cult film freak: KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, KAREN BLACK & GENE HACKMAN 'CISCO PIKE'

Kris Kristofferson in CISCO PIKE Year: 1971 Rating: ****

Since EASY RIDER ignited movies by stoners for stoners, CISCO PIKE takes it a step further: while Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda safely sold cocaine in Mexico before riding off into America, CISCO has a different approach...

By having the title character... a musician fresh outta jail played by acting-newcomer Kris Kristofferson... blackmailed to sell pot by crooked cop Gene Hackman, the crime-thriller genre's mixed into an otherwise spontaneously free-form counter-culture expose...

Gene Hackman in CISCO PIKE

But they don't do much with Hackman (not enough for his talents), who was right on the verge of playing an ambiguous antihero cop in THE FRENCH CONNECTION, making his extremely crooked detective extremely one-dimensional... so he could have been played by anyone...

Maybe Seymour Cassel, who was actually up for the lead role until, at the last minute, Kris filled in: which really works since he's not only a genuine musician/guitarist/singer, he's smooth and cool walking in and out of hippie hangouts, and, with an equally solid, no-nonsense manner, Kris could pull off both slow-burn and intense....

Harry Dean Stanton and Kris Kristofferson in CISCO PIKE

His character being forced into selling bricks of weed gives the otherwise superfluous drug-dealing montages an underline purpose... and it's not exploiting drugs since a crooked cop's behind it...

But the way director Bill Norton creatively grooves within the hippie hot-spots, CISCO PIKE is a much sharper glimpse into the counter-culture scene than the peripheral b-crime flick involving stoned musicians, like Harry Dean Stanton as Pike's heroin-addicted co-guitarist or hanging-out with authentic druggie chicks Joy Bang and Viva... while more recognizable actors like Roscoe Lee Brown, Severn Darden, William Traylor and Antonio Fargas feel like special guests in a TV-movie... at times, PIKE plays for both niche and mainstream audiences...

Kris Kristofferson and Karen Black in CISCO PIKE

Meanwhile, Cisco's genuinely faithful girlfriend is Karen Black, and, having practically stolen FIVE EASY PIECES from Jack Nicholson, she's mostly just around for Kristofferson to either relate or not relate with at home...

Which hardly makes any difference since, no matter who else comes or goes, this particular ride (including Kristofferson's brooding-vagabond songs filling the soundtrack) is almost entirely his own.