Badlands (1973)

BADLANDS  (1973)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Terrence Malick
    Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Warren Oates
I was 11 years old in 1958, when Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate went on their killing spree across Nebraska and Wyoming. Except for the strange case of Ed Gein, it was the most irresistibly lurid news story I can remember as a kid. I mean, two teenagers stealing cars, driving over the plains, shooting people and - for a short time - getting away with it: How could you not be intrigued by something like that? "Badlands" is Terrence Malick's fictionalized account of the Starkweather/Fugate murders, with Martin Sheen as Kit Carruthers, an out-of-work garbageman, and Sissy Spacek as Holly Sargis, a dreamy, baton-twirling 15-year-old with nothing much to do. Together, they're like an adolescent Bonnie and Clyde, drifting and delusional, a would-be James Dean and the blanked-out girl who adores him. One of the key American movies of the 1970s, and a collective career breakthrough for Malick, Sheen, Spacek and Spacek's soon-to-be husband, art director Jack Fisk. Ed Gein, eat your heart out. Sorry, bad joke.