Two Super-Charged Road Movies Take the Not So Scenic Route Through America

Barry Newman as Kowalski, 'Vanishing Point' (1971).
A high-speed chase through the desert turns him into an overnight folk hero.

By Paul Parcellin

“Vanishing Point” (1971)

The hyperkinetic, blind radio disc jockey Super Soul (Cleavon Little) is a lot like an evangelical preacher without the fire and brimstone. He’s part guardian angel, part voice of God to renegade automobile delivery driver Kowalski (Barry Newman) who, to put it mildly, is having an extremely tough day. 

A slightly burned around the edges Kowalski (he doesn’t seem to have a first name) returns from an exhausting delivery and insists on taking another assignment post haste. 

He grabs a white 1970 Dodge Challenger that’s due to be delivered in San Francisco and sets out to tear-ass across the desert to California with a pocketful of bennies as his only companion.

The hopped-up Kowalski makes a bet with his speed dealer that he can drive from Denver to San Francisco in 15 hours.

Spinning his tires and dodging the police, Kowalski tunes in to Super Soul on the car radio and discovers that the disc jockey is following his progress via a police scanner. The radio man cheers for the erratic driver as sheriff departments and highway patrol squad cars try in vain to chase him down. 

Cleavon Little as Super Soul.
His on-air raps are a guiding beacon for Kowalski.

The jive-talking announcer comments on the hero’s actions like a Greek chorus and sets up the movie’s underlying theme. In his blisteringly paced, funky online patter, Super Soul calls Kowalski the “last American hero” and “the last free soul.” Both are dubious titles for a man wired on amphetamines and driving someone else’s car like he’s been fired out of a cannon. 

Like “Two-Lane Blacktop,” the other movie discussed below, “Vanishing Point” is about freedom, but in an early 1970s countercultural way, meaning the word comes packed with contradictions, misconceptions and exaggerations. Yes, Kowalski is busting out of the norm, but, not to be too materialistic, aren't you glad that’s not your car he’s driving? 

Both films feature square pegs who’ve dropped out of society and live on the road. Highways and byways are commuting channels for most of us, but for these chronic nomads the road is a place that simply brings them to another road, another diner, another filling station. There’s no destination, really. Constant motion is the objective. 

Some might connect this with the restless energy of post-World War II America that inspired Jack Kerouac’s cross-country journeys, but it ain’t the same ball of wax. There’s no aesthetic pleasure taken from these motor-driven marathons; no awe at the vastness of the American landscape, no hopefulness and youthful optimism are present here. Any sense of joy and wonder was long ago deposited in a landfill. There’s only raw speed, the smell of burning rubber and a mad desire to shake free of society’s constraints.

All eyes are on Kowalski.

Kowalski, a former cop who raced cars and motorcycles and is a decorated war hero, is angry at the corruption he’s seen and bad breaks he’s had. We flash back to his days as a policeman, when he stops his superior officer from roughing up and raping a suspect, and was summarily drummed out of the force. 

At first it’s hard to understand why he’s made such a risky, indeed foolish bet. There’s no logical reason other than his compulsion to push himself to the limit. It’s just his way of shutting out the world, and like the drugs coursing through his veins, it's effective for a while, until it isn't. 

We cheer him on at first as he evades the Keystone Kops-like bumbling of small town heat who can’t figure out how to stop him. Kowalski does everything from jetting off the road into rocky desert terrain to taking the car over some pretty sick jumps — the car’s owner would no doubt suffer a brain hemorrhage at the sight of the suspension-smashing abuse the pristine muscle machine suffers. Somehow, the car looks none the worse for wear. Is the seemingly indestructible white muscle car a symbol of freedom — who knows?

Dean Jagger as the Prospector and Barry Newman as Kowalski.
Capturing poisonous desert snakes.

The ever intrepid Kowalski presses on and encounters, among other strange sights, a naked girl on a motorcycle (Gilda Texter) and a grizzled prospector (Dean Jagger), who captures poisonous snakes and sells them to a religious cult that has set up camp amid the cacti and sage brush.

At this point we might begin to wonder if these encounters are real or just the hallucinations of a buzzed hop head who’s spent too much time in the hot sun. 

The heat is on and Kowalski is in the skillet.

Things get stranger still when he encounters a woman by the roadside (Charlotte Rampling). She gives him some pot to toke on and spends the night with him. In the morning she’s gone. So, was she real or some kind of omen? It’s anybody’s guess (For some reason this sequence appears only in the film’s UK cut).

“Vanishing Point” was reviled by some critics who saw it as a downward regression that started with Steve McQueen’s “Bullitt” (1968). That’s the film that knocked everyone’s eyeballs out with stomach-churning, daredevil stunt driving in the ferociously steep hills of San Francisco. Doubters lamented that movies had become nothing but smash-’em-up thrill porn. In recent times “Vanishing Point” has won a legion of admirers, including Quentin Tarantino, and is a bonafide cult classic. 

It may not hold up as the spiritual experience that some suggest it is, including the film’s director, Richard C. Sarafian, but “Vanishing Point” is wall-to-wall action. Just don’t rely on it as a guide to cross-country travel.

Dennis Wilson, Laurie Bird and James Taylor, 'Two-Lane Blacktop' (1971).

“Two-Lane Blacktop” (1971)

Monte Hellman didn’t have a complex story in mind when he made “Two-Lane Blacktop.” He says it barely has any plot and he’s right on the money about that. It’s a movie about street racers, a subculture of amateur drivers who run unsanctioned drag races. There isn’t much money in it — the faster of two cars wins whatever scratch gets wagered, a few hundred bucks at best. 

The four main characters are the Driver (James Taylor) the Mechanic (Dennis Wilson), the girl (Laurie Bird) and GTO (Warren Oates). Among them, Oates was the only actor with bonafide screen cred. Taylor is a popular singer-songwriter with hit records, and Wilson, who died in 1983, was a drummer and vocalist for the Beach Boys. Bird was a model who later appeared in Hellman’s film “Cockfighter” (1974) and played Paul Simon’s girlfriend in Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall” (1977). She gives a remarkably natural performance in here.

The Driver and the Mechanic work the local street racing circuit like pool hustlers. They travel in a rebuilt 1955 Chevy. With its dull primer gray finish and prominent hood scoop the car doesn’t look like much. But it’s got a growling 454 V8 engine that blows the doors off of all challengers.

What happens next is simple. The four of them converge — the Driver and the Mechanic pick up the hitchhiking Girl; GTO and the two drag racers cross paths on the road and irritate each other until GTO challenges them to a cross-country race that starts in New Mexico and finishes in Washington, D.C. The winner gets the other’s pink slip — ownership of the car, that is.

That’s about it. There’s some minor drama when the Girl sleeps with the Mechanic — the Driver was sweet on her but didn’t speak up quickly enough. But emotions among the three are muted. Even the race itself ends up petering out long before either car reaches the finish.

Warren Oates as GTO in Two-Lane Blacktop.

“Two-Lane Blacktop” was green lit post “Easy Rider” (1969). Universal wanted to capitalize on the momentum of Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper’s counter-culture motorcycle odyssey that proved a surprise hit. 

But the studio hated Hellman’s finished product and barely promoted it. It flopped at the box office and was the last theatrically released film he helmed with major studio support. (He did, however, direct second-unit work and filled in, uncredited, with another project for a major.)

Another roadside diner.

Unlike other films of its ilk, “Two-Lane Blacktop” is an unromanticized view of outsiders living on society’s edge. All four characters seem to exist only on asphalt (much of it was shot on the old Route 66). There may be towns with real homes and people leading normal lives somewhere near the highway but we rarely see them. The four wanderers only exit their vehicles to eat diner food and refuel. At one point the girl hops out to panhandle when funds get low. 

Each seems to exist in his or her own private haze. Their relationships are tentative — the Girl switches cars to ride with GTO but that flirtation is short lived. 

The film defines each of them by the functions they fulfill. When the tires need to be changed the Driver sits on the roadside watching the Mechanic do the labor. He only drives, you see. GTO is merely the man with the orange Pontiac GTO muscle car — how much more early 1970s can you get? The Girl is the fickle love interest whose allegiances shift on a whim.

Laurie Bird as The Girl, 'Two-Lane Blacktop,'

GTO is the most verbose of the four. He’s a good ole boy who talks hitchhikers’ ears off, regaling them with grandiose stories about himself that are pure fantasy. He picked up his spanking new car in Bakersfield, or maybe he won it in a Vegas craps game. 

He’s a live wire and the diametric opposite of the taciturn Driver and Mechanic. Beneath the surface he’s just another homeless traveler whose lonely life has defaulted to a nomadic pilgrimage to nowhere. It’s a cinch that all four never see anything more exotic than a lunch counter, a Stuckey’s and an Esso station.

Many have called this the most genuine of road movies and that may be true (when I’ve watched every road movie ever made I’ll get back to you). For a scripted drama it often feels like a documentary. The movie has a lulling pace occasionally interrupted by bursts of fuel-charged speed. It all seems like a dream induced by gasoline vapors. 

In the end, all four go their separate ways, and not much is likely change for this quartet. The road goes on forever and there are no exit ramps.