End of the Road (1970) User Reviews

An Audacious Period Artifact

[rwint1611 · 6/10 · 1 June 2008]

THE PLOT: Bizarre adaption of John Barth's already bizarre novel detailing the story of a man (Keach) who goes into a catatonic state at a train station. He is sent to a strange mental hospital run by a weird man named Dr D (Jones). After he is considered to be 'cured' he takes a job as a college Professor and proceeds to have an affair with the wife of one of his colleagues.

THE NEGATIVE: It has been noted that author Barth disliked this film version of his novel and it is easy to see why. It gives only a basic outline of the story while leaving out all of the deeper meanings. It also tried to tie the story to all the chaos and rebellion of the 60's even though the book was written in 1955. The final result is a very confusing and off putting mess with nothing coming together at all. The characters all act very odd and with no understanding of their motivations it becomes impossible for the viewer to relate to them or anything else that goes on. Most viewers, especially those that are not familiar with the John Barth book, will easily become confused and turned off by this film after the first five or ten minutes if not sooner.

THE POSITIVE: The film-making style is refreshingly audacious in a way that is rarely seen anymore. Everything is just thrown out there no matter how outrageous with little or no regard to mainstream acceptance. The kinetic imagery and music has a certain hypnotic effect that keeps you connected to it even if you don't understand what is going on. The film culminates with a very intense, grizzly, and tasteless abortion scene that will not be soon forgotten by anyone who sees it. Jones gives one of the most bizarre and over-the-top performances that you will ever see anywhere. Anyone who is a fan of his or has an interest in acting MUST see him in this film.

THE LOWDOWN: The film is a misfired experiment that manages to be enough of a period artifact to make it an interesting curio. It definitely has the ability to stay with you for awhile after it is over.

THE RATING: 6 out of 10.

Time this road started again

[marekj66 · 17 December 2006]

The End of the Road, is probably Terry Southern's most personal work for the cinema. One over which he had most input and control. Southern's presence is felt throughout the film, from the use of his own East canaan home as a location, to Keach holding a pair of Terry's legendary 'Bono' fly style shades, to Terry's own cameo appearance as a patient.

The film is superbly acted by all concerned, Keach especially and the film is shot and edited as a subversive assault on the psyche and hypocrisy of America at the end of the sixties. Family life and alienation are to the fore, and a profound sadness for the end of the sixties.

The film often goes too far and screams too loudly its in gags and cleverness, but it is genuinely moving and totally unique. One can also say that the ill judged inclusion of the protracted and unwatchable abortion scene, killed any chances the film had of success. Which is a great shame, as this is a film which deserves a wider audience beyond its status as a cult oddity. The End of the Road is one hell of a unique ride if you can stay on board and a great insight into the mind of one of cinema's greatest screenwriters, Terry Southern.

Boy, people really love it or hate it, don't they?

[chrisdfilm · 8/10 · 11 January 2006]

Man, it is hard to digest some of the bile and acrid animosity of many of the comments here. I saw this when it first came out right as I was about to graduate high school in 1970, and I loved it. I had not read John Barth's novel, so I had no prejudice about the approach. I have watched the film a couple of times since on video (though it is virtually impossible to find) and must testify it more than holds up. Stacey Keach really gives a great, subtly nuanced performance (perhaps the best of his career when he was still getting 'serious' roles) as the guy plagued by occasional catatonia, and James Earl Jones is also fantastic as a brilliant, maverick innovator of psychiatry (think Wilhelm Reich by way of Malcolm X) who, at the end, may be a bit too godlike for his own good. I personally think Terry Southern is a wonderful writer, and I love all of the films from his work from the more favorably acknowledged, like DR. STRANGELOVE and MAGIC Christian, to the less so (CANDY, which is probably my favorite). There are some crazy juxtapositions here as well as absurd humor (that would do the 1920s-30s surrealists proud), but the humor is not stupid by any means. Director Aram Avakian and Terry Southern were a good pairing. It's too bad that they never did another film together. I can only guess that this dark, dark comedy that is about America in the sixties and about human vulnerability, hubris and arrogance touched many raw nerves with not only some of the IMDb commentators, but the few people who saw it on its initial release. A totally uncompromising picture with the courage of it's twisted convictions. The intention of director, screenwriter and cast was to rattle complacent, uptight people's cages -and, judging from the invective here, I'd say they succeeded in spades. I will echo: whomever owns the rights to END OF THE ROAD, put it out on DVD - NOW!

A strikingly original and compelling experimental oddity

[Woodyanders · 8/10 · 17 January 2007]

In the late 60's up until the late 70's Stacy Keach appeared with pleasing regularity in a sizable volume of seriously offbeat try-and-do-whatever defiantly unconventional and noncommercial oddball indie movies. These pictures include John Huston's beautifully downbeat "Fat City," the gloomy dope addict feature "Watched," the wonderfully outré "The Ninth Configuration," Jack Starrett's delightfully giddy'n'quirky crime romp "The Dion Brothers," and this truly idiosyncratic cinematic marvel of deeply depressed late 60's anarchy, disillusionment and spiritual malaise, which is arguably the strangest of the whole kooky bunch. Keach delivers a typically all-out loopy performance that's all fried nerves, eroding mental stability and spaced-out behavior as Jack Horner, a recent dejected college graduate who seeks psychological help from wacko unorthodox maverick shrink Doctor D (an extraordinarily nutty turn by a bearded, slender James Earl Jones). Doctor D encourages Jack to "do his own thing," a treatment which prompts Jack to get a job at a college as an English professor. Pretty soon Jack is having an adulteress fling with the neglected unhappy wife (superbly played by Dorothy Tristan) of a crazed, pompous colleague (marvelously essayed to smug, callous perfection by Harris Yulin in his film debut), a precarious situation which begets tragic consequences for all concerned. Addressing such pertinent topics as loss of identity, commonplace violence in contemporary society, abortion, drug use, infidelity, insanity and the sheer lunacy and bleak emptiness of middle class American existence with a bracing and fiercely pointed sense of sardonic humor, this grim social satire that was co-written by Terry Southern and garishly shot by Gordon Willis never lets up on its nihilistic, everything's-going-to-hell acid-soaked tone, thus making for a properly harsh, often funny and frequently provocative ridicule of trippy uninhibited 60's excess and messed-upness.

Takes lots of drugs if you want to slog through this

[HEFILM · 4/10 · 26 March 2006]

That's actually perhaps a bit harsh, but at 110 minutes the over the top acting and tedious 2 characters in a room trying to "out-strange" each other, first half of the film will turn most people away. The two great lead actors make the, can you top this for over the top performance, moments interesting only because they are such good actors, but at it's heart this is a drug or alcohol script, culled from a novel with much internal thought that can't really be done as a film anyway. Writer/producer Terry Southern was an unfocused, from what I've heard increasing bitter man, and his flashes of inspiration here and there just make the rest of it that much more unforgivable. Sure it's a product of the era it was made in, but the best of those can still speak to today, most of this is just a collection of bizarre behavior (people having sex with chickens, flashes of photos of mutant babies) with no sense of reality and nothing but a, "I wrote the script in a brothel with no sleep and 5 bottles of scotch in me." feel.

There is a funny telephone conversation near the end that reminds you of some of the phone conversations in Dr Strangelove. But by that point in the movie it's totally out of place.

There is really for the first hour no sense of purpose at all, then something that resembles a plot emerges and it all ends in a rather memorable scene that really is just the "I woke up sober and wanting to die" bad hangover ending.

The photography is occasionally fascinating, Gordon Willis first feature. The movie is not a reflection of insanity in the world or of the times, it's a reflection of substance abuse masquerading as a exploration of a crazy world. The bottoming out and turning of 60's ideals into recreational drug use as an excuse for self examination. It's the drunk who opens his mouth after saying, "do you like see food." A waste of talent and time ultimately.

Compelling and bizarre

[mcneeley · 10/10 · 20 September 1998]

End Of The Road is a compelling and bizarre film from that most elusive of genres, the "acid" film. Okay, so that may not be an officially recognized genre. All the same this title emerges from the hippie generation as an indictment of "establishment" ethos complete with a generous helping of surrealism and "acid-friendly" scenery.

In and of itself, its a pompous and wholly unremarkable film. It tries to play itself of intellectual and deep, and only comes off as superficial and pointless. The whole is definitely not as valuable of its parts. What is remarkable is the brilliant performance of James Earl Jones as Doctor D who is experimenting with radical psychological treatments that wreak of the mythical MK Ultra mind control experiments alleged to be performed by the CIA and legendary escaped Nazi scientist Joseph Goebles (sp).

Jones really pulls out all the stops and lets loose in this role. He bombards Stacy Keach with traumatic sounds and images as part of his treatment, and he twists and contorts his voice, body, and mannerisms to paint an over the top picture of a cutting edge scientist walking a fine line between sanity and lunacy.

It's hard to suggest that you, or anyone would enjoy this film, but if you have a taste for the twisted, you'll certainly appreciate bearing witness to this oddly beautiful artistic train wreck of a movie.

Well,it was different!

[nick-201 · 1/10 · 18 April 1999]

Well folks,here it is,my nomination for the WORST movie ever made!I bought this movie in 1980.I had never seen it before,and a video store had it on sale for 4.99,when BLANK tapes were about 8 bucks or so,so how could I lose?I still have it,I give it to friends to see what they think about it,and they think it is pretty bad,if not worse than me.I never thought a movie with this cast could be this bad,but it is!Let's see,Stacy Keatch in a catatonic state,after his college graduation with a whole load of degrees.He goes into zombie mode at train station,stands there for a couple of days,dog pees on foot.Along comes Mr Jones,who sees Stacy is in trouble,says something like "Yo mama's t*t's as hard as cold cement!",and Stacy wakes up!Goes to "asylum" run by Jones,gets tour,sees guy SCREWING A CHICKEN,along with other sights!Then he begins "treatment"consisting of sound effects playing at earshattering levels,and lots of pictures of war,babies,naked girls,etc flashing on walls,while Jones makes faces and talks very strangely.He eventually is improved enough to leave,gets a job teaching english(I think),has affair with older woman,has occasional relapses,then has affair with boss's wife,gets her pregnant,Jones does abortion,she chokes on own vomit and dies during the procedure.What a flick!What a load of crap this thing is,it's so full of itself!It IS amusing if watched while drunk or drugged,but if you are sober,watch out!!!

A neglected masterpiece of late sixties cinema

[lghill24 · 14 September 2004]

I would like to refute many of the negative comments about this film. It is the closest, I believe, that an American film of the period came to emulating the look and sound of late 60s' Godard or Bergman's Persona. End of the Road would be be a perfect companion to a series of films that might include Performance, the aforementioned Bergman, Mickey One (which director Avakian edited), or William Friedkin's adaptation of The Birthday Party. I am a big fan of Barth's novel, but I feel this radical adaptation extends the original in a way that is equally groundbreaking. The novel was more about the fifties, while the film is shaped by the explosive events of 1968 - Tet, the Kennedy and King assassinations, student riots, the rise of Nixon/Agnew - which take the whole idea of the novel's "politics of the personal" to another level. A DVD restoration of this misunderstood landmark is well overdue.

Disturbing. No other way to put it.

[sunznc · 8/10 · 17 January 2014]

End of the Road shouldn't be completely dismissed. It is hard to watch not only for what happens to the people in the cast but because it tries to be arty about something that isn't. A man in a catatonic state because he is overloaded by what is happening in society isn't arty. And if his catatonic state is played out too long with obscure or trite images we just become impatient. We aren't absorbing what we're seeing.

As hard as it is to allow yourself to become absorbed in this it's hard to shut it off. And when a female character decides to have an abortion we just know we're going to be subjected to the brutality of it and we don't want to be. Not after we have seen a man come out of a catatonic state and behave oddly in public and with his students. We're already alienated by the characters to have to endure anymore.

The acting is good by everyone even if we don't like any of the characters. The film does have an impact I'm just not sure what the message really is and why we need it. Maybe someone else can figure that out.

Pretentious and very bad early 70s flick

[theeht · 1/10 · 27 September 2000]

Based on Terry Southern's book, this is one of those achingly bad films that you have to finish because you paid the price of a rental. It's nearly plotless, like so many 70s films, a case of (bad)style over substance. Don"t let the premise or intriguing title fool you, it's a horrible film. Fans of Stacy Keach may want to see him as a young man, but all others beware of this all time baddie.

Does not hold up.

[PenDrake-2 · 20 November 2000]

I saw this film when it was released and was totally mesmerized by the story and the performances. When I found it on video, (twenty years later) I immediately rented it and had a number of friends over to watch it. I couldn't believe how pompous and overdone the film was. My film recomendations to my friends have suffered ever since.

Terry Southern aborts Barth's book

[mockturtle · 12 February 2004]

Despite several what-must-have-been-at-the-time-neat editing tricks and sequences, inserted because the director was actually an editor and should have stuck to that, we have a film with the wrong person's personality stamped all over it. All you have to do is sit through five minutes of "The Magic Christian," if you can, and you'll see how Terry Southern applied his panacea of "Just add stupid" to Barth's beyond brilliant novel. I am only 30 minutes into the film and I don't think I can take anymore. The pathetic need to shock, impress and generally make people think he's so smart is evident if one picks up the book and reads along, seeing where Southern has stuck in obvious imagery, where he's put naked people, which masculine female nurse has been turned into a cross dressing psychotic gun wielding patient/nurse, where he's put people having sex with chickens and where he's put the American flag (a lot of places). It's even more embarrassing because he's raping the work of a fellow novelist, probably out of jealousy. Southern's idea of brilliance is to take a part that was serious in the book, James Earl Jones' Doctor, and have him dance around singing "Caledonia, Catatonia." In other words: moronic nonsense. The more the better. The scene where Southern has added masturbation to Jacob and Rennie's first telephone conversation is reminiscent of Gus Van Sant restoring it to Norman Bates in that celebrated "Psycho" remake. The scenes in the hospital are among the worst in cinema history and take up so much of the running time of the movie that Joe's character is cut out nearly entirely and what actually happens as a result of these brief encounters with lovers of chickens gets short shrift. Aside from this it is annoying to see that one of Harris Yulin's only what-could-have-been-supporting-lead-instead-of-character roles has been pared down, and that he's so miscast. Keach is somewhat miscast as well, he might have been better suited to playing Yulin's part the way it is written in the book, and he looks like a prototype for "Jedi" Mark Hamill with the scar. Strangely enough, this was Yulin's first movie and he did several more with Keach. The girl playing Rennie is actually somewhat appealing, but we never see much of her, she apparently writes schlock now so I guess this was good practice. James Earl Jones seems to be here because of this Southern connection (Strangelove), Southern has written most of his (terrible) dialogue and Jones really should have cleaned his toenails instead. But never mind that, never mind what is written in the book because Terry Southern is a writer too and he knows best. Now I have

to decide if I'm up to seeing how they lay waste to the rest of it. I did stick it out and thank the lord, the scenes outside the clinic are less stupendously mind-blowingly awful. The critic and erstwhile jerk John Simon said "the novel concludes with a harrowing abortion, whereas the film is an abortion from start to finish." Not quite as bad as Jan De Bont's "The Haunting" as lit adaptations go, but close. GO READ THE BOOK!

A '60s riot - they'll have to spray you with a water cannon to stop you laughing.

[Diss_Oriented · 18 July 2019]

End of the Road is a belief-defying, obscure early 70s film (actually filmed in summer '68 but took a long time in production). It stars veteran actor Stacy Keach, only in his late 20s at the time, as an emotionally frazzled young novice academic, and James Earl Jones, like you've never seen him before, as a ludicrously "unorthodox" psychiatrist who's probably insane himself.

Some parts of the movie are so crazy it's almost like a live action cartoon. But the script is also extremely clever and dark. A lot of hard but weird thinking went into this. Perhaps only people who are a little messed up can fully understand it. It contains numerous weird and ultimately hilarious things which you never thought anyone would put on screen.

After the brilliantly made opening sequence in which Keach's character Jacob Horner loses it on a rural railway station platform, Jones' character, simply known as "Dr. D", whisks him off to his asylum somewhere in the countryside of New England, where he is subject to strange, loud and obnoxious experiments & "treatment" with the aim of waking him from his stupor. The dialogue and interplay between himself and Jones is definitely one of the highlights of the film.

After his initial treatment Horner is encouraged to take up an academic job, teaching English grammar. He ends up in an uneasy friendship with the more experienced lecturer Joe Morgan, played by another veteran actor Harris Yulin (if you know him from playing authority figures in various films or TV shows, it will be odd to see him without grey or white hair). Morgan is a morbidly nihilistic jackass who lives in his own little world and abuses his wife, which is probably why she jumps all over the fresh new Horner at the first chance.

The movie from there is conducted at perhaps a more "sustainable" pace than the opening frenzy between Jones and Keach, but it still overflows with deliberate absurdity (cooked to various different degrees). No film could possibly keep up the pace of the first 20 minutes... but if you enjoyed the opening scenes even half as much as I did, you'll want to stick around for the rest of it, as it sleepwalks toward to a horrible conclusion which even the most hardened viewer would wince at.

Both the lead actors are brilliant but Jones' presence in particular gives the movie extra power. I'm not sure if there is any other actor then or now who would take on such a bizarre role. Luckily Jack Nicholson was too young to give us his annoying overdone shtick playing this role. Jones is too funny to describe, and there's already been enough quasi-spoilers anyway.

Despite the difference in the colour of the two leads the movie never attempts to tackle race. Which is good, cause it would probably be the film's only clichéd element.

But it does work with other feverish and scary aspects of American life which existed in the 60s (i.e. Nixon, the counterculture, the cold war, etc.) It's a perfectly hilarious artefact from the time, but since it is so dark and wild, maybe it's not surprising that it languishes in such obscurity.

There is an absolutely terrible trailer for this, viewable on YouTube, which makes it look like cheap schlock, that probably doesn't help either.