Word: gortner
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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WHEN YOU COMING BACK, RED RYDER is a showcase for Marjoe Gortner. It shares much with the movie that introduced him. In the documentary Marjoe Gortner exposed himself as a rip-off travelling evangelist who gloated as he fleeced his followers. His sexual energy and charisma invited comparisons with Mick Jagger. Blue-haired dowagers fainted at his feet...
...When You Coming Back, Red Ryder, Gortner plays a crazed Vietnam vet who terrorizes a bunch of people in a New Mexico diner in 1968. Both the time frame and the tripped-out pomposity bring to mind the sixties marijuana generation. Background music is provided by the likes of B.B. King and Tammy Wynette, and I kept thinking of those late-night stoned raves in which you immortalize your first love affair on film in your head and try to match its moments to your favorite songs: "And then, after our fourth fight, when I'm crossing Boylston Street...
...movie opens with a desert landscape and an ear-splitting blast of electronic music. Teddy (Gortner) and girlfriend Cheryl (Candy Clark) are waiting for a cocaine connection. Teddy makes Cheryl hide behind a rock. Two Mexicans appear and Teddy successfully robs them of both the cocaine and their guns by being quicker on the draw. As soon as they disappear, Cheryl jumps out of her hiding place screaming, "Jesus Christ! You scared the shit out of me! You shot at those men! Jesus Christ!" He sits chuckling at her, lets her rave for a while and then makes everything...
...roadside cafes in the Southwest. But many of the elements which made The Petrified Forest a great film are missing in Red Ryder. The most important of these is restraint. Bogey was actually at his hammiest in Petrified Forest, but he communicated with the economy of a professional. Gortner's performance, for all its Bacchanalian intensity, lacks just this sort of professionalism. We cannot help but admire his characterization. Half demented encounter group leader, half psychotic drill sergeant, he strips people naked with a sentence. He tells the fat adolescent waitress nobody will marry her. He calls her macho greaser...
...characters except Gortner's are themselves cliches; the unsatisfied wife, the frustrated greaser, the fat waitress, the nice-guy motel-keeper. The characters line up almost exactly like those in The Petrified Forest, but in that film they were three-dimensional. In Red Ryder the characters are all foils for Teddy's contempt. None of them are allowed to do anything but whimper or get hysterical. When Red Ryder finally goes after Teddy and shoots him down, the film has already lost us. The final act of bravery, unlike Leslie Howard's in Petrified Forest, makes little impact, because...