BADLANDS, whatever else it says about America, alienation, violence and celebrity, revealed in 1973 a new filmmaker who was not ‘just’ a painstaking craftsman, but an inspired artist.  Twenty-nine-year-old Terrence Malick made an unvarnished yet sterling debut writing, producing, directing & editing a 95-minute peel away of a twisted road trip taken by a maniac and a moron, spinning that unsavory premise into a elegiac epic, visually striking, eerily believable and cosmically sad.

“Kit was glad to leave South Dakota behind, and cursed its name. He said that if the Communists ever dropped the atomic bomb, he wished they’d put it right in the middle of Rapid City.”

For blank-slate vacuous teenager ‘Holly Sargis’ (Sissy Spacek), her South Dakota hometown of 1959 might as well be Nothingville, Moon, good for little beyond a place to practice baton twirling. She chafes under the parental gaze of her dad (Warren Oates), a widowed sign painter, whose disapproval of Holly’s interest in ‘Kit Carruthers’ (Martin Sheen), a brash, footloose older guy, is severe enough that he kills Holly’s dog as a punishment. That not only doesn’t work with the smitten girl, but fatefully fails to take into account just how truly wild and flippantly unhinged Kit is when it comes to backing up his punk bravado. Homicide provides ‘freedom’ for hopeless naif Holly, who aimlessly hits the road with gun-happy Kit as he self-creates a creed to fit the given moment and his musing. Human beings, ordinary and innocent, get in their way.

Malick’s spare yet trenchant script took a familiar theme (young people on the run—from society in general and the law in particular) and a real-life horror escapade conducted in 1958, an 11-victim murder spree done by 20-year old Charles Starkweather and his 14-year old girlfriend/accomplice Caril Ann Fugate. The extent of depravity present in the actual case was tempered in the film treatment so that audiences could be drawn in without being repelled, similar in that sense to earlier creeps-in-love sagas like Gun Crazy and Bonnie And Clyde. Seeking to plumb the empty depths of the fellow next door was hardly new (M, several Hitchcock classics, Peeping Tom, In Cold Blood) but this one is fly-on-the-wall fascinating for the utter vacuity of its misfit pair, their social barrenness in contrast to the wide open spaces they ‘escape’ into. Filmed in Colorado for $300,000, the troubled shoot went thru three cinematographers with Brian Probyn (Downhill Racer) replaced by Tak Fujimoto, in turn relieved by Stevan Larner; the respective efforts envisioned, overseen and edited by Malick make every shot a fluid yet precise capture of mood and moment. A major atmospheric assist comes from George Tipton’s score, with vital contributions from Carl Orff (“Gassenhauer”, the “Street Song”).

“At this moment, I didn’t feel shame or fear, but just kind of blah, like when you’re sitting there and all the water’s run out of the bathtub.”

Playing Kit as 25, Sheen, 32, had been around for years but was suddenly everywhere in 1973 with parts in 15 television series and three TV movies. The part was a gift and a fit for him as he mirrored Kit in a benign way; the character consciously aped James Dean and Sheen commented that “All of his movies had a profound effect on my life, in my work and all of my generation. He transcended cinema acting. It was no longer acting, it was human behavior.” To each their own, I’ll take Sheen over Dean. Good as he is here, the real deal is newcomer Spacek. She’d just debuted in Prime Cut (and survived that junk); in her second film role she was 22 playing Holly at 15: her voice-overs of Holly’s plaintive diary entries are pitch perfect.

The boxoffice yielded $3,000,000, placing 93rd in ’73. With Ramon Bieri, Alan Vint and John Carter. Glimpsed, uncredited, are Martin’s sons Emilio, 10, and Charlie, 7. *

* Though critics exulted, and while receipts recouped the dime-store budget, Badlands was one of the year’s crop of high quality movies that were overlooked by large audiences. They also short-shrifted The Day Of The Dolphin, Charley Varrick, Theater Of Blood, The Wicker Man, The Iceman Cometh, The Outfit, Ludwig, Mean Streets and The Offence. Eventually, patient Time catches up to fickle immediacy and then apathy can bloom into appreciation. Or it ought to.