Glen and Randa

1971 "Once upon a time, there were countries, cities, schools, movies, electric appliances, The Beatles, politicians, then...Glen and Randa."
5.2| 1h33m| R| en
Details

Teenagers Glen and Randa are members of a tribe that lives in a rural area, several decades after nuclear war has devastated the planet. They know nothing of the outside world, except that Glen has read about and seen pictures of a great city in some old comic books. He and Randa set out to find this city.

Director

Producted By

Universal Marion Corporation (UMC)

AD
AD

Watch Free for 30 Days

All Prime Video Movies and TV Shows. Cancel anytime. Watch Now

Trailers & Clips

Reviews

Solidrariol Am I Missing Something?
Doomtomylo a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.
Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.
Bessie Smyth Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.
sunznc Glen and Randa is raw and has a hedonistic feel to it. The film was originally released in 1970 with an X rating because of (gasp!) full frontal male nudity! Don't want people to see that male genitalia.The film has a sort of low key, low budget amateurish feel to it at times. There are a few scenes which are sort of strange and silly at the same time. If it had been played serious by all the actors it could have felt sort of sleazy but most of the time it has a slight camp feel to it.The film also has an innocence to it that makes it feel very refreshing. Glen and Randa like to frolic in the nude at times and after exposed to a traveling entertainer they decide to leave their group and travel on their own and find "metropolis", a city with people dressed all in white but find that much isn't left after the holocaust.One other element I enjoyed was that there aren't any crazy people out to kill, rape or mame. You don't have to really worry about what will happen to these two as they travel alone.There are moments that seem very dated and some of the scenes aren't shot that well. It's not a film that makes a huge impact but it does linger in your head a bit afterward mainly because of the youth of the lead characters.
m_bryce74 Science Fiction/fantasy is a genre different in certain ways from other genres. In order for its ideas to be communicated a physical world usually needs to be constructed, and in order for this to happen, big dollars need to be invested. The most high brow concepts fall in a heap when the sets start wobbling or the cheesy music starts. There are not many low budget Sci- Fi/fantasy success stories. Glen and Randa is an exception. On an absolute shoe string budget a work has been created of genuine vision. In terms of a narrative there isn't much to speak of. The story tells of two teenagers who, after being visited by a traveling merchant in a post apocalyptic world, trek across the country side in search of a city. Something they have read about in comic books but never seen. It is never alluded to what caused the breakdown in society, but people live in it's remnants, in a kind of stunned simplicity. The story is told in a long series of scenes, which tell a story, but they are really there to give impressions of a world devoid of social structure and technology. Rather than creating elaborate sets and situations, Glen and Randa explores this through examining the internal world of the two main characters. They experience the world around them with a mixture of innocence and ignorance. They have a horse but no idea that it can be ridden, They aren't able to understand what a minute is, and when Randa becomes pregnant, they have no understanding of what that means, or how to deal with it. The internal logic of the film plays out without any flaw, always a real acid test for any work in the genre. Situations are often troubling, but not illogical. And through use of whatever locations were handy, an otherworldly reality is effectively created without a dime spent on lumber. It took a while for the film to work it's magic on me, because it was such unusual story telling. Because of it's early 70's origin I figured it would have a Hippy kind of naturalist message like Gas or wild in the Streets, but it became apparent that it went much deeper than that, which, to me is why it is such a crime that this film has been so completely overlooked. My advice is if you enjoy the genre beyond Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, then take any opportunity you get to watch this film, if you can bond with its ideosyncratic style of story telling you definitely won't be disappointed.
Woodyanders An intriguingly spartan and offbeat avant-garde early 70's excursion into post-nuke sci-fi survivalist cinema centering on the obsessive Glen (muscular, curly-haired Steven Curry) and his more passive female companion Randa (a sweetly disarming performance by the lovely, willowy Shelley Plimpton), a pair of guileless youths trying to eke out a meager existence amid the desolate ruins following an atomic war. After a wily, lecherous old magician (a wonderfully rascally turn by Garry Goodrow) visits Glen and Randa's camp and fills Glen's head full of tales about a great lost city, Glen and a now-pregnant Randa (the magician impregnated her) embark on a dangerous trek across the harsh, ravaged terrain to discover this great city that Glen first read all about in an old "Wonder Women" comic book. During their perilous quest Glen and Randa meet a friendly, doddering elderly man (an endearingly crotchety Woodrow Chambliss; Uncle Willie in the funky '72 made-for-TV creature feature favorite "Gargoyles") and Randa gives birth to a baby.Director Jim McBride (who later helmed such better known big budget films as "The Big Easy" and "Great BAlls of Fire") skillfully uses an extremely plain, basic and unpolished no-frills cinematic style to plausibly create a vivid depiction of the banality and hopelessness of day-to-day post-holocaust existence, thus giving this bleak, albeit strangely haunting and affecting apocalyptic vision an unshakable sense of gritty, lived-in conviction. The bare-bones, but eloquent and sometimes wittily droll script by McBride, Lorenzo Manns, and Rudolph Wurlitzer (who went on to write "Two-Lane Blacktop" and "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid") relates with deceptive simplicity and straightforwardness a lyrically powerful parable with provocative religious allusions (Glen and Randa's odyssey could be interpreted as Adam and Eve's fall from grace after leaving the garden of Eden) about lost innocence and a futile search for an irrevocably vanished past paradise. Kudos as well to Alan Raymond's flat, spare, minimalist cinematography, which uses long, lingering, unedited takes, stately tracking shots, and elegant fade-outs to convey a wealth of striking visuals: the rusty hulk of a car with tree branches growing out of it, a horde of grimy survivors glumly rummaging through the rubble for cans of food, Randa ravenously devouring grass and worms, Glen savagely beating several fish with a stick, and the oddly poignant final shot of Glen and the old man drifting out to sea on a rickety boat are all indelible moments that stick in your memory after seeing the movie. A pleasingly quirky and truly novel one-of-a-kind experimental oddity.
Raegan Butcher I thought this was a really interesting antidote to all of the mow-hawked and black leather-wearing silliness that seems to occur after the apocalypse in every other movie of this type. There are no marauding gangs of motorbike riders here. The innocence and ignorance of the titular characters is alarming enough; seeing them foolishly expend all of their wooden matches because its amusing to them before they attempt to cross what looks like the Cascade Mountain range is painful to watch! I happen to think that if anyone ever did survive an Extinction Level Event,they might behave something like Glen and Randa; what has destroyed the world is never explained; no mention of nuclear war is made and when the characters stand at what is obviously the west coast of either Oregon or California and explain that ..."about ten miles that way there used to be a city called Boise!" you realize that whatever happened, it was massive;nuclear warheads don't re-shape the coastline! The found sets--wrecked cars sunk in sand, mobile homes that look as if Godzilla stomped on them, a rusty derailed train half submerged in a river--lend a sense of surrealistic realism to the film, if that makes any sense. This movie moves at a slow pace but i was captivated by it, wondering what would happen next. I think one of the most powerful aspects of this film is the fact that there are NO characters who provide a sense of sanity and strength; all of the older characters seem to have been driven into a sort of semi-schizophrenic absent-mindedness by whatever it was that slammed the crap out of the old civilization and the 2 youngsters seem so ignorant and unaware of the inherent dangers of their travels that you seriously worry about their safety as they tramp barefooted thru the mountains, across deserts, etc etc. I would recommend this film as an example of what can still be done with the post-apocalyptic genre. This one was a breath of fresh air.