Glen and Randa

I find it interesting that nobody has yet mentioned how much casual nudity there is in this film. It's what got the film its "X" rating, even though there's no overt sexuality connected to it. It's more of a device to underline the innocence of Glen and Randa and their nomadic life. Nothing in the film would get it more than an "R" today. There are no special effects as such, just vistas of nature and of the ruined technology from which the survivors glean their living. The young actors are very appealing, and there's a quiet inevitability to the story's unfolding. I wish this were available on DVD, but given that there's no studio money behind it, this is unfortunately unlikely. This little film has stayed with me for many years since the release. It's too bad so few people know about it; it deserved a better fate.

Saw this when it came out and was deeply affected by it. It is a powerful tale of a second genesis, the titular characters being Adam and Eve. I recall the first shot shows a beautiful "garden of eden" grove with a huge tree trunk in the center. The camera pans up as we hear the voices of Glen and Randa playing innocently. Thirty feet off the ground we find them -- in the wreck of a car blown into the tree's branches. Glen is behind the wheel pretending to drive. So the first image is a twisted amalgam of start and finish together that only becomes more obvious and compelling as the film unwinds. Glen comes to embody the flip-side urges of exploration and egotism that got us to the point where the movie starts -- the aftermath of the end of civilization. And it becomes clear that it will happen again. Sorry if I'm not clear enough. The film is much more eloquent in a completely organic way. there's no preaching or messaging. The picture is very funny at times and never overbearing. I'd love to see it again.

One thing's for sure about this movie - you won't think of The Rolling Stones' "Time is on My Side" the same way again, following a scene where the few remnants of society in a post-apocalyptic wasteland - we don't see the apocalypse, it just happened - are sitting around at night and there is this strange curiosity called a record player that somehow, despite electricity and power being something of a rarity, can play a record. They have a single of the Stones song, and it sometimes goes a little in and out of track, warbling a bit, and everyone just sits around listening to it. Impassive, just taking it in. What is this thing called 'Music' after all?

It's one of those oddball moments, which is funnier perhaps on paper than how it's played, that comes out of Jim McBride's film of Glen and Randa. Watching this film you get the impression that it's almost like a bizarre, wild-child style documentary on what would happen to people years and years down the line after society had been broken apart with no infrastructure to set it up. Oh, and there's sex between these two crazy kids and lo and behold Randa becomes pregnant. So that becomes an issue as the two of them go wandering around, trying to find food, shelter, and some place they can call home.

McBride's film is a true oddity, shot in grainy film and done to look like some sort of artifact of a time and place (maybe intentional, maybe not), and the two leads are non-professionals. You know, for example, when Steven Curry is shouting out the same 'TIME IS ON MY SIDE' over and over, as it's in his head, this is a performance that is stripped down to its essentials. It's either a very good performance or a bad performance it that makes sense, but this guy is always in it, always showing this crazy kid's curiosity about the world, about the "City" that could be out there - he learns this through his tattered comic book remains he carries with him - and Shelley Plimpton is the same way.

As with the McCarthy book The Road we don't get many other people here. There is the tribe early on, but Glen and Randa can't stay there as it's too unstable and Glen wants bigger and brighter things. The last "act" as it were of this gangly narrative takes them to a beach where Randa may finally deliver her child into the world. The ending itself is as bizarre as anything else in the film, but less logical. Why does Glenn do what he does, or Randa, or the baby, or the old man who has another few remnants to help them? In some ways the movie has not stood the test of time, but in a way it has.

It's longish-freaky-looking characters are out of the late 60's, victims of the Flower Power movement, but they're also real and tactile and are fascinating to watch just from an anthropological point of view. In other words, it's not like a Mad Max post-apoc future, there are no motorcycle gangs or the like, it's, again, stripped down to where nature has taken over the Earth in major ways. If anything it's low-budget-ness shows a little too much, but the script via Rudy ("Two Lane Blacktop" Wurlitzer makes this experimental and low-key in good ways. What they don't got, they make it an advantage.

Simply put: one of the stranger films of 1971.

Unjustifiably ignored sci-fi indie is a lovingly handled little gem, and provides one of cinema's less trenchant visions of post-apocalyptic Earth.

Glen and Randa are young lovers, born years after the nuclear decimation of worldwide civilization. The nth-generation of a handful of survivors are tribal, searching daily for life's most basic essentials. Glen has seen a tattered Wonder Woman comic book, and believes that the fictional city of Metropolis in its pages does, indeed, exist. With his curiosity piqued, he and pregnant Randa embark on a journey to find it.

Not an action-packed film by any stretch of the imagination, GLEN AND RANDA is an otherwise very solemn, thoughtful film which won't be appealing to everyone, but will leave some to chafe inwardly. I was personally quite moved by it, and would recommend it without hesitation to anyone looking for a unique film born miles away from the questionable influence of Tinseltown.

6.5/10

Glen and Randa is raw and has a hedonistic feel to it. The film was originally released in 1970 with an X rating because of (gasp!) full frontal male nudity! Don't want people to see that male genitalia.

The film has a sort of low key, low budget amateurish feel to it at times. There are a few scenes which are sort of strange and silly at the same time. If it had been played serious by all the actors it could have felt sort of sleazy but most of the time it has a slight camp feel to it.

The film also has an innocence to it that makes it feel very refreshing. Glen and Randa like to frolic in the nude at times and after exposed to a traveling entertainer they decide to leave their group and travel on their own and find "metropolis", a city with people dressed all in white but find that much isn't left after the holocaust.

One other element I enjoyed was that there aren't any crazy people out to kill, rape or mame. You don't have to really worry about what will happen to these two as they travel alone.

There are moments that seem very dated and some of the scenes aren't shot that well. It's not a film that makes a huge impact but it does linger in your head a bit afterward mainly because of the youth of the lead characters.