When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder

Dont listen to the bad reviews, this is one of the greatest psychological dramas of all time, right up there with WHOSE AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOLFE & THE ANNIVERSARY but with way more dark overtones and up dated by utilising the political confusion of the transition between the early 50s and late turbulent 60s. Marjoe Gortner is on fire here as the psychotic ex Nam vet Teddy who singlehandedly terroises the inahbitants and few customers at a roadside diner with psychological terror and intimidation. Sure, the movie drags a little in the first half hour, setting up the case scenarios of the players ala PULP FICTION but by golly when they all meet up at the deserted diner are you in for a treat in psychological warfare. Peter Firth is absolutely fantastic in the role as Stephen (Red) Ryder and this really can be seen as a coming of age film and a depressing view into the life of Jerry Springer style poor white trash in small country towns. There is a 90s movie titled ALBINO ALLIGATOR that borrows heavily from this movie but falls oh so short. Red Ryder improves with repeated viewings and starts to resmble a black comedy in places. Itll make you laugh, sigh, frightened and when it gets going will have you at the very edge of your seat.This movie is awesome and should be re-submitted for its deserved (but currently out of reach) cult status. My second favourite movie of all time. love it or hate it you wont regret it. For those who hated it I plead for you to check this out again. There is way more in this film that meets the eye.Although far from being first rate technically this is without doubt a brilliant film on many other rare untouched levels.Now can some one out there release this on DVD already!??? I also recommend seeing the MARJOE documentary..AFTER this movie....essential viewing.

I recall thinking this movie would be uninteresting when I first saw it on HBO back in 1984, but this in not the kind of movie I could forget about a month later. No wonder so many stage recreations have been done. The many characters are so identifiable, so authentic in their behavior. I have to wonder where the writers got their material. As one who was born and spent many years in west Texas, this is like a compressed version of many years of my life. Thank God, the extreme bad guys like Teddy are rare, but they do exist. I recall a guy like him who started a serious fire at the school during the summer. It's too bad that this movie is not available anywhere or ever shown these days.

Most descriptions of this movie read something like "psycho Vietnam veteran terrorizes roadside diner patrons" or "bad movie adaptation of Medoff's stage play" and though these may be accurate surface descriptions, the movie deserves far more comment than that. As the movie progresses, each character's deepest motivations and fears are revealed and what is exposed is the shallow values, ignobleness and dark fears of mankind.

Marjoe Gortner's youthful rage manifest's itself strikingly as he rants on a each of the diner patrons. His cynism is directed at pretentious city intellectuals (Hal Linden and Lee Grant), small town folk (Stephanie Faracy), self-righteous do-gooder (Pat Hingle), bad-ass-wannabe (Peter Firth) and even the protagonist's girlfriend (Candy Clark). The film gives a whole new meaning to the American perception of machismo and much of this can be difficult as well as fascinating to watch.

The most interesting thing about this film however is that it has gone virtually unnoticed since the day it was released. It lasted in the theaters only a few weeks and the edited versions, which have only rarely appeared on non-cable TV, truly ruined the entire effect of RR. The movie was overlooked by the critics and the public for several reasons.

The critics labeled the movie "better as a stage play" and "it's been done before" and "overacted". For reasons that I have never completely understood, movie critics typically dislike stage plays made in to movies unless a lot of flashy camera work and new spirited locations make the play-now-a-movie fit more conventionally into the film art form. What critics fail to realize is that the general public does not have access to good theater and even if a movie is literally a play shot on film, one can now get the subtle nuances of close-up facial expressions and the quality dialogue that stage plays require and movies often go without. Some critics said the film was similar to other films such as The Petrified Forest yet these same critics can never seem to get enough gangster movies, boxer movies or movies about Hollywood professionals. Red Ryder has about as much in common with Petrified Forest as Platoon had in common with Green Berets. And the criticism that Gortner overacted ...... my god that WAS the point !!!

The public overlooked the movie mainly due to the marketing. A long non-descriptive title stunted audience draw and RR lacked the graphic exploitative violence that so often the public looks for in a movie that was touted as "he is getting even with every woman who slapped your face and every man that ....". A more accurate title (possibly "Unexamined Lives") and a descriptive byline like "he is here to prove to you that there is really nothing decent about anyone" may have at least got the right people in the movie house. Of all the mind pap available on video these days, such as Armageddon, it is a crime that this masterpiece has been lost to history.

I first saw this film when I was fifteen. Again it's cover appealed to me as well as it's story. I bought the video at the end of that year and watched it again and again as if I had an addiction. I can't believe some of the really negative reviews this movies got. People have labelled it "Trash" or given it nothing. But we're all our own critic, it's our right just like democracy. We have an embittered ex Vietnam vet, played with utter brilliance by evangelist turned actor, Marjoe Gortner who really found he's calling. When you see his performance, you'll see why. We see a naked Candy Clark, washing herself down in a stream, and we see stranger Gortner, watching approvingly through a set of reflecting shades, standing from a mountain top high above. In this first forty minutes that succeeds, we see life through the lives of some quite pathetic types, in this small Texas town that almost ceases to exist, we have Gortner who's pushed his van (no help from the police) into the gas station/cafe/motel. This cafe's frontage holds a lot of history and provides a great location setting, that's memorable, where inside there's even more history, with it's black and white checkered floors and old coffee taps. From here till the end of the movie is the real meaty heart of it. Marjoe creates trouble the moment he and his girl, walk through the louver doors, his facetious manner which itself is a little frightening. What starts from here becomes a claustrophobic nightmare of intimidation, where almost the rest of film takes place in the diner. Gortner begins his own sick game of vengeance, especially towards a rich couple, (Hal Linden, and Lee Grant, superb in this) staying in the back motel of this cafe, Grant, a gifted violinist, who becomes the worst victim of humiliation here, when exposed from the waste up. The tension mounts when Linden tries to defy Gortner and gets shot in the arms for his troubles, so he's not going nowhere. Then low and behold we intercut to a church scene of singing townfolk. Why? So now we have a Key Largo sort of situation, the diners now hostages, Gortner making them do some really out there s..t as seen mostly in role playing, a really interesting angle here. Wannabe tough guy, Peter Firth who's name is of the title, is involved greatly in this, where Gortner brings out this boy's real inner and killer self as seen later, where Gortner grandly states that he really is a chicken s..t. Firth delivers an amazing performance, the second best, with a first rate American accent, you'd truly think was ligit. He's aged amazingly as compared to his role in Eqqus only a few years earlier. He so much wants to vacate this town with a dream that comes true at the end, as he becomes the hero of our torrid violent tale. The movie really builds up to an intensity, that's terrifyingly real in it's last twenty minutes, that ends with a classic showdown in these sandhills. The exterior surrounds of this movie are superbly chosen, one pre cafeteria scene with Gortner in his van, head sticking out the sun roof, as his girl blazes it along, playing to a stones track, rules. Gortner is given a lot of awesome and thought provoking dialogue, funny and shocking, the makings of sheer writing brilliance which he exorcises through a brilliant performance, one again, I stress, must be witnessed. Pat Hingle as the old crippled attendant, and Stephanie Farracy as a fat ugly duckling, the only female waitress here are two examples of pathetic types, they convince us of so well. I love the wide Texan scenic shot of Firth walking to his trailer, where he and his poor suffering mother live. She's the prey of men who just use her for you know what, including the local copper who's heart is as big as his ego. Her latest flame, has taken off with her car, so she too is going nowhere. I guess the really sad thing about this tale, is at the end of it, where Farracy and Firth go driving off into the dust covered distance, the remainder of these pathetic types just go on about their business as usual. And that's what's really sad.

Gortner's character is smarter and tougher than anyone else in the diner. In an experiment in depravity, he decides to see how far he can humiliate and bully people before they stand up to him--if they do at all. He uses his worldliness and intelligence to insult them in ways that they might not detect, or pretend not to notice. When he learns that a young man bears the nickname Red Ryder, he sets out to show the banality and hypocrisy of American culture.

It's an anti-Western: the antagonist, a Vietnam veteran, finds that America is not the home of the brave, that perhaps the free and heroic spirit embodied in the popular conception of the Old West has vanished--or has it?

While the character is reminiscent of *Blue Velvet*'s Frank Booth (played by Dennis Hopper), *Red Ryder* is the superior film. Its predator is more comprehensive, realistic, and transparent. Booth, like many of Lynch's characters, is ultimately a cipher, and therefore uninteresting.