I think this is about as good a time as any to celebrate what you might call Jack!! Do you know that three time Oscar winner Jack Nicholson was working for like 15 years, doing weird movies and strange roles, before he actually got any notoriety? Just proves that if you're weird enough and persevere, you just might make it! Probably not, but maybe!!! Tonight's feature,
"The Wild Ride" kinda proves that point! No monsters or flying saucers, but Psychotronic as you wanna be, and it's all Jack!!
The film starts when Jack as Johnny Varron, runs this motorcycle cop off the road and into a tree and then has the audacity to call him a chicken!!!
And then it's time to party with his friends down by the water!!
Cops aren't so dumb, they know how to check which car just arrived and who the driver was!!
Basically nobody else in this film had a career that went much further, just not weird enough I guess!! Robert Bean as Dave went on to play Happy Jack Monahan in "Creature From The Haunted Sea," otherwise almost every other person in the cast never acted again except for Wesley Marie Tackitt who went on to play Nora Clayton in 26 episodes of the TV comedy "Margie" in the early 60's. I never met a girl named Wesley, that probably makes me weird!
Georgiana Carter as Nancy had been in "Night Of The Blood Beast" two years earlier, but never worked again after this wild ride! Here's a couple more shots of Georgiana, a gal we never got to see enough of! You can thank Rodan!!
This would be Jack's 4th film following "Cry Baby Killer" and "Little Shop Of Horrors" and it couldn't be cooler, and don't forget, he still goes on to do "The Raven" and "The Terror" and "Hell Angels On Wheels" and "Psych-Out" before he even gets around to "Easy Rider!"
Since "The Wild Ride" was nine years before the psychedelic era of "Easy Rider" the music provided is firmly entrenched in the late 50's Beat era, and smokes, literally!!! It was also a time when they also felt like there was no need to credit the music, so who knows who wrote this fantastic score! If it would be known, I'd bet it's gonna be a name we've heard before. This is some good stuff, and it just keeps on going through the whole film! Here's a shot from the police station, where Jack, the consummate smart-ass gives crap to the cops even as he sits there guilty as sin!
Colloquialism is a very cool word that consists of 13 letters and used here would translate as Hangin' with your Homies!!
You're probably not old enough to remember church keys and pop-tops, but there was a time in history when crushing a beer can with your bare hands was an enormous pleasure and great pastime that totally entertained members of the opposite sex, who would watch on in awe! Although, I must say, real men crushed them upside their forehead, and we're not talkin' pansy aluminum cans either, but real metal!!!
Aw, crap, ran out of things to do!!
See ya later, Jack, we'll catch back up with you on Friday!!
If you want to watch a nice copy of "The Wild Ride," get a hold of Johnny Legend's reprint, or it streams on the internet freely at places like the Internet Archive!
