I miss 70's movie posters, back when there were a lot of drawn and painted images. It's almost as good as Breaker Breaker!" The Police cars are getting closer - closer...Closer to our soul hero and his soul mobile. Yeah Baby! They're about to strike, they're about to get him. Smash! Rape! The last beautiful free soul on this planet."
Even though it's plainly referenced in the liner notes of G N R's Use Your Illusion II's "Breakdown" as coming from the movie Vanishing Point (1971), I never gave it much pause for cause. I just took it as part of the song, so it was a bit of a shock to be watching this classic car film and in the middle find this awesome speech by Cleavon Little playing blind radio DJ Super Soul. Little's performance is a tour de force of hippie spaciness and preacher man fire. And it's just one element of this great movie.
For year's I've read about Vanishing Point being referenced as one of the greatest car movies of all time. But I never bothered to check it out until now. The film has fuel pumping action as a man who is unnamed for half the movie drives a kick ass Dodge Challenger across Utah, Nevada and California for no apparent reason. He speeds and antagonizes Police to instigate chases in which he out manuevers them like Keystone Kops. Along the way, he meets competitors on the road, allies at the edge of nowhere and a friendly snake wrangler with a hippie singing cult in the desert as he is guided by the radio DJ.
Very much a product of its time, Vanishing Point is all about Freedom baby, yeah! Not just any freedom, but that special early 70's freedom where there was still slim hope that hippie ideals could co-exist with drugs and the Man. The freedom that has a naked blonde riding a motorcycle around her house just because she's a free spirit. The freedom to listen to the Police band and then announce it on the radio in a parable so its coded. The freedom to drive your Dodge Challenger as fast and far as you want just because you can. The Dodge car and driver draw media attention in the film as they come to represent both sticking it to the man and a mad dash away from whatever demons haunts him.
So tune out, drop in and head over to the Vanishing Point. But you might find the former members of Audioslave there, because they edited themselves into the movie for their 2004 video "Show Me How to Live". You know what's sad about this kind of freedom? It's pretty much gone due to modern jadedness, as I kept thinking "How can he afford to burn up so much gas in this gas guzzling Dodge? Can't you rebel and get better gas mileage at the same time?" Guess I won't be invited to the commune. Peace!
Audioslave "Show Me How to Live"
3 comments:
I'm kind of picturing this movie with an "Easy Rider" sort of vibe to it. Would I be off track? (no pun intended)
Hi Bunny! A little bit, its more of a Cool Hand Luke vibe though the story isn't similar at all.
I guess it's just the freedom theme and the "hippy" time period I guess.
But then again, sticking it to the man in a Dodge reminds me of Dukes Of Hazzard too. :D
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