By Brandon Nolta

By modern movie standards, 1970s cinema was often flat-out weird. Before focus groups, CGI and marketing budgets that dwarf the GDP of some nations, big studios would occasionally make bets on films that didn’t aspire to mass appeal or even make sense to the wider audience. Arguably, VANISHING POINT is one of the better-known examples of this brand of cinema. A cult film that refuses to fall into the dust of forgotten movies, Richard Sarafian’s uneasy blend of existentialist road trip and high-speed shenanigans makes for unusual though involving entertainment, if for no other reason the offbeat fun in trying to figure out what the hell it all means.

The plot itself is fairly simple. Kowalski (Barry Newman), a talented driver and car delivery agent, signs up to take a 1970 Dodge Challenger from Denver to San Francisco. He has an entire weekend to do it, but for a reason that the plot never specifies, Kowalski feels the need to be in the Bay Area tout suite, and thus bets his friend and pill connection that he can make the drive in 15 hours. Wired for (and by) speed, Kowalski sets out on his journey, evading cops, making legions of fans, and making a friend out of Super Soul (Cleavon Little), a blind DJ who acts as a Greek chorus as the legend of Kowalski grows with every roadblock he evades. Still, it’s one thing to blow through the empty spaces of the American West, and quite another to go up against the California Highway Patrol, who has more funding and manpower than all the other state police forces combined (especially in the early 1970s, when the interstate system wasn’t even 20 years old yet). Since the film opens with bulldozers blocking the road, things may not end too well for Kowalski.


Certain things become apparent in hindsight, and 36 years after its release, some interesting aspects of VANISHING POINT seem more obvious now than they might have at the time. Certainly, the counterculture aspects of the film appear dated at best, downright stupid in other places; I defy anyone to keep from laughing at the repeated “Right on, man!” or other clichéd hippie dialogue that litters the film, and the acting generally blows goats. However, Newman himself is pretty good, and since he’s really the center of the film, it holds together better than you might expect. Kowalski is no silent figure, but he’s alone for a lot of the film, so Newman has to act more with his face and body language. One of the counterculture points in the film’s favor is that Kowalski himself is rebelling against his former life; he was in the military, was a cop, and so on. When the camera isn’t on Newman in the driver’s seat or one of his many flashbacks, we see the adventures of Super Soul, a near-caricature that Little doesn’t get to do as much with as he should. Little had excellent timing (which BLAZING SADDLES demonstrated nicely), but he feels constrained into stereotypes here. A racist attack on Super Soul’s radio station does nothing to advance the story, and feels like a tacked-on example of liberal guilt. There are several points in the film where this reviewer scratched his head and wondered aloud, “Where the hell did this come from?”


Where the movie really goes right, however, is in the geography. The vast empty spaces of the desert states, where even now the horizon and the road can take up the entire visible universe on those roads, looms like eternity over the film, and highlights the existential themes that the filmmakers were bold enough to use. Kowalski, for all his ability and genial good-heartedness (despite some issues with cops, he comes across as a truly nice guy), is alone in his universe, and even the kindness of strangers isn’t enough to pierce that veil when it’s just Kowalski and the road. There’s a damn good reason why films like THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (or better yet, THE DEVIL’S REJECTS) are set where they are, and despite its subject matter, VANISHING POINT taps into that same isolation against the universe. It’s a weird, but potent, mix, and worth catching on DVD if you can, but if you run across it late at night when you feel like the only person in the world awake … well, that’s the perfect time for it.