The Wild Ride (1960)
Johnny, a reckless dirt-track racer running with a pack of California hot-rodders, needles his more level-headed friend Dave and moves in on his girlfriend, touching off a spiral of drag races, brawls, and a fatal wreck.
The Wild Ride gave a young Jack Nicholson one of his first starring roles, playing a Beat-inflected troublemaker in a low-budget Filmgroup drama made under Roger Corman’s B-picture pipeline; it’s a minor title chiefly remembered today as an early stop on Nicholson’s road to stardom.
Background
The Wild Ride was made under producer Roger Corman’s low-budget pipeline for Filmgroup, the kind of quickly made teen drama that filled out drive-in double bills at the time. It gave a young Jack Nicholson one of his earliest leading roles, years before he became a major star, playing a reckless troublemaker who causes problems for his more level-headed friend. The film is a minor entry even within Corman’s output of the period.
What to watch for
It is chiefly worth watching today to see Nicholson’s early screen presence, well before the persona audiences would come to know from films like Easy Rider and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Watch for the drag-racing and hot-rod culture on display, a common backdrop for teen exploitation pictures of the era, and notice how the film’s low budget limits its ambitions to a handful of characters and simple locations. It is a curiosity more than a discovery, but a useful stop for anyone tracing Nicholson’s career from the beginning.
