The Wild Ride

What a bore following the antics of the teenage guys and gals as they wander aimlessly around. Whoops! I mean what a trip digging the scene with the super studs and their hot chicks. Hey man, it's real cool eyeballing head stud Nicholson laying rubber down the road or on the track. Too bad about his buddy Dave 's wanting to go suburb with his nowhere chick, uptight Nancy. But our head man will straighten him out. That is, if the fuzz don't nail him first.

Kidding aside, it's an ultra-cheap teen flick with Nicholson and a no-name cast, filmed entirely on anonymous location. I'd be surprised if it took more than five days total. Moreover, the scenes never depart from the kids and their antics; at the same time, there's no real plot except for a conflicted Dave feeling a need to go conventional. Nonetheless, it's rather competently directed and performed for a bunch of no-names. Heck, there's not even much campy about the 60-minutes, just a lot of aimless wandering around. Looks like the producers understood Nicholson as an up-and-comer and fashioned a drive-in quickie around him. Anyway, the dialog amounts to little more than what's supposed to be cool hipster lingo of the day, so be prepared, man.

Okay, this is not classic film-making. It has its moments though. Jack Nicholson is about as young here as I can recall seeing him - almost young enough to pull off the teenage-or-just-past delinquent role he plays. The dialog is pretty full of then-current clichés and words, so that part can be a little bit amusing. There isn't a whole heck of a lot to say about this movie, either you like late 50's teen/delinquent movies or you don't. I kinda like the '57 Ford convertible Nicholson drives in this movie. I guess they made tons of this kind of movie back in the day, because kids had little to do for evening entertainment other than to go to the drive- in week after week, and the theaters needed fresh fodder to keep the teens showing up. Well, it's a period piece, don't watch it for any great entertainment value, just watch it to see a somewhat exaggerated view of what life was like back when and let it go at that.

While in 1960 Jack Nicholson was still relatively unknown here he gives his first leading man performance tho the movie was a quickly forgotten misfire. And that was reason enough for me for watching it last October.

Johnny Varron (Nicholson) is a larger than life punk that spends his nights organizing wild parties and his days racing on a dirt track and ending in trouble to the point of killing a policeman, kidnap the girlfriend of one of his friends and seeing another of his friends ending in tragedy.

The reason why this is a dud it's because in the first half was decent with Nicholson giving a decent leading man performance but in the last 20 minutes it became dull because of all the trouble his character caused. Besides, the race scenes weren't that exciting to watch as those seen in better race movies such as DAYS OF THUNDER.

Overall, a very limp film of interest probably only for three types of viewers: 1) Nicholson completists (2) fans of old movies (3) fans of bad movies because they can get a kick out of it.

This is an exploitation flick meant to entertain and perhaps teach us about the dangers of angry young beatniks with fast cars. Jack Nicholson stars as a larger than life punk who has a group of loyal young idiots who follow him with almost cult-like devotion. And, when one of the members DOESN'T, it ultimately spells disaster.

"The Wild Ride" was very low budget throughout and looks it. Aside from a very good performance by Nicholson as an angry jerk, the rest of the cast are uniformly bland. Also the story suffers because it is neither florid and 'racy' enough to be salacious nor is it ever especially believable. So, if you are a bad movie fan, it's just not bad enough to be especially entertaining and everyone else would just be pretty bored by it. But, on the positive side, it's not an embarrassment for Nicholson or any of the rest of the cast to be in this rather limp film.

Sure, the first reason to see The Wild Ride (or, unfortunately as it sounds, the 're-cut' Velocity which for some insane reasons extends the story) is for Jack Nicholson. It's arguably his very first 'bad-boy' role in a career with more than enough to go around. He's still got a long way to go from here, but it's fun seeing him go practically method about his character Johnny (apparently Nicholson just started with Martin Landau at the time as his teacher), as he tries to sway Robert Bean's Dave from going the not-hip route with a girl who isn't part of 'their scene' as it were. There's tension, there's some fall-out, and in the end there's some overly high pitched melodrama following a chase down a road. Nearly embarrassing to admit it, but for those who will seek out the movie for that reason, as I did, it's not that bad (as in *as bad* as some of his other B-movie work like The Terror and Rebel Rousers).

Hell, I'll even give one-time-only director Harvey Berman some credit: for a picture that's main dramatic thrust is dictated mostly by the same beef between Biff and the McFly's in the Back to the Future movies ("What's wrong? Chicken?" "Nobody calls me chicken!"), the Wild Ride does provide the cheapest thrills necessary with a picture that (thankfully) doesn't even run an hour's length of time. It gives a halfway decent race-car sequence, and some nifty music in the end climax (if not, of course, throughout). There's even an oddly coincidental opening bit to the movie with that of Breathless, also released in 1960, with a rebel and a cop on his trail (albeit this on takes itself seriously, while Godard's parody).

It's a silly bit of teens-and-hot-rods exploitation that is still riding out whatever fuel is left from the 50s via the Wild One and James Dean. It's tender moments are like tender cuts of lamb, and its dialog is as pulpy as a moldy orange. And shame on me, perhaps, for almost liking this diddle of a B-movie; at the least it features something I've never seen before in another movie I can think of, which is a guy working at a liquor store asking if the young man Johnny has ID, he says yes, guy asks to see it, and Johnny says a simple 'No.' 5.5/10