Glen and Randa [VHS]

Here's a quietly beautiful artifact from the end of the 1960s, one with a message that's still all too timely. Glen & Randa are two naive, blissfully ignorant young inhabitants of a post-apocalyptic America, wandering on a quest for a wonderful city we already know doesn't exist. The story is told in a series of blackouts, some holding only a single image for a moment. This minimalist approach not only suits the mood of the film, it makes what we're seeing almost documentary-like.If you're looking for Mad Max-style violence & action, you won't find it here. Rather than offer adolescent power fantasies, the film offers a more convincing & chilling view of the post-apocalyptic world -- almost an emotional landscape, one that's been flattened & where all sense of meaning has been burned away in a searing instant. The survivors are all clearly traumatized, barely able to function; those born afterwards inherit only scraps of knowledge that tell them nothing.And this is the message that comes through: just how fragile & thin the web of civilization really is, and how much we take it for granted. Glen & Randa are so terribly bewildered as they try & fail to understand things that seem glaringly obvious to us. Glen in particular has just enough dim awareness to realize that the knowledge he seeks is out of his grasp, that he can never really piece together a meaningful world. Yet he keeps on trying ... because what else can he do, after all?I know this film has often been dismissed as self-indulgent hippie meandering. Certainly it's not the sort of thing that will immediately appeal to an audience raised on fast edits, quick cuts, and CGI. But give it a chance, fall into its slower & more contemplative rhythms, and you may find yourself strangely moved, much to your own surprise. More than that, it might make you think about the technology & culture you take for granted, assuming it'll always be there for you ...Note: yes, the DVD has a problem with its third chapter locking up, so be warned. My five stars are for the film itself. Here's hoping VCI will correct this flaw in a newer DVD.

Glen and Randa is a 1970 film that was initially rated X for (gasp!) full frontal male nudity! Don't want people to see that male genitalia do we? Gosh no.The film has a slight amateurish feel to it at times. Sometimes the scenes end abruptly in a choppy fashion. Some scenes linger on way too long.Glen and Randa are a part of a group of holocaust survivors and decide to leave their group and wander on their own in search of one of the major cities in the US. What they find isn't what they expected.The acting isn't bad but leaves something to be desired. It isn't polished. At times I was completely absorbed in the story and at other times it almost felt like a bad sketch from Love American Style. It's very uneven!Watch it but be warned this is not top knotch film making here.

Saw this years ago on VHS. Definitely different but good. It us sort of a New Age thing I suppose. I was browsing the Video store years ago and ran into this and actually rented it several times over time. The dialog is a bit off, but the film did manage to reamin in context with coping after a nuclear holocaust. probably a bit dated, but was stil a good watch.

Kind of meandering and rather boring

Up there with, "The Bedsit Room", "A Boy & his Dog" and/or "Le Dernier Combat" and/or "Threads" for post apocalyptic futuristic (re)visions. Heavy stuff, but with comedic moments.

I'll keep it short. This film follows two teenagers through their attempts to cope in a world strewn with the debris of a collapsed civilisation (ours). Oddly poignant and wonderfully lacking in any pretentious silliness about "what might happen," i would recommend this film to anyone who likes films that address the ways real human beings try to get by in their lives and also has a penchant for quality science fiction.

Avoid this DVD at all costs, for surely your money will be wasted. I bought this movie to feed my recent post apocalyptic binge, and though I found the movie to be strangely satisfying (I am not a huge Independent Buff) the quality of this DVD is terrible, and believe me when I tell you, my standards are not high. Aspect Ratio is 1.85:1/16x9 Anamorphic. First off, the third chapter is unreadable. I don't know if this is a fault in the DVD I got or if all of them here are that way. Every other chapter is fine. Second, the sound is so bad you have to crank up the volume to where you hear a hum from the TV speakers during silent moments in the movie. I thought the picture quality was alright. People will still be unhappy with it though. The DVD comes with a lengthy interview with the director, Jim McBride, who had only confirmed my suspicions about him when he admitted that yes, he was a hippie in 1970 and yes, he was stoned when he directed this movie. The movie itself received an X rating when it was originally released in 1970 for its shots of frontal nudity. It begins with Glen and Randa completely naked in the forest. Glen often finds himself wondering how humans lived before everybody was reduced to squalors scavenging the ruins of a dead civilization for food, until one day a traveling merchant pays a visit to their little community showing off all these weird mechanics and gizmos that no one there understands (a blender, [...], a record player). What happens next, I don't know since the DVD was too faulty and I had to skip to the next Chapter but Glen gets it in his head to leave the settlement and make a journey to Metropolis, a city where everyone is dressed in white and can soar through the air...Randa does not want to go, but knowing she cannot survive without him, she reluctantly follows Glen to this mystical place. The journey there is long and challenging, and with a baby on the way, Randa becomes deeply concerned since food is so scarce in the wild, but Glen keeps raving about glittering lights, cars that go, Playboy, Miss January, The Rolling Stones and a bunch of other nonsense that Randa simply has never heard of and does not understand. If you are looking for leather-clad warriors with shotguns held together by duck tape like in Madmax, you will need to steer clear of this film. Glen and Randa tries to depict a more realistic future of humanity. Instead of fighting gangs and tribes, Glen and Randa battle hunger. Instead of collecting oil, they collect firewood, cloth, and rope as they fight their way to the mythical city. Unfortunately, VCI Entertainment is not trustworthy. The first DVD they put out for this movie is total crap. A Boy and His Dog is a better movie. My opinion. I would have given this movie 3 stars if it were not for all the problems I had with the DVD. Threads is the best Post Apocalyptic Movie ever. Americans need to seriously discover that one.