The Wild Ride

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.

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.

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.

I picked this movie up cheap out of a bargain bin. It is a double feature disc with "The Little Shop of Horrors." When I started watching it I was shocked to find that "Velocity," which I knew was circa 1960, started off with a relatively new-looking scene of kids driving dangerously. It seems that Vina Distributor (who put out this double feature edition) or somebody decided to "update" the old teen flick with some footage of more relevant "street punks."

The bad "modern" teen meets a dude in a bar who looks a little like Jack Nicholson but doesn't sound anything like him (I guess Jack has better things to do these days, unlike these cutters) who tells him the story of his young life. THEN we get into "Velocity," which is all that the other reviews here promised.

Jack is so young that one might not recognize him at first. This was only his second role and he was 23 years old in 1960. It is pretty funny and I gave it two stars for the yuks, but it is atrociously dated. The version I have is colorized.

I see on IMDb that "Velocity" is the video title and "The Wild Ride" was the original name of the film. Maybe it was renamed "Velocity" after the bizarre framing segments were added.