-week shooting in 1965, each given a $75,000 budget by legendary B-movie producer Roger Corman with a crew of just seven people, both shot by cinematographer Gregory Sandor, who would go on to shoot the cross-country road movie Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) as well, each one conceived by young American director Monte Hellman before he established himself in the industry, yet what’s noteworthy is that the reddish Glen Canyon setting for this film no longer exists, as all of their locations are currently submerged under several hundred feet of water by a man-made reservoir, Lake Powell.  Though the film was screened at the San Francisco Film Festival in the fall of 1966, it failed to interest U.S. film distributors and never obtained an American theatrical release until 1972, and was instead immediately sold to television, though it was shown out of competition at the 1967 Cannes Film Festival and played theatrically in France for six months in 1969, where it gained cult success on the French arthouse circuit, well received and critically acclaimed, endorsed by the editorial staff of the prestigious Cahiers du Cinéma, describing the film as “something new and original,” bringing attention to Hellman abroad before he was recognized in America.  By the early 60’s, westerns were already starting to be given a different look in Sam Peckinpah’s Ride the High Country (1962), John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962),  and David Miller’s vastly underrated LONELY ARE THE BRAVE (1962), while Sergio Leone started the spaghetti western craze with A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964).   Hellman eschewed widescreen compositions that capture the expansive panoramic landscapes of the American West, as was the custom at the time, and instead narrowed the focus to accentuate the tense claustrophobic anxiety.  Hellman studied drama at Stanford, then film at UCLA, taking a job as an apprentice film editor at ABC Studios, but he also founded the Theatergoers Company, and with financial help from Corman staged the Los Angeles premiere of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, turning it into a western with Pozzo as a Texas rancher and Lucky as a Native-American Indian.  Not so much a story, but more of a collection of incidents and character studies, what’s so essential about this film is that it completely subverts the western genre, which typically glorifies the good guys against the bad guys, with a heroic hero at the center leading the action, usually a character audiences can sympathize with.  In this film you’d be hard pressed to find a hero, while dialogue and action sequences are minimized to the bare essentials.  What that means is that the story is advanced through visuals, which simply was not done at the time, becoming more in line with an art film, and a predecessor to the dour fatalistic excursions of Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider (1969), and Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969).  The minimalist script was actually written by Jack Nicholson, who was also a co-producer and lead actor in the film, creating an ambiguous moral drama about frontier justice and how easily it was to be swept away by an ingrained culture of incessant violence, where the motto may as well have been “shoot first and ask questions afterwards.”  With similarities to the lynch mob hysteria in William Wellman’s The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), both are spare and uncompromising, yet also elusive to the core, where this reveals a couple of innocent cowhands who mistakenly get swept up in a bloodthirsty posse’s push for vigilante justice.  The wide open spaces of the American frontier are a fertile ground for lawlessness and indiscriminate killing, where the barrel of a gun sets the tone for the absence of justice. 

Both Hellman films are considered to be the earliest examples of a revisionist acid Western that brought contemporary 60’s counterculture ideologies into the classic realms of western lore, and while both are quiet films, accentuating the interpersonal relationships between a few people, they’re also very different films, where the grim, fatalistic tone reflects the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination.  The Shooting, written by Carole Eastman, features Warren Oates in his first starring role butting heads with a ruthless female protagonist (Millie Perkins), becoming altogether abstract, uncompromising, and hallucinogenic in its fatalistic, existential moral ambiguities.  But don’t be fooled by the supposed critical favoritism heaped upon The Shooting, declaring it the masterpiece between the two, more challenging in its minimalist structure, with its relentless expression of existential despair, as this underestimated yet more authentic film is defiantly realistic, more conventional and plot-driven, exhibiting a spare, austere quality, where the simplicity and naturalistic tone sets this apart from most all other westerns you can think of, bringing to mind Peter Fonda’s largely unseen The Hired Hand (1971).  At the outset, a bumbling group of outlaws rob a passing stagecoach, yet Hellman slows the action down so the scenes play out in real-time, turning morbid when one of them takes a bullet, where there’s only two passengers and barely any money, hardly worth it you might think, but this botched robbery makes you realize not every heist pays off, which is the chance you take.  Simultaneously, three cowboys are seen riding home to Texas after the rodeo they were to perform in got canceled.  As they travel through a similar terrain, Wes (Jack Nicholson), Vern (Cameron Mitchell) and Otis (Tom Filer), stop to view the gruesome remains of a hanged man strung up to a tree, the kind of thing that makes you think twice about entering the territory, as it’s just such an ominous sign, like a Shakespearean witch’s prophecy.  They don’t react much, offering a few stoic comments, but these are not articulate men, outsiders most of their lives, never staying in any one place very long.  The sparse dialogue is actually taken from the frontier diaries and journalistic accounts of the time, like Andy Adams’ The Log of a Cowboy, a real-life account of his experiences on the trail, or A.S. Mercer’s The Banditti of the Plains (Asa Mercer and The Banditti of the Plains) and The Cattlemen's Invasion of Wyoming in 1892 (The Crowning Infamy of the Ages), a true account of the crimes against homesteaders by cattle barons, with a scathing exposé about Wyoming’s Johnson County War (The Johnson County War: 1892 Invasion of Northern ...), including the siege and burning of a ranch house to draw out the inhabitants who were shot on sight, read by Nicholson when he was writing the script, providing insights into the characters he was writing about, crafting a story of simple men caught up in the cruelties of the time, and an authentic reflection of the American West.  As fate would have it, the three cowhands mistakenly wander right into a remote cabin holing up the stage outlaws, sensing no trouble at first, just a place to bed down for the night, spending the night sleeping with the horses.  The cowboys are suspicious of the ragged crew, but the one-eyed leader, Blind Dick (Harry Dean Stanton), is hospitable enough, sharing food and corn whisky, but by morning they’re greeted with a hail of bullets, surrounded by a vigilante posse aiming to either shoot them or string them up to a tree, thinking they are all part of the stagecoach holdup gang, with Otis shot trying to make it to his horse.  Like Mercer’s historical exposé, the posse burns down the cabin, executing those inside, with Wes and Vern trying to make an escape on foot up a high ridge of a box-canyon that offers no real chance of getting away.    

There are overlaps in the two films, each a story of paranoia and pursuit, expressed through alienation and existentialism, with Hellman claiming all his films have been informed in some way by Samuel Beckett, asking fundamental existential questions like “Who are we?” and “Where are we going?”  While this is a dark and brooding, psychologically intense western, introducing both slow-motion and realistic violence, while also using a limited musical score that never overshadows what happens onscreen, it lacks the suffocating dread that elevates The Shooting, where all the characters are bigger than life, yet the stripped down, bare minimum aspect of this film is highly unusual, with minimal dialogue, which is a true standout, among the most economic scripts of the 1960’s.  Yet its brazen depiction of a roving posse bypassing the legal system by taking the power of the gun into their own hands reflects the current power unbalance that continues to haunt America’s racial crisis through perpetual police shootings on the streets of America today.  What it also captures that other westerns seem to omit is the pervasive sense of loneliness from such extreme isolation, essentially cut off from the rest of humanity.  The enveloped emptiness from traversing vast distances on horseback can only be described as incredibly monotonous, where the land poses such a physical challenge, as it’s even difficult to do today in a car with all the newfangled gadgetry, so imagine the difficulties encountered going on such long distance rides, wearing the same clothes, struggling to find water, eating the same basic meals of biscuits and beans, having little to talk about on those grueling days in the saddle under the hot sun.  Not anyone’s idea of a good time.  Hellman reimagines what the West was like from a personal perspective, working against tradition, so instead of focusing his attention on action sequences, he instead shows us what happens in between the bursts of gunfire and furious chases, offering the perspective of those being hunted down.  This alternative vision of the West is immediately apparent, where you need look no further than seeing Harry Dean Stanton step behind a rock and take a piss.  This is just not something you see in other westerns.  There are bookended scenes of a family homestead, where the ranch is run by an older man (George Mitchell) and his wife (Katherine Squire), along with their attractive 19-year-old daughter Abigail (Millie Perkins).  The posse visits them first, inspecting the house and barn for the escapees, and leave satisfied they’re not harboring criminals.  Shortly afterwards, however, Wes and Vern have commandeered the women inside while the old man continues to work outdoors, taking an axe to a giant tree stump.  But once he sets foot inside, he is disarmed as well, suddenly at the mercy of these supposed dangerous outlaws who attempt to explain their innocence, to no avail, as what is the family supposed to believe when they take their horses, viewing them as little more than common horse thieves.  The quietness and non-threatening manner of this home invasion, however, speaks volumes, attempting to be polite while at the same time exposing the desperateness of their situation, protagonists on the lam from a lynch mob, as that hanging posse has promised the settlers, “They’ve seen their last sunrise.”  In this film there are no heroes or villains, just victims of tragic circumstances that reveal the hardships of trying to settle the American West, where even for those who somehow manage to make it, there is a devastating cost associated with everyday survival, where there’s an underlying feeling of sorrow that saturates every frame of this film.    

Ride in the Whirlwind | Jack Nicholson  full movie, YouTube (1:22:06)

The Shooting

 

 

 

 

 

 

Warren Oates

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE SHOOTING               B                                                                                                           USA  (82 mi)  1966  d:  Monte Hellman

The one thing that’s purposely ambiguous is what it’s all about, why all this is happening, and that’s built into the story and the reasons for the story.                                                               —Monte Hellman

An existential exercise in futility, a minimalist road movie, and an abstract, theater-of-the-absurd essay made during the gloom of the post Kennedy assassination, along with the rampant fear and anxiety from the build-up of nuclear weapons by the two superpowers, this feels like a doomsday scenario, taking westerns into a bleak nihilistic void where there is no way out, a predecessor to Peckingpah’s fatalistic The Wild Bunch (1969), and a model for Jim Jarmusch’s acid western Dead Man (1995), representing a moody yet pensively expansive style firmly rooted in the mid-60’s.   Made on a budget of just $75,000, with a crew of just seven people, shot in three weeks in the Utah desert back-to-back in a six-week shooting with RIDE IN THE WHIRLWIND (1966), a package deal, both written by Carole Eastman (aka Adrien Joyce), who also wrote Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces (1970), which captured the 60’s counterculture mood of rebellion and alienation, and the film that turned Jack Nicholson into a household name.  But these earlier films came out of the Roger Corman B-movie school, with Jack Nicholson as a co-producer and actor, released straight to television, as no domestic distributor took any interest, playing only in selected film festivals around the world, including out of competition at Cannes, endorsed by the editorial staff of Cahiers du Cinéma, the film developed a reputation for being scarcely ever seen, with most initially being introduced to it on television, where it wasn’t like anything else in the medium.  If anything, the only comparable viewing might have been Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone (1959 – 64), as it has a near science fiction feel, audaciously subverting the Western genre.  What stands out in the film is lack of expository information, only a looming sense of dread, driven by an overriding sense of paranoia, with Hellman ripping up the first ten pages of the script and starting midstream, leaving viewers to fend for themselves in this mind-altering wasteland, as no one’s aims or motivations are ever revealed, leaving one questioning everything that’s happening, as it’s absent significant facts and story elements.  While there are plenty of clues offered, there is no real payoff, where you may end up scratching your head wondering just what happened, as the film is ambiguous enough that there is no certain answer.  The true joy of watching this film is having the privilege to view Warren Oates in a starring role, as he developed a reputation for being one of the greatest character actors in secondary roles.  Listing 124 credits throughout his career, only five are in starring roles, with this being the first.  The others are playing a private eye in CHANDLER (1971), a notorious bank robber in DILLINGER (1973), a trainer of birds in the illegal “sport” of cockfighting in Monte Hellman’s COCKFIGHTER (1974), and a piano playing bar owner turned bounty hunter in Peckinpah’s Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974).  He plays a bounty hunter here as well, but refuses the label, preferring the term professional tracker, which is more in line with what he does, as in this film he’s after someone, but doesn’t really know who he’s following.  According to Danny Peary in his 1986 recommendation of more than 1500 must-see films, The Guide for the Film Fanatic, Hellman’s is an “unusual, interesting West, ugly, barren and godforsaken…a lonely, cruel world,” where “the good guys find themselves in a predicament beyond their comprehension.”   

After an extended absence, one-time bounty hunter Willet Grashade (Warren Oates) returns to a remote mining camp that he operates with his brother Coigne, seemingly deserted until a bullet buzzes by his ear coming from his overly jittery friend Coley (Will Hutchens), scared out of his wits, but with a story to tell, as his partner Leland Drum is recently buried while Coigne is nowhere to be seen.  Both recently visited the town of Winslow where Coigne got wildly drunk, inadvertently trampling a young boy to death.  The two got to arguing upon their return to camp, with Coigne taking off after Drum was gunned down by an unknown assailant, leaving Coley holed up in his tent panicked and petrified, afraid of anything that moved.  After hearing a hysterical version of the story that probably no one but Willet could understand, his response is priceless, delivered as only Warren Oates can deliver a line, “My mind’s all unsatisfied with it.”  The next day, a mysterious woman arrives unexpectedly on foot, Millie Perkins (Hellman’s next door neighbor), dressed in bad guy wardrobe, black boots, black gloves, and black hat, unlikeable right away, claiming her horse broke a leg so she was forced to shoot it, offering $1000 dollars to escort her to the town of Kingsley.  A close examination of her horse, however, reveals no injuries or broken bones, so Willet is immediately suspicious, not the kind of woman to trust, even more so when she refuses to provide her name or her intentions, a female counterpart to Clint Eastwood’s A MAN WITH NO NAME (1964), so initially he refuses her offer.  But thinking his brother Coigne is likely mixed up in this, he gives it some second thoughts, changing his mind in the hopes he can find out what happened to him, as clearly he is on the run.   Bringing the childlike Coley along, who is something of an innocent half-wit, he lags behind, struggling with a mule for food and provisions, continually criticized by the woman for slowing them down.  Almost immediately the mule is stolen in the night.  Nonetheless, Coley is sweet on the woman, while Willet senses danger, warning Coley not to trust her, finding her demanding, overly manipulative, and cold-hearted, while complaining all the time, as she purpously changes course, forcing them off their initial path, following the tracks of a rider a day or so ahead of them, refusing to rest, increasing their pace, with designs on catching him.  She also has a nasty habit of shooting her guns off, as if issuing warning signs of some kind, marking their position.  Sure enough, in no time they are joined by a sinister Billy Spears (Jack Nicholson), initially introduced with just a close-up on his eyes, a taunting and cocky man also dressed in black who is a hired gun with some past connection to the woman, as they seem to be in cahoots together, both thoroughly unlikeable, bordering on psychopathic, feeling no remorse, completely altering the dynamic, as Spears collects Willet’s gun, effectively making the other two men prisoners.  Production values are so slight, at times it resembles watching an early Star Trek (1966–69) television episode, especially when they were running low on money, as there are few props, minimal conversation, and lengthy shots of riders traveling through a barren desert landscape under relentess heat, where there are few, if any spots to find shade.  Nonetheless, the woman rides her horse hard, offering little rest or water, and with little thought about it, singlemindedly pursuing her target. 

The disdainful attitude of the woman is clear right from the beginning, where she apparently likes telling others what to do, showing no regard whatsoever for their safety.  Willet has ample opportunity to escape, but sticks around to protect Coley, who is continually bated by Spears, as if goading him for a fight, while remaining intently curious how things will play out.  The woman is completely underestimated throughout the journey, perhaps best expressed by a moment when Coley finds a bluejay, a colorful sign of life in the middle of nowhere, which he detects as a positive omen, until the woman blows it away, using it for target practice, revealing just how utterly ruthless she can be.  When the woman rides her horse to exhaustion, she takes Coley’s horse, forcing him to ride with Willet, placing a terrible strain on that horse as well, so he is ordered to stay behind on foot under the inescapable hot sun, with Willett promising to come back for him.  By this time, Spiers collects all that remains of the dwindling water, not particularly interested in sharing.  The landscape gets more desolate while the behavior gets more and more threatening, revealing a surrealist moment of discovering another stranger in distress left out into the open to die (Charles Eastman, brother of the screenwriter), apparently with a leg broke, unable to move (only God knows how he ended up there), with Coley able to corral his horse, making a beeline straight to Spears who shoots him dead on the spot, no questions asked, one of many dumb things happening throughout this film, as no one seems prepared for the actual journey they are taking, but they plunge forward anyway, motivated by greed or revenge, soon completely out of water with horses dying or growing lame right out from under them, left to pursue their victim on foot.  What follows is a road to nowhere, becoming a death drive, where there is no exit and no escape, a kind of Hell on earth where nothing can survive, shot by Gregory Sandor using natural light, recreating the blazing hot desert sun conditions of Erich von Stroheim’s Greed (1924), where all rationality is replaced by a sun-baked delirium, and all that’s left is madness, as humans are reduced to a Zombie-like state.  Willett knows the journey will end in doom, but he is somehow compelled to see how it plays out, driven by undefinable forces, as if embracing oblivion, first realizing Spears is suffering the effects of heatstroke, then jumping on him, finding a rock, and breaking the bones in his shooting hand, before running ahead to the woman who finds herself in a shooting spree, eying her target just as he eyes her, both wiping each other out in a nonsensical moment of absurdity, where meaning and reason have left the earth, replaced solely by primal instinct which has its way.  In the background, Spears rises, as if from the dead, but wobbles and stumbles off-balance, still delirious under the hot sun.  The film is more a cautionary tale or a morality parable than a narrative thriller or Western, absent all coherency, kind of an oldie but goodie, yet frustrating and creepy don’t even begin to describe the meandering quality of this experience, reflecting the mindset of those living off the fringe, outsiders in complete isolation, seemingly existing in the deep recesses of the subconsciousness, like a mythical tale of old.