Word: gortner
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...pistol belongs to Teddy (Marjoe Gortner), an aging, long-haired rebel who marches into a New Mexico diner one morning in 1968 and proceeds to hold both the hash-slinging employees and the dyspeptic customers hostage. Teddy's aim is really not to rob or murder his captives but to humiliate them. He forces a haughty middle-class tourist (Lee Grant) to bare her breasts; he makes cruel fun of the diner's crippled owner (Pat Hingle); he tells a fat young waitress (Stephanie Faracy) that she is doomed forever to spinsterhood. By the time that Teddy departs...
...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...
...lesson to be learned from this film is that a good preacher is not necessarily a good actor. Gortner has great presence. With a good director and a little humility he might learn to act. The movie itself is pretensious and insulting to its audience. It promises a lot but delivers a confused mishmash, a midnight stoned rave on film...