Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

Pluskylang Great Film overall

Lumsdal Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

Ceticultsot Beautiful, moving film.

lasttimeisaw American music producer James William Guercio's one-off dalliance with filmmaking, ELECTRA GLIDE IN BLUE is made when he is only 28-year-old. It stars Robert Blake as a motorcycle cop Johnny Wintergreen who patrols rural Arizona highways and aspires to be a homicidal officer.The movie opens with a promising panache hardly betrays that Guercio is a greenhorn, conjecturing through its voyeuristic close-ups, audience would soon realize a face-unshown man prepares to kill himself, yet, Guercio's camera also cunningly suggests that he is cooking beef streaks at the same time. Then, boom! He blows himself dead through a shotgun, which unusually aims to his chest rather than the usual easy target, the head, it compellingly sets a paradoxical situation that one immediately knows there is something fishy about the whole act.Also, before the title card, Guercio takes a tongue-in-cheek tack to introduce our unlikely hero, big Johnny, the camera lurks and swirls in the apartment where Johnny expertly gratifies Jolene (Riley) in bed, before revealing that Johnny is small in stature. When a man's masculinity is stunted by his appearances, it gives audience an idea why he is so eager to achieve something, to compensate the ingrained inferiority complex is a shoo-in. So the apparent-suicidal case becomes his stepping stone to be recruited by detective Harve Poole (Ryan) for his astute observation that it is indeed a murder underneath the hatched facade.But the ensuing police procedural dampens Johnny's driving enthusiasm, especially after witnessing Harve hectors physically abuses and a group of hippies to milk information about their prime suspect, a drug dealer Bob Zembo (a cameo of Peter Cetera, one of the four CHICAGO members who take on acting roles here apart from their contribution to the picture's soundtrack), and the final straw is an awkward confrontation between him, Harve and Jolene, the latter turns out to be Harve's lover, and spitefully lambastes Harve's incompetence to make her contented and laments her ill-fated destiny, working in a barrelhouse after a dashed Hollywood dream, Johnny and Harv fall out afterwards.Unambiguously Guercio conducts a half-hearted approach to solve the murder mystery, after trifling with a biker-chasing set piece to keep the action moving, the movie falls back on Johnny's "inner voice" for an expedient epiphany to realize who is the murderer at the end of a MADURA concert, with reasons unexplained, but that is not enough, ultimately there would be another revelation later, to further muddle the water and leave the opening scene ever so ambivalent when one retraces back, before reaching its chilling coda, completely hits viewers like a cold shower, willful but symbolic, overall, it is a loner's world against the canvas of a vast Arizona landscape, everyone in the story is either indolent, disillusioned or corrupt, only the hippies' community stands in as a getaway from the unpleasant reality, but their guarded world is defiant towards the mainstream values, Johnny represents a tragic hero who is doomed because of what he represents, an authority figure, cannot be saved by his amiable personality and all-too-well intentions.Performance-wise, everyone on board is on a par with excellence, Elisha Cook Jr. is heart-rending to watch in his committed lunacy, Mitchell Ryan expertly imbues a certain degree of passing diffidence in his bombast mannerism and Billy Green Bush is so organic as Johnny's shade- hogging partner and nails his big scene with a flourish, so is Jeannine Riley, manages to steal some limelight even with a role riddled with platitudes. And our leading man Robert Blake, ever so self- reliant as a pipsqueak trying rather hard to chase his dream, only to get short-changed by a cynical world.ELECTRA GLIDE IN BLUE, also bolstered by a symphonic soundtrack produced by Guercio himself and its striking wide-screen landscape sensation shot by DP Conrad L. Hall, is an astonishing debut feature, if it intends to be more of a zeitgeist-capturer than a gripping detective story, then I must give my whole-hearted congratulations to the crew, mission grandly accomplished!

BaronBl00d This film is of interest for a variety of reasons: its surreal feeling through the Arizona desert, its ambiguous story, its thematic threads of honesty, integrity, and corruption amongst the police, its humanizing lust for meaning in an otherwise meaningless world, OKAY, it is getting deep but this film COULD be said to meander in all those areas. Does that make it a good movie? No, not necessarily. Nor is it a bad movie. It is certainly an interesting movie. Robert Blake plays Officer Wintergreen - a short, dedicated motorcycle cop out to become detective. He works with his partner Zipper who is happy just to have a job and get paid and have little work to do. Here the film explores goals and what life is like with and without them. We get more of this through other characters' eyes: Harv the eagle detective Wintergreen initially impresses but later is stripped of all manhood in front of him by a wildly over-acting Jeannine Riley. Riley's Jolene sees life as despair basically loveless and pimped out to Harve I think. We get some hippie characters caught up in life anarchy in communal life and a trucker and Wintergreen himself having just returned from Vietnam. The film has a lot going on in subtext - perhaps too much. I still am not sure what the film is trying to achieve. Is it a mystery of an old man being shot through the chest that may or may not have had some money? Is it a battle of integrity in Wintergreen(played rather decently by Robert Blake) versus corruption as in Zipper's character or Harve's police brutality. Is it meaning versus nihilism with the whacked out ending that leaves one scratching one's head. I honestly don't know. I do know that film will make you think, is evocatively filmed, and generally well-acted. Robert Blake is good - perhaps one of his best roles. The supporting characters are interesting with character stalwarts Royal Dano(great as a coroner in a brief sequence) and Elisha Cook faring well. And what about Jeannine Riley? Sure she overacts, but she is still beautiful. You might remember her as Billie Jo from the first few seasons of Petticoat Junction. Well, it's ten years later - but Jeannine is still sexy and still fills out a sweater wonderfully. Electra Glide in Blue is a strange film by a one-time director. It is definitely worth a look. Then you can figure out what you think everything means.

Robert J. Maxwell Everybody likes to ride around on a motorcycle in the sunshine, and, what with the desert climate of southern Arizona, you get not only the wind in your hair and the scent of sagebrush but a rosy tan as well. Unfortunately, Robert Blake and his partner, Zipper (Billy Green Bush), are constrained by their police uniforms and what they call proper police procedure, or PPP. The movie is essentially about how closely the police force follows that procedure when murder is involved.Two old weirdos live in a desert trailer and when one is found murdered the other (Elisha Cook, Jr., more flamboozled than ever) is arrested. But did he do it? And, if so, why? The written story is dated. The affable and sympathetic Blake is taken under the wing of his superior, Mitch Ryan, a big blustering detective who beats up hippie informants while Blake must stand silently by. Yes, this is a movie which pits the ugly cops against the far-from-innocent but still human hippies. The hippies dress in rags, do dope, and -- hold on -- they have long hair. All they want is to be left unhassled, but Ryan is intent on cementing community relations by beating them to a pulp.Mitchell is not only a bully but, even worse, his drunken girl friend explains to Blake that he is also impotent, causing Mitchell to almost pop his cork and hate Blake, finally demoting him and putting him back in uniform on his hated police motorcycle. (He'd love to have a more colorful machine with Electraglide transmission.) I think Blake's motorcycle represents the police force, which in turn represents the society which the hippies must live in and which hates them for reasons that are "accidental" rather than "essential." Mainly, they look funny. (None of them can act, either.) In fact, I think Robert Blake's character must illustrate Edmund Burke's dictum, "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." How else can we explain this good man's assassination by previously harassed hippies at the end? Why else does Blake suffer? He's guilty of no wrong doing, intelligent enough to solve a rather complicated homicide, and in the end courageous enough to tell his sadistic boss that the boss is full of horse hockey.The dialog is kind of stylized, especially Mitch Ryan's. He carries on with his rodomontade as if speaking to Jesus. It isn't exactly realistic. That's okay because at least it's an attempt to be original. The narrative, though, sometimes falls flat. After being promoted to detective by Ryan, Blake lovingly dresses himself in expensive new civilian clothes, if a modified cowboy outfit can be considered civilian, and strides outside only to look down and see that he's forgotten to put on his trousers. It's not really either credible or amusing, though it's supposed to be cute, I guess.The direction is okay. The camera is where it should be, and at the proper times, but -- can we have some kind of moratorium on slow-motion violence? Sheez! A pursued hippie on a motorcycle crashes through a cafe window and I fell asleep before he finally hit the floor.The climactic scene was shot in Monument Valley. Warning to all film makers. Lay off. That's John Ford territory.

eltee2 I saw this movie when it first came out as a biker/college student/pot-head/drinker! I loved it then. I OWN the movie now and as a current rider and a retired Police Commander (& former Motor Cop), find it highly realistic & true ('cept for the chases, which may have been OK out here in the West given the time frame). Despite Bobby Blake's problems w/the law & women, he is NOT GUILTY according to a court of law and that fits OK with me! "The Job" has difficult moments and leads down roads unknown. "EG in Blue" personifies it! So much for being the Nice Guy! Cops can't be bad guys and nice guys at the same time!!! Lt JG (Ret)