Badlands (1973)

An impressionable teenage girl from a dead-end town and her older greaser boyfriend embark on a killing spree in the South Dakota badlands.

Director:

Terrence Malick

Writer:

Terrence Malick

Stars:

Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Warren Oates

Nominated for 1 BAFTA Film Award. Another 3 wins.

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Martin Sheen	...	Kit
Sissy Spacek	...	Holly
Warren Oates	...	Father
Ramon Bieri	...	Cato
Alan Vint	...	Deputy
Gary Littlejohn	...	Sheriff
John Carter	...	Rich Man
Bryan Montgomery	...	Boy
Gail Threlkeld	...	Girl
Charles Fitzpatrick	...	Clerk
Howard Ragsdale	...	Boss
John Womack Jr.	...	Trooper
Dona Baldwin	...	Maid
Ben Bravo	...	Gas Attendant

Storyline

It's the late 1950s. Mid-twenty-something Kit is a restless and unfocused young man with a James Dean vibe and swagger which he has heard mentioned about him more than once. Fifteen year old Holly has a somewhat cold relationship with her sign painter father, if only because she is the primary reminder of his wife, who died of pneumonia when Holly was a child. The two meet when Holly and her father move from Texas to the small town where Kit lives, Fort Dupree, South Dakota. They slowly fall in love, something about which she cannot tell her father because of their age difference and Kit coming from the wrong side of the tracks. When he tries to take Holly away with him, Kit, on an impulse, shoots her father dead. After letting the initial emotions of the situation settle down, Holly decides voluntarily to go with Kit, they trying to make it look like they committed suicide in a house fire. But they soon learn that their plan did not work, there being a bounty on their heads. As such,...

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Plot Keywords:

serial killer | cult film | killing spree | on the run | cult director | 

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Taglines:

He was 25 years old. He combed his hair like James Dean. She was 15. She took music lessons and could twirl a baton. For a while they lived together in a tree house. In 1959, she watched while he killed a lot of people.

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Genres:

Crime | Drama

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Certificate:

PG

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English Spanish

Release Date:

5 January 1974 (Brazil)

Also Known As:

La balade sauvage

Filming Locations:

Bloom Mansion - 312 E Main Street, Trinidad, Colorado, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$450,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Warner Bros., Pressman-Williams, Jill Jakes Production

Technical Specs

Runtime:

94 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Closing credits: This motion picture is fictional and is not intended to depict real events or persons, living or dead.

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Goofs

Soldiers at the end are wearing fatigues consistent with the mid-1970's when the film was made, with subdued pin-on enlisted rank insignia on their collars (including a very visible Specialist 4th Class in the front), and subdued name and U.S. Army tapes (black lettering on olive drab fabric tape) above their breast pockets. In the 1950's, enlisted ranks were worn full size on their sleeves, unsubdued yellow on OD green (same as for their class-A green uniform), the U.S. Army tape above the left breast pocket would have been yellow on black fabric tape, and the name tape above the right breast pocket would have been black lettering on white fabric tape.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Holly Sargis: [voice over narration] My Mother dies of pneumonia when I was just a kid. My Father kept their wedding cake in the freezer for ten whole years. After the funeral he gave it to the yard man. He tried to act cheerful but he could never be consoled by the little stranger he found in his house. Then one day hoping to begin a new life away from the scene of all these memories he moved us from Texas to Port Dupree, South Dakota.

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Connections

Referenced in Let There Be Light: The Odyssey of Dark Star (2010)

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Soundtracks

Mariae Geburt
[The Birth of the Virgin Mary] (uncredited)
by Carl Orff

User Reviews

Brilliantly constructed and acted debut feature

An astonishing film, uncomfortable, bewildering but never less than beautiful. I came away and went straight to my dictionary to look for a definition of 'evil'. My OED uses three words. 'Bad', 'sin' and 'harm'. Neither 'bad' nor 'sin' get a foothold in this morally sterile film. Any impression of wrongdoing is dissolved in Holly's intermittent voice-over, recording Kit's justifications for his actions. All the film is conducted at this remove - even the killings themselves: Kit only uses guns, distancing himself and his impulse from the violence of murder; the victims die silently with little bleeding. Many are shot in the back or out of frame. This way even the idea of 'harm' is removed.

Stripped of a moral framework the film becomes terrifying. The natural inclination is to side with this charming couple falling in love. Then without warning, Kit's unfettered id can lash out with the amplified, impersonalised firearms he carries. The insecurity of whether you're watching the good guys or the bad is as gripping as any individual performance.

That said, Spacek and Sheen are necessarily strong. They have to carry the film, their characters are strangely feral. Untutored, yet modern, Kit's moral framework is gleaned from movie and music personalities (he beams at being called James Dean). In fact I was poleaxed by Sheen's performance, a schizophrenic construction of barbarism and erroneously understood manliness. I'll never watch the awkward energy of Michael J Fox in Back To The Future or Teenwolf in the same way again.

On top of everything Malick films America beautifully. The two senses of Kit's fruitless journey contradict themselves; even the soundtrack oscillates between the aspirational (Nat King Cole) and the bucolic (a capella singing, a marimba). It's so well composed and executed it's possible to feel cut off. It's hard to argue with for a first picture though 8/10