The Wild Ride

While in 1960 Jack Nicholson was still relatively unknown here he gives his first leading man performance tho the movie was a quickly forgotten misfire. And that was reason enough for me for watching it last October.

Johnny Varron (Nicholson) is a larger than life punk that spends his nights organizing wild parties and his days racing on a dirt track and ending in trouble to the point of killing a policeman, kidnap the girlfriend of one of his friends and seeing another of his friends ending in tragedy.

The reason why this is a dud it's because in the first half was decent with Nicholson giving a decent leading man performance but in the last 20 minutes it became dull because of all the trouble his character caused. Besides, the race scenes weren't that exciting to watch as those seen in better race movies such as DAYS OF THUNDER.

Overall, a very limp film of interest probably only for three types of viewers: 1) Nicholson completists (2) fans of old movies (3) fans of bad movies because they can get a kick out of it.

The Wild Ride is the original (B&W) non-modified version. I have watched it several times and believe it is one of the best cult classics available. "Velocity" however, is a butchered color version that splices in new scenes lacking in any sort of continuity and ultimately destroying the mystique and integrity of the original film. Whoever had the idea for Velocity needs to be shot in the head because they turned a truly beautiful virgin classic film into a cheap prostitute with too much makeup. This is a true testament to the "less is more" adage. If you get to view both films you will see the ultimate travesty of how a great film was destroyed by a greed driven marketing attempt to update a true cult classic. In summary.... "The Wild Ride" GOOD............."Velocity" BAAADDDD!

Jack Nicholson has done better and most likely not done worse.

He's a punky teen hot-rodder exhibiting all the characteristics of a 1959-1960 juvenile delinquent. He's sore at his best buddy for hooking up with a girl who's not into the beatnik punk-kid scene and not eager to let her new guy stay this course to disaster. Best buddy is waffling between going straight and staying with the witless crowd. Nicholson exhibits a weird sort of subconsciously gay relationship with best buddy by trying to place a wedge between the gal and the pal.

Ending is totally out of context with the morals of this leader of the pack, but necessary for the film to have sociological value. Lots of fun to watch just for the wild slang.

Okay, this is not classic film-making. It has its moments though. Jack Nicholson is about as young here as I can recall seeing him - almost young enough to pull off the teenage-or-just-past delinquent role he plays. The dialog is pretty full of then-current clichés and words, so that part can be a little bit amusing. There isn't a whole heck of a lot to say about this movie, either you like late 50's teen/delinquent movies or you don't. I kinda like the '57 Ford convertible Nicholson drives in this movie. I guess they made tons of this kind of movie back in the day, because kids had little to do for evening entertainment other than to go to the drive- in week after week, and the theaters needed fresh fodder to keep the teens showing up. Well, it's a period piece, don't watch it for any great entertainment value, just watch it to see a somewhat exaggerated view of what life was like back when and let it go at that.

I picked this movie up cheap out of a bargain bin. It is a double feature disc with "The Little Shop of Horrors." When I started watching it I was shocked to find that "Velocity," which I knew was circa 1960, started off with a relatively new-looking scene of kids driving dangerously. It seems that Vina Distributor (who put out this double feature edition) or somebody decided to "update" the old teen flick with some footage of more relevant "street punks."

The bad "modern" teen meets a dude in a bar who looks a little like Jack Nicholson but doesn't sound anything like him (I guess Jack has better things to do these days, unlike these cutters) who tells him the story of his young life. THEN we get into "Velocity," which is all that the other reviews here promised.

Jack is so young that one might not recognize him at first. This was only his second role and he was 23 years old in 1960. It is pretty funny and I gave it two stars for the yuks, but it is atrociously dated. The version I have is colorized.

I see on IMDb that "Velocity" is the video title and "The Wild Ride" was the original name of the film. Maybe it was renamed "Velocity" after the bizarre framing segments were added.