BIG HOUSE FILM REVIEWS ~Roger Westcombe
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CISCO PIKE (1972)
Starring Kris Kristofferson, Gene Hackman, Karen Black, Harry Dean Stanton; dir: Bill L. Norton
It was the seventies before Hollywood started grappling with the peace/love, sex & drugs sixties. Easy Rider proved that the rock’n’roll generation could be lured into cinemas – and in huge numbers! But how to keep them coming back? Hollywood only knew that it didn’t know. As a result we had the green-lighting of a swag of movies in this late 60s/early 70s period which normally would’ve never been approved. An existential car chase through the desert guided by a blind soul DJ? Let’s call it Vanishing Point; a boy-man given to serial suicide-faking finds love with an 80-year old Auschwitz survivor? And you want to call it Harold and Maude? Sure – why not!?!
Bubbling along in the wake of these interesting times comes Cisco Pike , a minor entry but one notable for its acting strength in particular. Kris Kristofferson in his debut film appearance here is very good. The world weary visage he gives to down-on-his-luck pop star - but gifted dope dealer - Cisco reveals a character whose sense of self is sufficiently strong to shrug off the shit he momentarily finds himself mired in. That this strength derives from his (probably) doomed dream of a musical comeback is reflected in Cisco’s persistent return to music whenever he needs a recharge. This, and the clear emotional depth the film’s death scene provokes in Cisco’s grieving underlines the real complexity Kris brings to this material. Though Pike doesn’t want to deal dope any more he clearly likes to win and, as the portrayal of mendacious muso bullshit by Doug Sahm brilliantly shows, he ain’t winning in music. (This despite a great Kristofferson soundtrack!)
Karen Black is also good, registering the roller coaster ride an unsteady partner provides. Harry Dean (billed here as H.D. Stanton) brings some much needed energy to the concluding stages of Cisco Pike, playing a Gram Parsons manqué , even down to the nudie shirt! But in this hipster worldview Gene Hackman’s pasty-faced straight is strictly on the margins and hardly occupies the film. There are a few hints of Gene/Kris parallelism but they’re fairly token; Kristofferson is all.
Cisco Pike is not a thriller but a character study and a snapshot of a time now past. It’s episodic and an odyssey through a vanished world. Pauline Kael’s is the best assessment, seeing it as a romantic quest for meaning and identity when the old realities have crumbled away. The underground drug economy is the core of the film (director Bill Norton’s Fletch apparently returns to this Venice Beach drug milieu) but traditional Hollywood verities are maintained: the overdose death in the concluding stages is the necessary moralistic counterweight to Cisco Pike ’s freewheeling hedonism.
The shootout finale is terribly contrived, belying Kael’s assertion that Robert Towne ( Shampoo ,The Last Detail ,Chinatown ) performed a comprehensive script doctoring, and the look is grey and boring with the big screen not exploited at all. It would probably work better compressed on the TV screen as a Late Night movie where, being a minor work anyway, it probably makes more sense as a time capsule (hint: the lava lamp is not ironic!)
