Vigilante Force [1976]

VIGILANTE FORCE is an American action thriller that was written and directed by George Armitage and originally released in September 1976 by United Artists.  It stars Kris Kristofferson, Jan-Michael Vincent, Victoria Principal and Bernadette Peters.  After oil is found in a small Californian town it finds itself overrun by hordes of itinerant workers, hell bent on raucous mayhem on their days off.  With the small police department unable to maintain order, they call in a Vietnam veteran to dispense justice with no questions asked.

This is another film that I have at last managed to tick of my personal ‘lost films’ list, that is to say films I have wanted to see for a long time but have simply been unable to find, much less see.  Various films have held the number one slot on this list, each being deleted every time I’m lucky enough to track one down.  For the longest time, the Bryan Adams of lost films, if you will, was Richard C. Sarafian’s LOLLY MADONNA XXX [1973] very much the BEN-HUR of hicksploitation.  Then it was Sidney J. Furie’s LITTLE FAUSS & BIG HALSY [1970], the world’s premier Robert Redford / bike-racing picture.  Going back further, to the time when I used to literally give my list to my parents so they could keep an eye out for NTSC tapes on their trips to the States.  Via that route I managed to see Al Pacino and Gene Hackman in Jerry Schatzberg’s SCARECROW [1973] and Kubrick’s BARRY LYNDON [1975].  The latter is of course now widely available in multiple formats which goes to show not only how much easier it is to see films these days but also how big important films can become lost too.

It has just struck me that all of the films mentioned above, including the subject of this piece, are from the early-mid 1970s.  And to them you could add Robert Altman’s NASHVILLE [1975] and Dennis Hopper’s THE LAST MOVIE [1971].  Is this because my particular taste is for cinema from that period?  I would say that my taste in films knows no bounds so it can’t be that.  So is there something about that period, from a legal or commercial perspective, that meant it was easier for for films to fall into distribution / exhibition limbo?  Unfortunately my knowledge of that aspect of the film business is non-existent so the answer will have to wait for another day, if it ever comes.

Like many of the other films on my ‘lost’ list, VIGILANTE FORCE was something of a disappointment; because of the prolonged wait to get to see them, these films have unreasonable expectation piled on to them so perhaps that disappointment is inevitable.  More than thatm settling down to watch virtually any film for the first time there’s always that little feeling inside, the hope that it’ll turn out to be a classic - even more so if it has been one you’ve waited patiently for.  So while Armitage’s film certainly didn’t turn out to be one of those hoped-for classics, and while it wasn’t really worth the wait and expectation, it is a perfectly serviceable action thriller which amid the punch ups and explosions, manages to make one or two points about right-wing views and taking the law into your own hands.

Aaron (L) and Ben Arnold

Kristofferson and Vincent plays brothers (Aaron and Ben, respectively), the former a grizzled Vietnam veteran who might well have a screw loose; the latter a clean cut, hard-working blue collar kinda guy with a steady girlfriend and a personable demeanour.  Aaron is the guy upon whom Ben is asked to prevail to put a stop to the crime spree that the local oil boom has brought about.  I get that itinerant workers may bring some problems but I didn’t quite buy that they turned the small town into a hellhole, to the extent that it required the remedial measures adopted in pretty swift order by the town burghers.

Aaron and his good time girlfriend Little Dee (Bernadette Peters) before the **** hits the fan

Be that as it may, Aaron agrees to help and brings a lot of his war buddies with him.  Soon he is dispensing justice, Buford Pusser-style, via a pick-axe handle or whatever other blunt instrument he can get his hands on, which usually means his, er, hands.  Aaron pretty soon has the town licked into shape and his thoughts turn to how he might exploit the situation by establishing himself as the main man.  Only his brother Ben, and one or two wise old heads, can see what Aaron is up to and they resolve to put a stop to it.

In other words, having failed to adequately police their own town, the council make an ill-judged lurch to the right in circumventing the proper channels and bringing in some violent scumbags to restore law and order.  When they’ve done that, the violent scumbags start wreaking their own havoc, as is in the nature of violent scumbags so to do.  At that point, said council realise they’ve gone too far down a rocky road and everything goes tits up.  By way of context, I watched VIGILANTE FORCE not long after the inaugration of President Trump in the USA.  I get that he is the protest candidate, the only option remaining to those who feel so disenfranchised and disillusioned with mainstream politicians.  I get that, I really do.  But, like hiring a mentally-unstable and belligerent man to keep the peace, it represents something of a nuclear option and, as far as I can tell, is likely to end in tears.  This film isn’t a political allegory of course and it isn’t even a blackly comic satire.  But it is a useful reminder that, unlike say in DEATH WISH [1974], resorting to drastic measures to resolve problems best left to the authorities – however imperfect those authorities might be – generally ends in carnage.

Kris Kristofferson as Aaron Arnold

The time when Kris Kristofferson could topline a movie is many many years past now but in his day he was one of the most popular entertainers around.  He had a wider range than most critics give him credit for and he had, at least early in his acting career, a knack for choosing interesting and quirky projects which in some cases had points to make about modern American society, as is the case here.  He is a man I greatly admire, not merely for his films, or even for his music, but because he is a man of great integrity who has managed to rise above the superficiality and general baseness that you might expect from someone who has been world famous for nearly 50 years.  If you don’t know much about his work, then I can recommend catching pretty much anything he made in the 1970s and, especially, HEAVEN’S GATE, made in 1980, which despite the received wisdom is one of the greatest westerns ever made and one of the very few to directly address the racism and bloodshed of early US history.

Jan-Michael Vincent as Ben Arnold

The time when Jan-Michael Vincent could actually get on to a movie screen, much less topline his own movie, is sadly long gone.  These days the poor fellow is beset by a multitude of health problems, some self-inflicted, some not and his acting career seems over.  To be honest, after some early promise – and one hit TV series in the 1980s – it was a pretty disappointing career which in quality terms was over long before the health issues began. 

A pre-DALLAS Victoria Principal as Ben's girlfriend Linda

Director George Armitage hasn’t made many films but they’re all worth seeing, especially the utterly brilliant GROSSE POINTE BLANK, made in 1997, which stars John Cusack as a hitman persuaded to attend his high school 10-year reunion.  “Ten years!”

Cisco Pike [1972]

CISCO PIKE is an American drama that was written and directed by B. L. Norton and originally released by Columbia Pictures in January 1972.  It stars Kris Kristofferson, Karen Black, Gene Hackman and Harry Dean Stanton.  In what was his proper 'Introducing' film début Kristofferson plays the title character, a faded rock star whose success has dried up.  Reduced to selling drugs in and around Venice Beach he resolves to get out of the game and try again in the music business but is coerced by a crooked cop (Hackman) into selling a mountain of drugs over one weekend.



Watching a film such as this is enough to drive you to tears over the current state of US film-making. Before I go off on a long rant I'll say that I do recognise there are some fine independent people working in the US today and that they occasionally make some fine movies.  However, this is not the norm.  Today US film-making seems to be dominated by three things: revenge movies, superhero movies and cartoons.  Where are the slices of life?  Where are the small scale dramas?  Where are the character studies?  Where is the political and social commentary?  You'll go a long way to find a modern US film that is but one of those things; CISCO PIKE on the other hand is all four.

Hare Krishnas outside The Troubadour

For ten years or so from about 1967 the US made dozens of terrific intelligent films for adults, films that above all else questioned the way things were in the country at that time.  Of course it was a time of great social upheaval so the impetus to do so was obvious but is the US not now in a similar situation, if not worse?  Inequality, oppressive government, brutal policing, racial discrimination, hawkish foreign policy, corruption - these are all going on as we speak in the US.  These were issues that in the 60s prompted a new wave of US film-makers.  So where is the current equivalent?  Are we to conclude that these issues no longer concern film-makers?

Take this year's Oscar nominations.  There was a reverential biopic of Martin Luther King, a reverential biopic of Stephen Hawking, an offbeat backstage movie, a decent film about Alzheimer's, a by the numbers coming of age drama, a whimsical comedy, a slice of Americana and a film about a US soldier who killed a record number of foreigners from a long way away.  Okay, it's the Oscars and they're not about ground-breaking cinema, independent or otherwise, but there's nothing hard hitting there, nothing expressing doubt, nothing putting forward another way of doing things.

Which brings me to my conclusion that if one is looking for those things in cinema one either has to look to films made by non-American directors or one has to look to documentaries.  It lifted my spirits to see that CITIZENFOUR, about whistle-blower Edward Snowden' was awarded the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.  Now I'm not suggesting every US film, documentary or not, has to be driven by desire to expose what that country gets up to; far from it, what I'd like to see - and what we all saw in that golden age I referred to earlier - are films which simply show the reality of US lives and, more to the point, in a non-judgemental manner.

Cisco inspecting the dope that Holland wants him to sell

That brings me back to CISCO PIKE.  The central character is a drug dealer, there's no getting away from that, but does that make him a bad man?  A supporting character is a corrupt cop bud does that make him a bad man?  The point is that blatant injustices in the system have positioned these characters where they are.  Now, they have made choices that have taken them there but the film makes clear that because the way things are they have had a reduced number of choices.  In fact, with society structured in the way it is character A finds himself with few options which leads him down the path to character B who has even fewer.  Sooner or later you end up with another character who has no options at all.  So do we blame the characters / people or the system / society?

Cisco's pad, inside...

CISCO PIKE is interestingly set at the fag end of the hippie era and just before Watergate, as the idealism was on its last legs and just about to be shattered completely.  Tastes are changing: the music business is becoming more mercenary - Pike is told that his style isn't hip any more and he should start playing electric; managers rather than performers are now calling the shots - and the drugs seem to be consumed not by potheads but by junkies.  In a way Cisco and Sue are a little island of idealism; their house, still done out in red and yellow paint and wall hangings, is not much more than a shack sandwiched between two commercial properties.

... and out.

I suppose the point is that what you do does not define who you are.  Cisco was no more a rock god genius any more than he is a lowlife drug dealer but others define him in these terms.  The music business people he meets wanted something from him when he was hot and want nothing from him now except the occasional drug deal.  The only person who wants him just as he is is, predictably, his girlfriend Sue played by Karen Black with her customary endearing kookiness.  So in the end the film is about identity and whether that is something imposed on us by others or something we generate ourselves.  And if we do generate it ourselves what happens when everyone else sees us differently.

Kris Kristofferson as Cisco Pike

I've have long admired Kris Kristofferson both as a man and as a performer.  I have to confess I'm not a big country and western fan but it has always seemed to me that he approached the genre from a more left of centre perspective.  Not that you'd have to try that hard, after all it's a pretty reactionary field, but he took the music and more importantly the lyrics in a more intelligent direction.  He's underrated as an actor in my opinion and appears in two of my all time favourite films, namely Sam Peckinpah's PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID [1973] and Michael Cimino's HEAVEN'S GATE [1980].  Those are stone cold classics, obviously, but his overall CV is better than you might think.

Karen Black as Sue

Karen Black who died recently was an iconic figure of the freewheelin' movie scene in the late 60s and early 70s.  She wasn't a typical movie actress at all - she was slightly cross-eyed and always seemed kind of one card shy of a full deck.  Maybe it's just that I'm figuring her in terms of the characters she very often played but I suspect she was just as unconventional in real life.  She was in a string of really terrific movies right up until the early 80s but just as the off-beat films stopped getting made she stopped getting the good parts and found herself relegated to low budget genre movies in which, it has to be said, she was very watchable.

Gene Hackman has now sadly retired from acting but one of the true giants of his craft.  I don't think I've ever seen him give a bad performance.  He's been in some bad movies but even in those you can see the intelligence at work.  Whether it's in trash like SUPERMAN IV [1987] or genuine film art like THE CONVERSATION [1974] or NIGHT MOVES [1975] he's always good, a phenomenal consistency over a 40-year career.

Harry Dean Stanton as Jesse Dupre

The supporting cast is a who's who of weirdos and character actors.  Harry Dean Stanton is of course the ne plus ultra of off beat, half-soaked chancers but he too is a fine actor.  Viva was one of Andy Warhol's crew and Joy Bang was a genuine free spirit who ditched the movie business before her career had really begun.  I wrote about her in my review of MESSIAH OF EVIL here.  There are plenty of other familiar names and faces: Roscoe Lee Browne, Severn Darden, Antonio 'Huggy Bear' Fargas, Howard Hesseman, Alan Arbus and even Doug Sahm of the Sir Douglas Quintet.

Doug Sahm as Rex.  It was difficult to get a still of Sahm because he never stood still

Viva (L) as Merna and Joy Bang (R) as Lynn

The writer-director B. L. Norton, also known variously as B. W. L. Norton, Bill Norton or Bill L. Norton made his debut with this film and it's really good.  So good in fact that his career was a slow decline afterwards.  He had a couple of stinkers in a row - MORE AMERICAN GRAFFITI [1979] and BABY: SECRET OF THE LOST LEGEND [1985] - and as per the adage of you're only as good as your last film that was that for his cinema career and the world of TV beckoned.  It's a shame that he never followed up on the promise of CISCO PIKE because it is a perfectly sound contribution to the last golden age of American film-making.