Electra Glide in Blue

1973's ELECTRA GLIDE IN BLUE is one fascinating motion picture, quite different from what I was expecting.  Far from a standard issue '70s police drama.  I'm glad I did not read up too much on it, as it more or less sneaked up on me and knocked me out with its mesmerizing conclusion, one that is maybe inevitable but unexpected and potent just the same.  How (and how long) it plays reveals just how freewheeling Hollywood movies were in that time period.  What an incredible time for artists to get their visions on film.  Even for a director named James William Guercio, who managed the band Chicago and never directed anything ever again.

Some reports state that cinematographer extraordinaire Conrad Hall (who does amazing work once again) and leading man Robert Blake helped the inexperienced Guercio oversee the movie.  If I studied it all hard enough, maybe the seams would show.  I can fault this film for its abrupt shifts in tone in the second hour, also during which the film becomes less interested in its murder mystery and allows long, sometimes meandering character sketches.  As with so many flawed gems, the faults are also assets.

Blake plays John Wintergreen, an ambitious, by-the-book motorcycle cop who longs to be a homicide detective.  He's had it with pulling over speeders and their excuses.  Also with his lazy Electra Glide partner Zipper (Billy Green Bush).  When a local is found dead, Wintergreen is skeptical of the coroner's assessment of suicide.  So is Harve Poole (Mitchell Ryan), a brash, perhaps overly confident detective who believes the answers to the crime can be found when one listens to the sounds of the night, and looks within himself.  Wintergreen impresses Poole and the latter gets the diminutive badass a shot on the case.

But ELECTRA GLIDE IN BLUE, which has thus far played it pretty lighthearted, eventually reveals its true colors.   Robert Boris' screenplay is only nominally interested in action scenes and police procedurals. The curtain comes down on the testosterone and bravado in vividly dramatic fashion.  The outcome of the case and especially the last fifteen minutes of the film will sober viewers with its elegies.  For the '60s, and maybe the fallout of youth culture.  Maybe the youth culture to come.  You could argue all sides.  Someone called this movie EASY RIDER FIGHTS BACK, and I think that covers it well.