Idaho Transfer - 1973

 Okay, I wouldn't normally do this but I am 11 minutes in and I want to point out several ridiculous things in this movie:

1. A dentist has a poster for the movie Frankenstein on his wall, right where the patients would look at it. 

2. A woman eating unpeels a banana, rips off part of it in her hand and eats it (gross) followed by a glug of Coke from a glass, followed by a bite of red Jello.  Is this their dinner?!

3.  The next day in the car ride her friend casually admits to getting raped recently, to ABSOLUTELY ZERO reaction from her friend.

4. Our plucky heroines pick up some self-identified "gypsies" and the soundtrack plays some hokey ass "Traveling Man" song for them. How do I know it's for them?  It stops as soon as they're gone.

5.  This line:  Girl 1:  "Lock the door, and take off your clothes."  Girl 2: "Sounds familiar."

This movie has a very crazy beginning, and then it sorta changes up.  Two girls are driving along having the above encounters, then they go to some facility, go into a special room, and one of them shows the other how the machine works.  What does the machine do?  Well, it takes them into the future.  The future is a desolate wasteland which was filmed in southeast Idaho.  Ladies and gentlemen, I propose I watch all the movies with Idaho in the title, starting here.  

Peter Fonda directed this movie, strangely.  This was his follow up four years after the hugely monumental Easy Rider.  He made it because it scared him, made him nervous and suspicious.  The movie mostly takes place in the future the girls travel to, the year 2027, and man, some shit has gotta change in order for us to look like this.  At the rate things are going though it could happen amiright?

The film has no expository dump, and everything takes its sweet time to be told and expressed.  I wondered for a long time just what was happening, and at the end there are still plenty of unanswered questions.  That is certainly the intent, and it completely fulfills that aspect of intrigue.  Filmed extremely simply, using nonactors and no real sets for the majority, with plot progression happening through dialogue.

Welcome back to the thing I love in film, minimalism, and in this movie it mostly works.  There's like 3 major plot holes, and the end is another wtf situation entirely, but I believe I would get more watching this a second time.  Man, the 70's was just the best decade for experimentation in film.  I am sticking to that.  

This film does a whole lot of things right.  The majority.  Weird atmosphere and curiosity does this movie huge favors, and I was downright enraptured as it got towards the end.  I am going to spoil one thing here and say, I do not understand at all how these people have access to a fucking time machine to go back into the past and they don't just all go back there and stay...  the future looks like it fucking sucks and especially with the end, they have every reason to leave.  

Idaho Transfer is a weird one, a movie that should have a cult following, and one I'd like to watch again.  I'll give it 4 stars!