Glen and Randa (1971)

One thing's for sure about this movie - you won't think of The Rolling Stones' "Time is on My Side" the same way again, following a scene where the few remnants of society in a post-apocalyptic wasteland - we don't see the apocalypse, it just happened - are sitting around at night and there is this strange curiosity called a record player that somehow, despite electricity and power being something of a rarity, can play a record. They have a single of the Stones song, and it sometimes goes a little in and out of track, warbling a bit, and everyone just sits around listening to it. Impassive, just taking it in. What is this thing called 'Music' after all?It's one of those oddball moments, which is funnier perhaps on paper than how it's played, that comes out of Jim McBride's film of Glen and Randa. Watching this film you get the impression that it's almost like a bizarre, wild-child style documentary on what would happen to people years and years down the line after society had been broken apart with no infrastructure to set it up. Oh, and there's sex between these two crazy kids and lo and behold Randa becomes pregnant. So that becomes an issue as the two of them go wandering around, trying to find food, shelter, and some place they can call home.McBride's film is a true oddity, shot in grainy film and done to look like some sort of artifact of a time and place (maybe intentional, maybe not), and the two leads are non-professionals. You know, for example, when Steven Curry is shouting out the same 'TIME IS ON MY SIDE' over and over, as it's in his head, this is a performance that is stripped down to its essentials. It's either a very good performance or a bad performance it that makes sense, but this guy is always in it, always showing this crazy kid's curiosity about the world, about the "City" that could be out there - he learns this through his tattered comic book remains he carries with him - and Shelley Plimpton is the same way.As with the McCarthy book The Road we don't get many other people here. There is the tribe early on, but Glen and Randa can't stay there as it's too unstable and Glen wants bigger and brighter things. The last "act" as it were of this gangly narrative takes them to a beach where Randa may finally deliver her child into the world. The ending itself is as bizarre as anything else in the film, but less logical. Why does Glenn do what he does, or Randa, or the baby, or the old man who has another few remnants to help them? In some ways the movie has not stood the test of time, but in a way it has. It's longish-freaky-looking characters are out of the late 60's, victims of the Flower Power movement, but they're also real and tactile and are fascinating to watch just from an anthropological point of view. In other words, it's not like a Mad Max post-apoc future, there are no motorcycle gangs or the like, it's, again, stripped down to where nature has taken over the Earth in major ways. If anything it's low-budget-ness shows a little too much, but the script via Rudy ("Two Lane Blacktop" Wurlitzer makes this experimental and low-key in good ways. What they don't got, they make it an advantage.Simply put: one of the stranger films of 1971.

A young, naive post-nuke couple (Steven Curry with Sideshow Bob hair, and Martha's mother Shelley Plimpton) leave their commune to search for "the city" (using Wonder Woman comics as a reference). They never do find it, and she dies during childbirth at the end of this mostly dreary, low-key 16mm American Film Institure-backed effort that received an X for casual nudity when released in '71. The best part is early on with Garry Goodrow (a jobbing character actor who later co-wrote HONEY I BLEW UP THE KID) excellent as a lecherous motormouth travelling "magician" who puts on a show (great use of The Rolling Stones' Time Is On My Side). Shot in California and Oregon. The first screenplay attempt by then-hip novelist Rudy Wurlitzer, he wrote TWO-LANE BLACKTOP next. McBride had already made a couple of documentaries and David HOLZMAN'S DIARY. He made HOT TIMES (also with Curry) next.Movie reviews at: spinegrinderweb.com

Glen and Randa is raw and has a hedonistic feel to it. The film was originally released in 1970 with an X rating because of (gasp!) full frontal male nudity! Don't want people to see that male genitalia.The film has a sort of low key, low budget amateurish feel to it at times. There are a few scenes which are sort of strange and silly at the same time. If it had been played serious by all the actors it could have felt sort of sleazy but most of the time it has a slight camp feel to it.The film also has an innocence to it that makes it feel very refreshing. Glen and Randa like to frolic in the nude at times and after exposed to a traveling entertainer they decide to leave their group and travel on their own and find "metropolis", a city with people dressed all in white but find that much isn't left after the holocaust.One other element I enjoyed was that there aren't any crazy people out to kill, rape or mame. You don't have to really worry about what will happen to these two as they travel alone.There are moments that seem very dated and some of the scenes aren't shot that well. It's not a film that makes a huge impact but it does linger in your head a bit afterward mainly because of the youth of the lead characters.

Saw this when it came out and was deeply affected by it. It is a powerful tale of a second genesis, the titular characters being Adam and Eve. I recall the first shot shows a beautiful "garden of eden" grove with a huge tree trunk in the center. The camera pans up as we hear the voices of Glen and Randa playing innocently. Thirty feet off the ground we find them -- in the wreck of a car blown into the tree's branches. Glen is behind the wheel pretending to drive. So the first image is a twisted amalgam of start and finish together that only becomes more obvious and compelling as the film unwinds. Glen comes to embody the flip-side urges of exploration and egotism that got us to the point where the movie starts -- the aftermath of the end of civilization. And it becomes clear that it will happen again. Sorry if I'm not clear enough. The film is much more eloquent in a completely organic way. there's no preaching or messaging. The picture is very funny at times and never overbearing. I'd love to see it again.