will thrill series fans) and com- poser Akira Ifukube, creator of the iconic Godzilla theme and its most consistent musical voice, who has a generous 50m to cover everything from writing that famous march to the rest of his monster movie career. All of the interviews are augmented with many behind-the-scenes photos. In another 14m interview, Japa- nese film critic Tadeo Sato dis- sects the film’s enduring role in Japanese film culture, and effects director Koichi Kawakita offers a photographic demonstration while photographer Motoyoshi Tomioka reveals the methods used to composite terrified masses, an unlucky train and perilous power lines. Along with the Japanese trailer (no Ameri- can one as claimed on the pack- aging, unless it’s tucked away somewhere very discreetly), “The Unluckiest Dragon,” an audio essay with writer Greg Pflugfelder, inspects the real-life nuclear di- saster which inspired the barely coded opening sequence of the film.


END OF THE ROAD 1969, Warner,


$19.97, 110m 5s, DVD By Brad Stevens


Despite being released on VHS by Key Video in 1985, Aram Avakian’s END OF THE ROAD has spent most of the last four decades in distribution limbo, acquiring mythical status as a lost classic from a particularly vibrant period of American filmmaking while casting a surprisingly large shadow over several cult items from the ’70s: Alan J. Pakula’s THE PARALLAX VIEW (1974), which borrowed cinematogra- pher Gordon Willis and the con- cept of the Parallax Test; William Peter Blatty’s THE NINTH CON- FIGURATION (1980), which bor- rowed lead actor Stacy Keach,


48


the institution offering eccentric treatments for mental illness, and several references to HAMLET; John Waters’ PINK FLAMINGOS (1972), which borrowed the chicken-screwing scene; Francis Coppola’s APOCALYPSE NOW (1979), which borrowed Harris Yulin’s solitary gyrations before a mirror; and Nicolas Roeg’s THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH (1976), in which shots from END OF THE ROAD, some of them involving characters posi- tioned in front of multiple pro- jected images, can be seen playing on one of David Bowie’s multiple televisions. Roeg’s frag- mented editing style may well have been influenced by that of Avakian, who edited Robert Rossen’s LILITH (1964) and Arthur Penn’s MICKEY ONE (1965, both of which starred Warren Beatty, who, surely not coincidentally, also appears in THE PARALLAX VIEW), as well as Coppola’s YOU’RE A BIG BOY NOW (1967).


END OF THE ROAD, Avakian’s solo directorial debut (he had previously co-directed 1962’s LAD: A DOG), was based on a 1958 novel by John Barth. The central character is Jacob Horner (Keach in his first lead role), a graduate student suffering from catatonia who begins teaching English grammar at a local col- lege, where he becomes involved in a romantic triangle with over- bearingly rationalist fellow teacher Joe Morgan (Yulin) and his wife Rennie (Avakian’s spouse Dorothy Tristan). All the while, Jacob is undergoing treatment by the Burroughsian Doctor D (James Earl Jones), whose didac- ticism and inclination to quote HAMLET connects him with Joe, and whose patients (one of whom is played by M. Emmet Walsh, making his first screen appear- ance) are encouraged to act out a series of bizarre fantasies: the


most memorable of these in- volves a man dressed as a balle- rina who is crucified from the ceiling of a barn (“Look up at him and say: ‘You seem to be having a jolly good time’,” Doctor D in- structs Jacob). These details, along with Keach’s imperson- ation of a German psychiatrist, can surely be attributed to co- screenwriter and co-producer Terry Southern who, like Avakian, cameos as one of the patients. The film is certainly strik- ingly designed: the lengthy montage sequences depicting recent events in US history are so audacious that it’s easy to understand why END OF THE ROAD has been acclaimed as a maudit masterpiece by those who caught its rare screenings. Yet it now looks like the work of an artist attempting to run before he can walk. The mon- tages’ emphasis on American politics is a spurious gesture towards unearned significance, having no real connection with the main narrative (it’s hardly surprising that Steven Soder- bergh, who also conceives of style as something applied over a film’s surface, is a fer- vent admirer), and this insis- tence on baldly stating themes that are never effectively dra- matized ends up reinforcing the protagonist’s inability to connect with the world around him: “cool” detachment is thus promoted as the most admi- rable stance to take when con- fronted with a terminally unhip modern society (compare Monte Hellman’s TWO-LANE BLACKTOP, which subjected this tendency to a scathing cri- tique). John Barth despised the film (perhaps picking up on Avakian’s attitude of superior- ity to the text), and eventually folded it back into his personal mythology: in Barths’ epistolary novel LETTERS (1979), Jacob


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