It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

A young, naive post-nuke couple (Steven Curry with Sideshow Bob hair, and Martha's mother Shelley Plimpton) leave their commune to search for "the city" (using Wonder Woman comics as a reference). They never do find it, and she dies during childbirth at the end of this mostly dreary, low-key 16mm American Film Institure-backed effort that received an X for casual nudity when released in '71. The best part is early on with Garry Goodrow (a jobbing character actor who later co-wrote HONEY I BLEW UP THE KID) excellent as a lecherous motormouth travelling "magician" who puts on a show (great use of The Rolling Stones' Time Is On My Side). Shot in California and Oregon. The first screenplay attempt by then-hip novelist Rudy Wurlitzer, he wrote TWO-LANE BLACKTOP next. McBride had already made a couple of documentaries and David HOLZMAN'S DIARY. He made HOT TIMES (also with Curry) next.Movie reviews at: spinegrinderweb.com

A downbeat post-WWIII film that has practically no soundtrack; there is an old pop hit being played on a record player, and some of the characters briefly sing a bit, but basically there is no music. A very silent, calm film which takes a little while (10-20 min.) to get interesting. The gloom isn't realized with dark scenes and depressed faces; it's realized with the lack of music, the miserable living conditions of the characters, and by the events.Whether it's realistic or not depends on how you look at it; it's realistic enough within the framework of the world that is envisioned here. However, at least 20 years have passed since the Armageddon, and people still live like rats which is an underestimation of humankind's ability to re-organize. I mean, all that the group of people (the ones Glen & Randa belong to) in the movie do is collect cans of food. Also, there is a ridiculous scene where Randa holds a piece of raw fish and lights it briefly with a match, then eats it! Surely, even cave people would have more culture than that. Surely, Glen and Randa - as super-naive as they are shown to be - at least ought to know that fire is used to prepare meat.But otherwise the realism achieved is far greater than in most post-apocalyptic films, and there are no other exaggerations that I can think of.After seeing the fish-hunting scene (literally "hunting fish") it's safe to say that the movie can make no claims that "no fish were killed during the making of this film".

Saw this when it came out and was deeply affected by it. It is a powerful tale of a second genesis, the titular characters being Adam and Eve. I recall the first shot shows a beautiful "garden of eden" grove with a huge tree trunk in the center. The camera pans up as we hear the voices of Glen and Randa playing innocently. Thirty feet off the ground we find them -- in the wreck of a car blown into the tree's branches. Glen is behind the wheel pretending to drive. So the first image is a twisted amalgam of start and finish together that only becomes more obvious and compelling as the film unwinds. Glen comes to embody the flip-side urges of exploration and egotism that got us to the point where the movie starts -- the aftermath of the end of civilization. And it becomes clear that it will happen again. Sorry if I'm not clear enough. The film is much more eloquent in a completely organic way. there's no preaching or messaging. The picture is very funny at times and never overbearing. I'd love to see it again.

I find it interesting that nobody has yet mentioned how much casual nudity there is in this film. It's what got the film its "X" rating, even though there's no overt sexuality connected to it. It's more of a device to underline the innocence of Glen and Randa and their nomadic life. Nothing in the film would get it more than an "R" today. There are no special effects as such, just vistas of nature and of the ruined technology from which the survivors glean their living. The young actors are very appealing, and there's a quiet inevitability to the story's unfolding. I wish this were available on DVD, but given that there's no studio money behind it, this is unfortunately unlikely. This little film has stayed with me for many years since the release. It's too bad so few people know about it; it deserved a better fate.