Plot: A young policeman (Robert Blake) spends his time patrolling throughout endless miles of desert and studying to become a detective. His big break appears when a local is found murdered in his cabin and a police detective asks him to help him with the investigation.
Comments: This film is a gem, plain and simple. Don't let the murder mystery plot fool you, what it does best is to describe Robert Blake's character and to serve as a record of what the 70s felt like. The first thing it achieves by giving Blake's character plenty of nuances. For instance, he has a hollier-than-you attitude that is both his forte (he refuses to arrest a wandering hippie on evidence planted by his partner) and his weakness, because it often interferes with his ego. As for the second thing, the film documents well the animosity between the police and the disgruntled youth of the era. A visit to a hippie comune in search of leads ends up with the detective endlessly brutalizing the kids. And later, an encounter with a bike gang leads to lots of unnecesary violence and even death.
The film's offbeat narration is also one of its strengths. There is a mystery to solve, but it often takes the foreground. What really make the film are the bits I mentioned, plus the desintegrating relationship between Blake's character and the detective's. The camerawork, precisely because of its amateurish-ness (the credits roll as we see Blake's character, headless, going through his morning routines) adds the exact touch of unpredictability to the mix, while the cinematography by Conrad Hall is top notch. As outrageous as it may sound, I'd consider this film much better than "Easy Rider".