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Zabriskie Point (1970)

Rate: 1
Viewed: 6/13

Zab
6/13: Why is it that a failed film generates renewed interest years later and subsequently gains cult film status?

Is this movement per se becoming cliché? Anyway, I read in a book that Zabriskie Point was named one of the fifty worst films made. Unnaturally enough, I became interested in seeing it.

It opens with a scene of fake thespians pretending to be revolutionaries by trying to look cool in the process (why am I now thinking of Billy Jack?) and saying silly phrases such as "power to the people" and "they're kicking down the door."

Soon thereafter, a couple of them decide to get guns, so they can protect themselves from uh...pigs? Some time passes, and the boy with bad teeth decides to hijack a plane in order to recreate the well-known scene in North by Northwest. It's how the girl driving the car will meet him at some point later.

Finally, I'm at the moment of where the title of the film comes from when this "it's beautiful" girl runs after the "it's dead" boy and they both frolic in the middle of the desert that's called...*drum roll* Zabriskie Point. They're doing it while being covered in (you have to see this to believe it) sand, gypsum, boracite, and whatnot. Minutes later, all of a sudden, many couples appear out of nowhere doing the same thing in a choreographed orgy. They're licking sand, gypsum, boracite, and whatnot from each other.

When the brain-dead girl and the boy with hideous teeth come out of the desert to return to the car, they both look sparkling clean as if they've just had a shower. All of a sudden, the plane is magically painted with corny words that are supposed to be emblems of the 60's counterculture movement. I'm only surprised both of them did all of the activities in one day.

One hour into Zabriskie Point, I thought there were enough elements to withstand the Worst Film label. But no...as the boy with crap teeth decides to get back to Los Angeles with the hijacked plane, this is when the movie began to shoot itself in the foot. The rest of the way is a long dragged-out sequence of ridiculousness and pointlessness with the last ten minutes of stuff being repeatedly blown up in a slow-motion from different angles before closing out with a sunset.

I had been wondering the whole time: was Michelangelo Antonioni mentally retarded? Also, did he watch 2001: A Space Odyssey and Easy Rider too many times and then want to emulate them? By the way, the following is seemingly a Ripley's Believe It or Not! trivia. The boy with ugly teeth is named Mark Frechette. Zabriskie Point was his debut film, and he had no prior thespic experience. Afterwards, he did some acting work and then decided to rob a bank with his friends, landing himself in the slammer. One day, he was lifting weights, and the bar weighing 150 pounds fell atop his throat, killing him at the age of 27.

All in all, any time a film reaches below Zabriskie Point, that's when it will begin to suck.