Directed by Milton Katselas
My rating: 3 stars out of 4
IMDb
(YouTube)
The first hour or so is a slow, meandering look at the lonely lives of several dysfunctional couples in a dusty west Texas town, and you begin to wonder where it is all leading. Eventually everyone converges on the diner, where the plot takes a left turn and becomes a tense standoff with a loudmouth hippie with a gun. Marjoe Gortner has a knack for getting under everyone's skin, probably including the viewer's, and forces the people in the diner to act out increasingly demeaning fantasies. At one point he gives the gun to his girlfriend who takes it outside to watch over the mechanic, but he still has complete control over the group with nothing more than a violin. You are never quite sure when it will turn violent, which ratchets up the intensity even further. While Marjoe is fascinating and quite convincing as the psycho, even more interesting is connecting the relationships and characters which took so long to establish in the first part of the film to their actions, or inactions, in the diner.
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