Dennis Hopper's now notorious second feature fulfilled the promise of 'Easy Rider' by doing to his career what those Southern rednecks did to his character at the end of the earlier film: blasting it to an early grave. Given the disposition of its maker and the attitudes of his era it's not surprising the film took shape the way it did, but unlike the more unified mess of his debut feature (in retrospect a happy accident) this sophomore effort is merely chaotic: an ill-conceived, sloppily executed, helplessly edited riot of unintended laughs.
There's a germ of an idea here about the essential artifice of movie-making (in which the film itself finally disintegrates into random outtakes), but the director painted himself into a creative cul-de-sac by envisioning a project that had to fail in order to succeed. And fail it did, famously so, putting all of Hopper's drug-induced limitations on public display. Seen today, it's a fascinating example of professional self-destruction, and a laughable catalogue of hippie flotsam scraped from the bottom of the '60s barrel.
There's a germ of an idea here about the essential artifice of movie-making (in which the film itself finally disintegrates into random outtakes), but the director painted himself into a creative cul-de-sac by envisioning a project that had to fail in order to succeed. And fail it did, famously so, putting all of Hopper's drug-induced limitations on public display. Seen today, it's a fascinating example of professional self-destruction, and a laughable catalogue of hippie flotsam scraped from the bottom of the '60s barrel.