Cisco Pike

source: Cisco Pike

I recall loving this film when I saw it upon release in 1972. It seemed to capture something of the moment that so few films did and I fell in love with the songs of Kris Kristofferson. Recently picking up an Italian poster for the film encouraged me to revisit it. Actually, hard to find but I found I had a DVD. The film is fine, Kristofferson is great as is Karen Black, for most of her performance. Indeed, she is great at first but seems to fade a little in the final scenes. Viva is okay but perhaps a little old in the role, seeing her now alongside the kitten like Joy Bang. There are not a lot of songs here and the central story regarding the drug dealing sets ones eyes rolling at the thought but the dialogue, the cinematography and colourful and evocative creation of the freewheeling lifestyles remains attractive and compelling. One slight item of curiosity is that IMDb suggests there is talk of a threesome but no nudity, whereas quite clearly we see Kristofferson with Viva and Bang in a brief topless frolic. It is blink and you miss it stuff, so whether it was intended to be cut out, I don't know and can't remember whether or not it was in in the cinema release!

An early lead for Gene Hackman (who has just turned 93) building upon his recent success as Popeye Doyle in 'The French Connection' although here played more as a road movie than as a thriller and this time the cop he plays is corrupt. A young and beardless Kris Kristofferson gets an 'introducing' credit as a drug dealer (they could be portrayed as heroes in those days). Karen Black has an even more faraway look in her eyes than usual in big-hair and ankle-length cheesecloth dresses as the hippie chick to end all hippie chicks. It's all a bit of a shambles and I could have done without all that harmonica music on the soundtrack. But Harry Dean Stanton's good.

Tedious in it's lack of motion, "Ciscoi Pike" is well acted, but doesn't really have a storyline. It just sort of meanders about with Kristofferson trying to sell $10,000 worth of drugs while under the thumb of the rarely seen Hackman. Harry Dean Stanton finally makes a welcome appearance in the final third of the film, but to little effect. Today there would be almost no audience for this severely outdated piece of nostalgia. Hackman is barely in the film, yet receives top billing. Karen Black and H.D. Stanton simply are along for the ride as Kristofferson makes his rounds dealing. Very forgettable and not recommended as entertainment. - MERK

This film is a must-see for a 70's crime picture fans, it's a low-key, interesting story of a musician turned drug dealer and the cop who does the same only for different reasons, that add up to the same result. The movie would be a whole lot different if it hadn't starred Kris Kristofferson or Gene Hackman for that matter. They glue the story together, and the supporting cast add fine touches to the plot. I think that this is the best role Kristofferson played in his entire career, even better than the way he acted in Scorsese's "Alice doesn't live here anymore", and the rest of his acting career consisted of appearing in half to full bad movies. The song played in this film, called "Pilgrim, Chapter 33" is referred to by Cybyl Shepherd in the "Taxi Driver", in context of explaining De Niro's character Travis Bickle ("partly true, partly fiction, a walking contradiction") I love this film, and I definitely recommend it to everybody who has the taste for 70's genre cinema.

What a great movie this is. It's low key through-out, but a terrific look back at the very early 70s in the California music business. Many 70s icons are here, you even see a lava lamp on a guy's desk! In how many movies do you see Kris do the following... almost get busted by the cops for selling 10 kilos of primo killer weed to Woodstock icon Wavy Gravy, drag a drugged-up Harry Dean Stanton around who has been up for days and is impotent, receive oral favors from underground film star Viva, get naked with a 1960s * star with the hysterical name of Joy Bang, eat a diner meal with a pimped-up Antonio Vargas and share a topless * scene with Karen Black? It's all here, man! Add in Gene Hackman lurking around as a crooked narc and 100 keys of weed to sell in a weekend for no less than $10,000 and you have the making for an off-beat classic that hardly anyone knows about. It has the low-budget look of a movie like "Billy Jack" and, at the very beginning, during the opening credits, will remind you of a TV movie. But this was no TV movie! As much drugs as a Cheech & Chong movie and a decent soundtrack if you like early Kristofferson. As a sidenote, in a flashback we see Kris and Harry Dean Stanton onstage at a concert that MUST have been filmed live and spliced into this movie. It ties in the claim that they both used to play together. I am trying to think of what might make a good double-feature with this. Perhaps "Billy Jack", the first one. Just to get a bigger picture of early 70s small budget "indy" type movies. They both have a sort of outlaw storyline anyway. If you can find it, get it. If it comes on TV, tape it. You won't regret it.

Bill L. Norton also wrote the screenplay (with some uncredited script doctoring by Robert Towne) for his directorial debut, 'Cisco Pike', the story of a washed-up rock musician and convicted pot dealer who, after a stint in prison, is trying to break back into the music business and avoid another spell behind bars. Originally slated for the lead role, Cisco Pike, was John Cassavetes stalwart Seymour Cassel ('Shadows'; 'Faces') but Cassel dropped out before principle photography started to star in 'Minnie & Moscowitz' (1971). His last minute replacement was country-folk singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson in his first starring role in the movies (he had a bit part in Dennis Hopper's The Last Movie). Kristofferson also wrote and sang the music for the film. Starring opposite Kristofferson is Gene Hackman—fresh from his Oscar-winning turn as "Popeye Doyle" in William Friedkin's 'The French Connection' (1971). Here Hackman plays a cop of an entirely different stripe: crooked, desperate police sergeant Leo Holland, who blackmails Pike into selling 100 kilos of pot over a weekend in order to raise a quick $10,000. The other three notables are: Karen Black as Sue, Pike's stereotypical sexy-but-dumb-and-dependent hippie-chick girlfriend; Harry Dean Stanton as Jesse Dupre, Pike's heroin-addicted friend and former band member (who eventually suffers a fatal overdose); and Andy Warhol "superstar" Viva (real name: Janet Hoffman) providing some quirky color as Merna, a slow-talking denizen of the counterculture. Norton's storyline concerning a man struggling to break free of his past—a tried and true film noir staple—is grafted onto a somber meditation on the transmogrification of Sixties idealism into Seventies cynicism and despair. Shot on location in the Los Angeles area by veteran TV cinematographer Vilis Lapenieks (production design by Norton's wife, Rosanna White), 'Cisco Pike' is decidedly gritty-looking and downbeat, also surprisingly sympathetic toward Hackman's corrupt cop, who is facing dismissal from the force for medical reasons just shy of the twenty year's service he needs to qualify for a pension. In the end, 'Cisco Pike' posits the grim notion that, when all is said and done, "the System" crushes both its opponents and its adherents with equal indifference. Despite fine performances by Kristofferson and Hackman, 'Cisco Pike' did poor box office, so poor that Bill L. Norton decided to stick with television work thereafter. DVD (2006).

I've never seen so many reviews miss the mark so entirely. It's important to understand that this is mainstream money behind a bleeding- edge art-flick of it's day. Kristoferson was reviled by the mainstream. Truly loathed. It's one of the reasons his star never quite took-off. Seriously, having one of his albums back in those days would have had your folks shipping you off to boarding school. Many are characterizing this as "down-beat", "low-key", one person even said, "humerous melodrama". Wrong. The aloof demeanor of Kristoferson's character is just how Kristoferson was. That lumbering meter was omnipresent in films of the day. He wasn't intoxicated, or leastwise effected by it, that was just what passed for kool in those days kids. Those guys grew up on Gary Cooper and the strong-silent type was the guy every kid emulated. This was disingenuous coming from a long-haired California kid. Part of the reason he was so hated. The copyright date in the film says 1971. Hackman's character was driving a car depicted as a police cruiser and it was a '70 model. Also, Kristoferson's character rents a car at one point, and it's a '71. So I'm guessing this film is early '72 at the latest and not '79 like the info says. Anyway. This is an incredibly enjoyable watch. 'Play Misty for me', Clint Eastwood's directorial debut is a better look at the early 70s. That came out in '70 as a matter of fact. To me LA was just a set along with the period in Cisco Pike. Again I think there are way better cultural history tours of the time. This was fantastically directed, and if often poorly lit, was cinematographically quite professional looking. The script is tight with great dialog that dates well but it moves a little fast. They needed about 10 more scenes in the film to flesh it out a little. Probably budget issues.

No, the script is not based on the novel of German writer Thomas Mann, and the movie has nothing to do with Venice, Italy. It is more like a prequel of The Big Lebowsky, although the main character is, as in Mann's story, a musician at the end of his tether. And the derelict, „dying" beach-side community where he has put up his tents actually is Venice: Venice, California. Some of the main characters actually do end their lives in Venice. Cisco Pike is a kind of a dark comedy. Only his coolness can save the main character, the viewers see him driving off into the desert as the end credits start rolling. The movie takes a critical but also sympathetic look at the hippie and drug culture in California in the early 1970s, where everything seems to fall apart: buildings, law and order, relationships. It might be a movie one appreciates most for the atmosphere and the depiction of a certain era. Some of the acting performances are outstanding. Gene Hackman is excellent as slightly disturbed cop, Karen Black plays more or less the same character as in Five Easy Pieces (including some pleasant singing), Antonio Farga's presence is as always refreshing. Harry Dean Stanton should have been nominated as Best Supporting Actor for his role of the main character's drug addicted friend. Talking about child support he tells that his kids will have his insurance money as he sustained brain damage in a car accident. „Whiplash wouldn't do, he explains, nowadays it has to be brain damage. I always get lucky that way." For me that is the best line of Cisco Pike.

Singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson is well-cast in his first film as Cisco Pike, a musician with some success a few years behind him, now just another struggling performer in Southern California. Busted twice for dealing, he's gone straight, hoping to get back into the music business which has quietly passed him by. The narcotics officer who nailed Cisco comes to him with a proposition: having just lucked into 100 kilos of weed, he wants Cisco to sell it all off in two-and-half days, give the cop 10 G's and keep the rest of the profits for himself. Writer-director B.L. Norton (whose script was reworked by an uncredited Robert Towne) creates a deceptively lackadaisical atmosphere, yet the paranoia and desperation is palpable. The vivid cinematography is by Vilis Lapenieks; performances by Kristofferson (who also contributes four songs to the soundtrack), Gene Hackman, Karen Black, Antonio Fargas, Roscoe Lee Browne and Harry Dean Stanton are each in their own remarkable. There are some problems with the film, mostly narrative: an unexplained sequence midway has Hackman's narc apparently following Cisco as he deals to his clients, leading to a violent argument that sort of dead-ends; also, Cisco is given several chances to explain his actions at crucial points in the story, but each time he frustratingly clams up (this is a problem that runs throughout the movie). Otherwise, a perceptive, quirky effort with funny asides and lovely throwaway moments. **1/2 from ****