End of the Road
To really appreciate this film, It might be a case of "you had to be there", though I'll bet many viewers even in cinematically freewheeling 1970 had a rough time with END OF THE ROAD, an adaptation of John Barth's same named novel, written a decade earlier. Co-writer/director Aram Avakian reset the story to the end of the sixties, when America's many ills seemed to dominate every headline. Ills of violence abroad in Vietnam and on its own streets. Assassinations. Avakian opens his film with a hit and run collage of famous images seen in magazines and on television screens. Meanwhile, a young man is seen leaving a college campus after graduation. Are these images invading his brain? Explain why he stands in a train station for what appears to be a few days in a state of catatonia? The man is named Jacob Horner (Stacy Keach). He is eventually approached by another man who goes by "Dr. D" (James Earl Jones) and is able to break the spell by saying...
