Yeah, Lee Marvin might be the coolest person to ever live.

And Point Blank?

This film has more swagger in its first five minutes than most modern action movies have all put together.

Marvin was in London filming The Dirty Dozen, but already had his sights set on his next move: an adaptation of Donald Westlake’s hard-boiled pulp classic, The Hunter. He sits down with director John Boorman to go over the script, and they reach the same conclusion almost immediately: it’s absolute trash.

But that character, Walker? That cold, unkillable force of nature? That was pure gold.

So, Marvin does what only Lee Marvin could get away with. He calls a meeting with the big brass at the studio, the producers, his agent, and Boorman. He walks into that room like he owns the place—because, let’s be honest, he did—and lays down the law. He asks if he has script approval. They nod yes. He asks if he has approval over the principal cast. They nod yes again.

Then, he said, “I defer all those approvals to John.”

Just like that, Boorman—a guy fresh off the boat and doing his very first Hollywood feature—is handed the keys to the kingdom. He had final cut, complete creative control and the total backing of the biggest tough guy in the business. That’s how you get a movie as uncompromising and weird as Point Blank. 

After being betrayed and left for dead by his partner on the abandoned rock of Alcatraz, Walker (Marvin) returns to Los Angeles like a ghost haunting his own life. He’s not just looking for his $93,000; he’s looking for something, anything and heaven help anyone who stands in his way.

This isn’t your grandfather’s detective story. Boorman used avant-garde techniques, fractured timelines and bold color palettes to create an atmosphere of existential torpor.

The story starts on Alcatraz. Walker and his buddy Mal Reese (John Vernon; Marvin didn’t think Vernon was strong enough to contend with him. Marvin then punched him in the stomach during a fight scene, causing the actor to yell that he was an actor, not a fighter.) pull off a massive heist, but Reese is a snake. He puts a few slugs in Walker, makes off with the loot and steals Walker’s wife, Lynne (Sharon Acker), for good measure.

Walker should be dead. Maybe he is — we’ll get to that.

Walker tracks Reese to a heavily guarded apartment, using Reese’s own lover, Chris (Angie Dickinson), as his inside woman. The scene where Reese goes over the balcony while clinging to a bedsheet? It’s pure, beautiful chaos. Walker then hits the high-level guys — Carter (Lloyd Bochner), Brewster (Carroll O’Connor) and the mysterious Fairfax (Keenan Wynn) —one by one. Every time he gets close to the money, it slips through his fingers, replaced by more violence.

The genius of the plot isn’t in the heist; it’s in the surreality. Walker’s confrontation with Chris at Brewster’s house is bizarre. One minute, she’s slapping him, taunting him through a speaker system, hitting him with a pool cue and then—boom—they’re in bed. It doesn’t make sense in a standard movie, but in this movie’s world, it’s the only thing that does.

And that ending? Walker hides in the dark, watching the hierarchy of The Organization cannibalize itself while the money just sits there on the ground. He doesn’t even take it. He just stands there, a phantom who’s done his job and has nowhere left to go.

Is Walker a man, a ghost or a manifestation of post-WWII trauma? Boorman keeps his cards close to his chest, and honestly, that’s what makes the movie work.

On the commentary track for this, Boorman said that another adaptation, Payback, was so poorly made that Mel Gibson must have used the original script he and Marvin had thrown away. Boorman was joined by Steven Soderbergh for that commentary, who said that Point Blank was “a film that I’ve stolen from so many times.”

Back to being cool. There are just some actors — and therefore, the characters they play — so effortlessly and effusively cool that we can’t believe they’re alive. Like Clint in High Plains Drifter and Pale Rider, that’s the only explanation our geeky and awkward minds can offer up as to why Marvin’s Walker can walk the same world as us.

Can director and writer Joe Sarno do a title or what?

The story begins with Marcia (Tamara Glynn), a young woman from the country, hitchhiking her way to the city. She isn’t the typical wide-eyed waif; she is acutely aware of the power of her appearance. When a driver picks her up, she essentially trades sex for a safe ride and a bit of cash, viewing it as a simple transaction to reach her goal. She is headed toward a roadhouse where her sister, Vicky, works as a hostess and has promised her a job.

Upon arriving at the roadhouse, Marcia learns the dark truth: Vicky has been murdered. The method was particularly brutal. She was strangled with her own silk garter belt.

Rather than fleeing in terror or going to the police, who are largely in the pocket of the local elite, Marcia decides to step directly into her sister’s shoes. She takes the hostess job at the roadhouse, moving into the same room where Vicky lived, effectively becoming the new Vicky to draw the killer out of the shadows.

As Marcia works the floor, she discovers that the roadhouse is a front for the secret desires of the town’s most respectable citizens. She begins a dangerous game of manipulation with all of them. And as for the Garterbelt Strangler, it isn’t just a random maniac; the motive is tied to the corruption and secret lifestyles of these powerful men. Marcia finds herself increasingly imperiled as she realizes that her sister was murdered because she knew too much about a specific civic leader’s proclivities.

The film culminates in a claustrophobic confrontation where Marcia’s life is threatened by the same lace instrument that killed her sister. In true Sarno fashion, the resolution is less about justice and more about the survival of the craftiest person in the room, leaving the viewer with a bleak look at the hunger that drives both the powerful and the desperate.

Directed by Richard Rush (The Stunt Man) and written by R. Wright Campbell, this is the tale of Poet (Jack Nicholson), a gas station attendant with a short fuse and a soul-crushing job. When a run-in with the notorious Hells Angels leaves his bike damaged, Poet doesn’t cower. Instead, he demands restitution. This display of suicidal bravery impresses the club’s charismatic leader, Buddy (Adam Roarke), who invites Poet to trade his mundane life for a permanent seat on the open road.

As a “prospect,” Poet is initiated into a subculture of beer-soaked brawls, police harassment, and brutal turf wars. However, the actual danger isn’t the rival clubs or the law; it’s the volatile romantic triangle that forms between Poet, Buddy, and Buddy’s restless girlfriend, Shill (Sabrina Scharf). What begins as a quest for freedom quickly spirals into a claustrophobic power struggle where the code of the road is tested by jealousy and betrayal.

“The violence, the hate, the way-out parties…exactly as it happens!” Roger Ebert said, “The film is better than it might have been, and better than it had to be.” He noted that, unlike so many other biker movies, everyone in this looks filthy, as they should.

Shot on location in Northern California, the film utilized actual members of the Hells Angels (including Sonny Barger) as extras and technical advisors, lending an unsettling air of legitimacy to the way-out parties and chaotic ride sequences. While Nicholson was still a few years away from Easy Rider, his performance here serves as the blueprint for the rebellious, anti-authority persona that would define his career.

You can watch this on YouTube.

The Black Souls are led by Chino (an absolutely berserk Dennis Hopper), and the Glory Stompers are led by Darryl (Jody McCrea). Chino jumps him and nearly kills Darryl, then steals his girl, Chris (Chris Noel, who has a wild life story. Starting as a model in her teens, she was painted by pin-up artist Gil Elvgren; she was a New York Giants cheerleader; she was in Girl Happy with Elvis and most interestingly, she toured Vietnam eight times, was the only woman to travel through South Vietnam to remote bases in helicopters and lived to tell despite mortar and assault rifle attacks in war zones. She had her own Armed Forces Network radio show and married Green Beret captain Ty Herrington, who sadly took his own life eleven months into their union. She’s continued to help veterans ever since.).

Originally written by James Gordon White (Bigfoot, The Hellcats) as a Western, it was turned into a biker movie, which makes sense, since you just replace horses with motorcycles. Director Anthony M. Lanza adapted another White script into a film, The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant, and edited The Sadist and Wild Guitar.

Joined by ex-Black Soul Smiley (Jock Mahoney), Darryl heads off to save Chris, battling gang members like Mouth (Casey Kasem!), Clean Cut (Jim Reader) and Monk (Bing’s son Lindsey Crosby). Plus, Robert Tessier as Magoo! This also has a great soundtrack by Davie Allen and the Arrows, along with Mike Curb.

What makes this worth watching is Hopper. He’s crazy in this, yelling at everyone and saying man so many times. He talked to Tarantino about this, as it’s one of the director’s favorite movies.

QUENTIN TARANTINO: One of your performances that’s one of my favorites?it’s a wacky, kooky performance?is in The Glory Stompers. I loved you in that. You know, that is the beginning of you as Frank Booth in Blue Velvet right there.

DENNIS HOPPER: Glory Stompers is the American International Pictures movie which actually, I ended up directing. That was my first directorial job because the director had a nervous breakdown. I drove the guy to a nervous breakdown and then I took over the picture.

QUENTIN TARANTINO: You have this one line that’s just so fucking funny in it: when you’re fighting this guy, you beat him up, and then you look around and say, “Anybody else got anything else to say? Turn it on, man, just turn it on.”

DENNIS HOPPER: Well, thank you, man.