After years of waiting, the dust has been blown of this cult masterpiece, which is getting a long overdue general DVD release.
Two Lane Blacktop is a road movie that slips neatly into the counter culture film canon, somewhere between the two defining films of the genre, Easy Rider and Vanishing Point.
It stars the Beach Boys tragic drummer Dennis Wilson in his only major screen performance and folk singer James Taylor takes the starring role. In many ways it’s a nihilistic film of hippy disillusion as the flowers of the Sixties were stamped into the ground of Seventies America.
But Two Lane Blacktop is captivating viewing and what it lacks in dialogue and compassion it makes up for with heavily pregnant pauses and a shocking ending to rival the finale in Easy Rider when Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda meet their abrupt end.
