A largely forgotten vanity project by the late child evangelist turned Hollywood mainstay Marjoe Gortner (1944-2026), who produced and starred in this filming of the similarly titled 1973 play by Mark Medoff (1940-2019). The 1979 copyright date explains in large part why WHEN YOU COMIN’ BACK, RED RYDER? wasn’t successful, as its depiction of a crazed hippie holding the denizens of a desert diner hostage (with dialogue like “What happened to all of that Love and Peace garbage?”) was simply no longer as topical in 1979 as it seemed in ‘73, yet it contains enough standout elements to rank with similarly themed classics like THE SADIST (1963) and THE INCIDENT (1967).
WHEN YOU COMIN BACK RED RYDER (1979) Trailer
Taking place (as an opening intertitle makes sure to inform us) in 1968, the film is situated largely in a New Mexico diner. There, the youthful waitress Angel (Stephanie Faracy) is working with her loser boyfriend Stephen Ryder (Peter Firth), who prefers to be called Red, in tow, along with the middle aged Lyle (Pat Hingle), who runs a nearby gas station.
Orbiting the diner are a motley crew that includes the elderly couple Richard (Hal Linden) and Clarisse (Lee Grant), the hippie punk Teddy (Gortner) and his hapless girlfriend Cheryl (Gortner’s then-wife Candy Clark). Teddy is a dangerous sort who harasses several people before attempting to cross the Mexican border, which involves him being subjected to an invasive body cavity search that he appears to greatly enjoy.
Richard, Clarisse and Lyle all end up at the diner early the next morning, together with Angel and Stephen/Red. Before long they’re joined by Teddy and Cheryl, who have pushed their broken-down van to Lyle’s gas station. Teddy immediately acts confrontational, and brandishes a pistol, forcing his companions to act out a bizarre western play that grows increasingly demeaning—and increasingly focused on Stephen/Red, with whom Teddy is obsessed. This prefigures an attempted escape by Teddy, followed by a car chase and a brutal desert confrontation that prefigures the finale of THE HITCHER (1986).
Mark Madoff made a concerted effort to broaden out his single setting drama with a variety of different locations and some added shock value (the body cavity search was not in the play, and nor was a Richard-Clarisse sex scene). These additions fail to alleviate the staginess of the enterprise, and succeed only in wreaking havoc on the carefully modulated intensity, with the shock of Teddy suddenly brandishing his pistol midway through the play lessened by the fact that in the film we’ve already seen him wield it.
Director Milton Katselas (1933-2008) turned out a late 1960s set film that often looks like it could have been made in that era, with oft-distracting handheld camerawork and quirky electronic music riffs by PERFORMANCE (1970) composer Jack Nitzsche. Katselas also replicates the play’s emphasis on behavioral drama, with great attention lavished on the characters’ eye contact and vocal tones.
The cast, stocked with seasoned Hollywood veterans (who in addition to the abovementioned Candy Clark, Lee Grant, Peter Firth and Pat Hingle include other, equally impressive names like Anne Ramsey of THROW MOMMA FROM THE TRAIN and Bill McKinney of DELIVERANCE), is impressive, and the comparatively unseasoned Marjoe Gortner more than holds his own in a characterization that’s heavy on menace, yes, but also quite devilishly charismatic. Credit must go to Katselas, a famed acting teacher (he ran the Beverly Hills Playhouse) and sometime director (of films like BUTTERFLIES ARE FREE, 1972, and REPORT TO THE COMMISSIONER, 1975) whose ability to corral actors was quite something to see.
Vital Statistics
WHEN YOU COMIN’ BACK, RED RYDER?
Melvin Simon Productions
Director: Milton Katselas
Producer: Marjoe Gortner
Screenplay: Mark Medoff
(Based on a play by Mark Medoff)
Cinematography: Jules Brenner
Editing: Richard Chew
Cast: Marjoe Gortner, Hal Linden, Peter Firth, Lee Grant, Pat Hingle, Bill McKinney, Audra Lindley, Anne Ramsey, Robert Easton, Barry Cahill, Ron Soble, Alex Colon, Stephanie Faracy, Candy Clark