1980: "Out of the Blue"

                             Out of the Blue is an 1980 drama (directed and starring Dennis Hopper) about a damaged family affected by the aftermath of a tragic accident. Hopper plays the patriarch released from a five-year prison stint after crashing his truck into a school bus full of children. Sharon Farrell plays the unfaithful, heroin-addicted matriarch and Linda Manz as the rebellious but vulnerable daughter.

                             I found this movie at my local library, but the DVD was released by a public domain hack distributer called "Passion Productions", with a crappy package cover and poor video quality. It's a shame because the movie is a forgotten gem of 80's cinema.
                             It shares the same thematic subjects (alienation and the elusive American Dream) as Hopper's seminal Easy Rider, only taken to its darkest conclusion. This movie makes Easy Rider seem naive in comparison. Instead of being about the death of a idealistic generation as Easy Rider was, Out of the Blue is how this ennui and disenchantment affects a younger generation (punk rock is very much a cynical, unhinged reaction to the melodic baroque pop of the Beatles and the sunniness of Woodstock). Even ten years after the sixties had ended, Hopper and Farrell's characters still seem to mourn these Edenic ideals and take it out on their put-upon daughter.
                              This is a raw film, to the point where a lot of it feels improvised. Hopper, Farrell, and Manz give very naturalistic performances and their impulsive actions make sense. Even in the final scene, there's a lot of rambling and disorder, there's no scripted order to anything, which might not make sense to a general viewer, but in a family past the point of repair, it's all that makes sense to them. It's, sadly, how they are able to communicate.
                              One of the more interesting aspects of the film is the use of music. Taking Neil Young's "Hey Hey, My My (Out of the Blue)" as a theme/motif, the movie utilizes a lot of rock tunes as a soundtrack. The music is often used in tonal opposition to what we're watching on screen (a rather upbeat rocker is playing when Hopper drunkenly knocking over a shed, ultimately costing him his job). The characters are unable to face their own inner demons or take responsibility for their reckless actions, so they use music dipped in nostalgia (Neil Young, Elvis Presley) to take their minds off of whatever disaster lies before them. It's a idiosyncratic film technique that connects to a deeply fundamental human trait.
                           
                           This is a great film and sadly overlooked. To the folks at Criterion, if you need any new restoration ideas, Dennis Hopper's Out of the Blue deserves a rerelease.