Directed by:
James William GuercioScreenplay:
Robert BorisCinematography:
Conrad L. HallComposer:
James William GuercioCast:
Robert Blake, Billy Green Bush, Mitchell Ryan, Jeannine Riley, Elisha Cook Jr., Royal Dano, Hawk Wolinski, Peter Cetera, Terry Kath, Nick Nolte, Michael Butler (more)Plots(1)
A police officer who would rather use his brains than his gun is put into a situation where neither can help him in this police drama. John Wintergreen (Robert Blake) is a sawed-off and street-smart Arizona motorcycle cop who dreams of climbing the ladder and becoming a police detective, but his ambitions are scoffed at by his partner, Zipper (Billy "Green" Bush). Wintergreen's superiors tend not to take him seriously due to his short stature, but when he stumbles upon the site of a murder, he digs up enough relevant evidence to insure his advancement to detective status. However, after a few days on the job, Wintergreen begins to realize just how corrupt his superior Poole (Mitchell Ryan) truly is after Poole attempts to frame a local hippie, Bob Zemko (Peter Cetera), for a crime he didn't commit. Adding fuel to the fire is Poole's discovery that he and Wintergreen have been dating the same woman, dancer-turned-barmaid Jolene (Jeannine Riley).
Electra Glide in Blue was the first (and to date only) directorial credit for James William Guercio. Successful in the music industry as a manager and producer, Guercio was best known for his association with the top-selling jazz-rock group Chicago; several members of the band appear in the movie, as does a young Nick Nolte in a bit part. On a note of sad irony, Terry Kath, the longtime Chicago vocalist who died in 1978 from a self-inflicted gunshot to the head, plays a gun-wielding killer in this film.
(Shock Entertainment)
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With its atmosphere, The Blue Electra Glide is open about its relation to Easy Rider, explicitly referring to that film in a scene. It acts as the other side of the same coin when it looks at the era of the flower children movement through the eyes of police officers, who have a significantly more conservative idea of the American dream and freedom, often closely resembling the attitudes of guard dogs. The failure of the utopian ideas of the hippies was already exposed in Easy Rider, but Hopper's piece maintained the illusion of crushing the dream with a brutal attack from the hostile environment. The Blue Electra Glide goes much further in this disillusionment: it shows the degeneration of ideals corroded by drug addiction, trafficking, passivity, and inability to face problems. Guercio's film evidently struck a chord with the 70s generation and received decent acclaim. Since I don't have, and won't have, the opportunity to follow his development as a filmmaker, I'm not completely certain about the extent of his talent, and I don't accept his film without reservations. With its aesthetic of violence, it closely resembles the approach of Sam Peckinpah, as evidenced, for example, by the scene of the wild chase by the motorcycle gang. At times, the film doesn't bother with logic, and if I wanted to dig deeper into it, I would find many flaws. However, the positive impressions still persist, and they are enough to give the film an overall impression of 70%.
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Photo © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
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