Text © Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen,
2013
Images from the Internet
Wild Eye Releasing
90 minutes, 1968 / 1972 / 1996 / 2010
www.WildEyeReleasing.com
www.MVDvisual.com
Speaking of soundtracks, the reissue is very proud of the fact – and rightfully so – of their use of songs by the then-unknown Motor City Five (aka, the MC5), which ups the films credibility among more modern hopelessly obscure nostalgia collectors. You just know there is a whole contingent of First Wave punkers who are going to see this for that reason alone.
Images from the Internet
Gold
Directed and
Organized by Bob Levis and Bill Desloge Wild Eye Releasing
90 minutes, 1968 / 1972 / 1996 / 2010
www.WildEyeReleasing.com
www.MVDvisual.com
By 1968, when this film was shot, the
Hays Office style of extreme film business gatekeeping was essentially
toothless, after years of legislation ripping it of its power, such as proclaiming
the studios must be separated from the means of distribution; in other words,
the studios could no longer own the theaters. This broke their monopoly,
opening up the chance for foreign and independent features. This started early
in that decade, giving rise to the likes of the material of Roger Corman and Herschell
Gordon Lewis. Yet, this film didn’t see any theaters until it was shown in
England in 1972, and had its US premiere in New York in 1996, thanks in part to
a minimal number of negatives leading to the film becoming lost.
Continuing with my geekology, social
theory shows that trends start with the poor, get picked up by the rich who are
trying to show how “cool” they are with the lower social strata, and then by
the middle class who are trying to climb the social ladder. Langston Hughes was
writing about this in the early part of the 20th Century in stories
like “Slave on the Block” (1933). In this case, the hippies were indigents who
were praised and emulated by the Hollywood youth (such as the Fondas).
Put these two together, and you have a
perfect storm of the idealistic having enough money to display their
incompetence (a drugged version of the Peter Principle, perhaps?). This is not
to say I do not respect what they were trying to do¸ because even the punk
movement had its reflective moments (think of the British film Jubilee [1978], which has very similar
vibes to this one, dealing with similar grand motifs of overbearing systems of
control, anarchy, and both the differences and similarities).
That being said, this film was made for
about $1000, most of which went to the insurance for the rental of an olde style train used for one day of
shooting in the month-long filming, the rest going to equipment, food, and
other mind-altering substances. Sure some of the cast and crew were either
professionals in the industry already, and others wanted to be, but it is
equally obvious that some were there to share in the chemical and herbal vibe.
The end result may be considered, using a modern idiom, a hot mess. There is no writing credit for the film because much of
it was improvised, and that is easy to figure out pretty quickly.
The
stick of the premise is that a second gold rush gets a group of people – er – motivated
to head to northern California. There, a small corrupt government springs up among
the new town (whose members include Ramblin’ Jack Elliot and Dan Hicks!), and
it takes the local loser to rise up and lead la
revolución!
Truly, for both sides, it is shown that violence is, indeed, inherent in any system, even the loving, herbal kind.
But
this is mostly a comedy. Well, actually it is pan-genre, sometimes switching
from scene to scene or character to character. When the film starts, it’s a
western, and most are dressed accordingly as they board a train headed for the
locus of supposed gold (that we never see a hint of other than a mine shaft
door near the end). One exception is the villain of the piece, a cop called Harold
Jinks (as in, “Jinx! It’s the cops!”), portrayed by Garry Goodrow, who dresses
like a 1920s G-man and talks in the quick patter of Jimmy Cagney of that
period, see? Yeah, that’s it, see? Jinks is obsessed with control and stopping
nudity, something nearly everyone else is swaying and bouncing the other way. Meanwhile,
a sexy woman (Caroline Parr) with big – er – hair gets on the same train
definitely flashing some legs and belly in a cut-out dress, seemingly right out
of Carnaby Street.
At
the start of the film, we meet our hero, Hawk (Del Close, d. 1999), who is on
crutches. We watch as he almost misses the train and ends up riding underneath
it (Close foolishly did his own highly-dangerous stunts, surely empowered by
some – er – altered state of mind).
Through
much nudity (lots of full frontal of all genders) and multiple trysts, with
some nearly prescience to the mud-caked denizens of the Woodstock Festival in
the coming year, Jinks goes to the dark(er) side and starts arresting people
left and right and puts them into a barbed wired corral (either a pig sty or
cow pasture of the commune on which it was filmed). More of the town ends up
there than on the outside, of course. Finally, the mayor, not such a wonderful
person himself, starts to object, but you’ll see where that leads.
With
power corrupting absolutely, in a comment on the war in Vietnam and the then-current
Democratic Convention in Chicago that ended in disaster, a hero must arise,
with that being Close’s Hawk character (again, a reference to being pro-war). Easily no longer a western and certainly more
an allegory to the then-modern Marxist-influenced groups like the SDS and the
Weathermen, you know which way the wind is going to blow when Hawk starts
reading Mao’s Little Red Book and quoting Che Guevara, even coming to physically
resemble him. With his drunken buddy, LeRoy Acorn (Orville Schell) they start
planning a violent coup via a homemade arsenal (including bazooka!). Note that
all the main characters are men…I’m just sayin’.
While
I won’t give away what happens – and even though I’ve told quite a bit of the
story, yet not enough to diminish the fun of the flick – perhaps it’s worth
noting how religion plays a background role in the whole mishegoss. There are lots of songs on the soundtrack about Jesus,
and Christianity is mentioned or referred to as a recurring motif in the
dialog. I am not certain if this was a commentary about church and state, the hypocrisy
of how the state sometimes uses religion (e.g., “opiate of the masses”), or it
was so imbedded in the filmmakers that it came naturally without regard to its exclusivity
of the rest of the culture (and much of the business end of Hollywood at the
time).
Speaking of soundtracks, the reissue is very proud of the fact – and rightfully so – of their use of songs by the then-unknown Motor City Five (aka, the MC5), which ups the films credibility among more modern hopelessly obscure nostalgia collectors. You just know there is a whole contingent of First Wave punkers who are going to see this for that reason alone.
Extras
include two somewhat interesting full-length commentaries, an hour-long access cable
interview with the director, trailers, and more.
Whatever
your motivation, or mind-altering substance intake, the sheer insanity of this
film makes it worth seeing. There is so much happening, and it takes a vivid snapshot
of a counterculture that is the remnant of the original Beat hipsters of its
period, much in the way the Ken Kesey Merry Pranksters group did with the
Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test road trip. Gold is both a throwback and ahead of
its time, concurrently. What’s more, it’s groovin’ in these equally harsh
times.
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