A couple of attractive young ladies lie in the tall grass by the side of a road. Handsome blonde hippie-type Chuck (Alan Long) stops his RV and offers them a ride. Dark, slightly exotic Maureen (Gini Eastwood) warns freer-spirited Carol (Jill Senter) that no good will come of this, as Chuck is an Aries...
So begins the bizarre mystical/sexploitation/hippie melodrama Pick-up, one of the stranger and most unplaceable films I've seen in a while. Chuck and Carol develop an attachment pretty quickly, Carol flirts with him and flashes a group of horny guys in a pickup truck that passes them....Chuck's driving the RV through Florida to Tallahassee and communicates with an irritable manager on the phone...Maureen does Tarot in the back and seems pensive. Eventually they get lost and the RV gets stuck in a swampy area, where the bulk of the film takes place. None of the characters seems to worry too much about getting out of being stuck, or getting anywhere in particular though Chuck is under contract. They're carefree, you know? Alternating odd and seemingly random flashbacks to the earlier lives of all three characters, Maureen's mystic pagan religious revelations, and Carol and Chuck's uninhibited lovemaking, this is a bizarre mesh of "art" film elements, exploitation, and really quite gorgeous scenic nature photography courtesy of director/cinematographer Hirschenson. After a while I basically stopped caring about what was happening, because none of it really mattered very much. It's nice to look at, both leading ladies are very cute and very naked much of the time, and the ending is pretty bizarre and nonsensical. This must have mystified most drive-in audiences; what the aims of the filmmakers were, I really couldn't tell you. Sit back, fire one up, and dig it, man.
So begins the bizarre mystical/sexploitation/hippie melodrama Pick-up, one of the stranger and most unplaceable films I've seen in a while. Chuck and Carol develop an attachment pretty quickly, Carol flirts with him and flashes a group of horny guys in a pickup truck that passes them....Chuck's driving the RV through Florida to Tallahassee and communicates with an irritable manager on the phone...Maureen does Tarot in the back and seems pensive. Eventually they get lost and the RV gets stuck in a swampy area, where the bulk of the film takes place. None of the characters seems to worry too much about getting out of being stuck, or getting anywhere in particular though Chuck is under contract. They're carefree, you know? Alternating odd and seemingly random flashbacks to the earlier lives of all three characters, Maureen's mystic pagan religious revelations, and Carol and Chuck's uninhibited lovemaking, this is a bizarre mesh of "art" film elements, exploitation, and really quite gorgeous scenic nature photography courtesy of director/cinematographer Hirschenson. After a while I basically stopped caring about what was happening, because none of it really mattered very much. It's nice to look at, both leading ladies are very cute and very naked much of the time, and the ending is pretty bizarre and nonsensical. This must have mystified most drive-in audiences; what the aims of the filmmakers were, I really couldn't tell you. Sit back, fire one up, and dig it, man.