Leofwine_draca Bizarrely, GLEN & RANDA was shown on late night TV here in the UK, so I decided to give it a watch having never heard of it before. I'm not exactly sure what I watched; ostensibly this is a post-apocalyptic movie dealing with mankind's struggle to adapt in a ruined world, but it's also an incredibly slow moving film in which very little incident actually happens.The film begins with a couple of naked hippies strolling around and moves on from there. The female character falls pregnant and this sub-plot takes up a lot of screen time. The performances, shall we say, naturalistic to say the least, and there's a lot of waffle and philosophical debate as the characters interact with others in their landscape. I did like the way the central twosome are searching for a mystical comic book city and the cinematography is quite good on a zero budget, but there's too little meat here to sustain a proper movie.

MisterWhiplash One thing's for sure about this movie - you won't think of The Rolling Stones' "Time is on My Side" the same way again, following a scene where the few remnants of society in a post-apocalyptic wasteland - we don't see the apocalypse, it just happened - are sitting around at night and there is this strange curiosity called a record player that somehow, despite electricity and power being something of a rarity, can play a record. They have a single of the Stones song, and it sometimes goes a little in and out of track, warbling a bit, and everyone just sits around listening to it. Impassive, just taking it in. What is this thing called 'Music' after all?It's one of those oddball moments, which is funnier perhaps on paper than how it's played, that comes out of Jim McBride's film of Glen and Randa. Watching this film you get the impression that it's almost like a bizarre, wild-child style documentary on what would happen to people years and years down the line after society had been broken apart with no infrastructure to set it up. Oh, and there's sex between these two crazy kids and lo and behold Randa becomes pregnant. So that becomes an issue as the two of them go wandering around, trying to find food, shelter, and some place they can call home.McBride's film is a true oddity, shot in grainy film and done to look like some sort of artifact of a time and place (maybe intentional, maybe not), and the two leads are non-professionals. You know, for example, when Steven Curry is shouting out the same 'TIME IS ON MY SIDE' over and over, as it's in his head, this is a performance that is stripped down to its essentials. It's either a very good performance or a bad performance it that makes sense, but this guy is always in it, always showing this crazy kid's curiosity about the world, about the "City" that could be out there - he learns this through his tattered comic book remains he carries with him - and Shelley Plimpton is the same way.As with the McCarthy book The Road we don't get many other people here. There is the tribe early on, but Glen and Randa can't stay there as it's too unstable and Glen wants bigger and brighter things. The last "act" as it were of this gangly narrative takes them to a beach where Randa may finally deliver her child into the world. The ending itself is as bizarre as anything else in the film, but less logical. Why does Glenn do what he does, or Randa, or the baby, or the old man who has another few remnants to help them? In some ways the movie has not stood the test of time, but in a way it has. It's longish-freaky-looking characters are out of the late 60's, victims of the Flower Power movement, but they're also real and tactile and are fascinating to watch just from an anthropological point of view. In other words, it's not like a Mad Max post-apoc future, there are no motorcycle gangs or the like, it's, again, stripped down to where nature has taken over the Earth in major ways. If anything it's low-budget-ness shows a little too much, but the script via Rudy ("Two Lane Blacktop" Wurlitzer makes this experimental and low-key in good ways. What they don't got, they make it an advantage.Simply put: one of the stranger films of 1971.

roblins Saw this when it came out and was deeply affected by it. It is a powerful tale of a second genesis, the titular characters being Adam and Eve. I recall the first shot shows a beautiful "garden of eden" grove with a huge tree trunk in the center. The camera pans up as we hear the voices of Glen and Randa playing innocently. Thirty feet off the ground we find them -- in the wreck of a car blown into the tree's branches. Glen is behind the wheel pretending to drive. So the first image is a twisted amalgam of start and finish together that only becomes more obvious and compelling as the film unwinds. Glen comes to embody the flip-side urges of exploration and egotism that got us to the point where the movie starts -- the aftermath of the end of civilization. And it becomes clear that it will happen again. Sorry if I'm not clear enough. The film is much more eloquent in a completely organic way. there's no preaching or messaging. The picture is very funny at times and never overbearing. I'd love to see it again.

Gene Bivins (gayspiritwarrior) I find it interesting that nobody has yet mentioned how much casual nudity there is in this film. It's what got the film its "X" rating, even though there's no overt sexuality connected to it. It's more of a device to underline the innocence of Glen and Randa and their nomadic life. Nothing in the film would get it more than an "R" today. There are no special effects as such, just vistas of nature and of the ruined technology from which the survivors glean their living. The young actors are very appealing, and there's a quiet inevitability to the story's unfolding. I wish this were available on DVD, but given that there's no studio money behind it, this is unfortunately unlikely. This little film has stayed with me for many years since the release. It's too bad so few people know about it; it deserved a better fate.