Idaho Transfer
(1973)
This is a weird ass movie. It seems like two middle-tier Hollywood types (Peter Fonda and Keith Carradine) were
driving through southern Idaho one day, perhaps on the way to some bong festival in Montana, and stopped to
spend the night in a National Park campground. When they woke up the next morning, they looked around at the
ample natural beauty and said, "Damn! We should make a movie here!" Now, it just so happened that they had a
movie camera and some film in the back of their VW bus, and a few stacks of cash. So, they just went around to
all the other campers in the campground and said, "Hey, you dudes want to be in a movie? Great! We start
principal photography in 30 minutes. Just wear what you have on, but comb your hair, ok? Just meet us over at
that VW bus and we'll assign you a part. A script? Hmm...no, but that's not important right now." A couple of
days later, they had a few reels in the can and were back on the road, heading back to Hollywood now with their
new movie. They did their editing one night in a corner booth of an all-night diner in Oregon, voice-over
post-production while crashed on some dude's couch in Sacramento, and had it all wrapped up and done by the
time they pulled off Interstate 5 in Los Angeles. A few months later, once all the legal details and fine tuning
had been finished, the movie was released to theaters. See, and you thought filmmaking was a difficult process.
Silly you. And you know what? Not a bad little film, I'd have to say, despite the weak acting and the often
confusing directorial style. Certainly more watchable than many of the "mainstream" movies I've seen lately.
And now on to our show...
Two things before we start...
First off, I guess I should note right here my problem with our film's director, Peter Fonda. I know that he has
done some great work over the years, staring in Easy Rider, Ulee's Gold, Escape From LA,
Futureworld, and The Wild Angels, and I'm sure he's a nice guy and gives lots of money to charities
and all that. Unfortunately, back in 2000 he had a starring role in Thomas and the Magic Railroad, which
my four-year old son made me watch like 50,000 times. In this movie, Peter Fonda mails in the most lackluster,
disinterested, too-bored-to-care performance I have ever seen. Everyone around him, from the little kids to the
dog to Alec Freakin' Baldwin was really trying hard, really trying to give the millions of kids in the audience a good
show. But Peter Fonda was just putting stamps on every scene he was in, dragging down every shot with his
near-asleep reads and less-than minimal effort. He was out-acted by an animated train engine for god's sake!
After about the 32,000th time I watched this movie, I began to develop an intense burning hatred for Peter
Fonda, enraged that he actually got a paycheck for this. So, when I was looking into Idaho Transfer for
my next review, I knew I couldn't help but be negatively influenced by his association with the movie. I have to
fight down an irrational hatred for this movie because I hate him. Sorry.
And secondly, I normally try and work some actor bios into my reviews, but here it's going to be difficult. Other
than established actor Keith Carradine, for fully 22 out of the 24 listed cast members this was their very first
experience with acting. And of those 24 young men and women, only three of them ever went on to act in
anything else in their lives. The other 21 went back to their LSD and their Led Zeppelin albums.
Anyway, we open out in the lava beds of the Craters of the Moon National Park in southeastern Idaho, a desolate
wasteland of barren rock fields and scrub trees. We see two young people, a boy and a girl in their late teens,
out in this wild territory. They're conducting some scientific tests on the local rattlesnake population (!), which
consists of catching, measuring, tagging and releasing them.
We follow the girl as she finishes her paperwork, packs up her clipboard and walks a bit down to an area of lava
rock over a rise. There, seemingly placed at random, is a metal grate covering a brushed stainless steel box set
about twelve feet into the ground. The box is a deep rectangle, about four feet wide and seven feet long. Inside
is just a simple padded bench, a small metal box, and a console of sorts on one wall with a few colored buttons
and lights that looks like an eight-track player.
The girl climbs down into the box, and as we watch, she takes off her necklace, watch, and hiking boots and puts
them into the metal box. She then...takes off her pants? Well, she's a very pretty girl, and has some great legs,
but this is a bit strange.
Even stranger is when she sits on the bench, flips a series of switches on the console and the screen begins to
wobble and shimmer and tint amber. Suddenly, the girl disappears into thin air! Cosmic, man!
Zip zap poof, and the girl is now sitting on an identical bench, in front of an identical console, only this time in a
large open garage-like room. Yes, we have just witnessed "matter transfer" (thus the movie's title). Not only that,
but that first scene out in the lava beds was 56 years in the future! Time travel, dudes!
We're now at the "Institute", as we will call it, a complex located in the small city of American Falls, Idaho, on the
edge of the Snake River Plain, known for its wild natural beauty and cool rock formations. The Institute is
currently working on a super-duper super-secret science project. "The Project", as we will call it, appears to be
privately-funded by unnamed corporate (and maybe academic) concerns. Ask anyone publicly and they will tell
you that the Institute is working on a machine to transmit matter from one place to another, essentially a Star
Trek transporter. No one but the people at this isolated Idaho complex know of the time travel thing. It
seems like that came as a surprising side effect of the matter transport tests, and they're keeping it secret until
such time as they need to go public.
During the first time travel tests, they managed to open a stable portal to a specific time and a specific
geographic point. The time is a late fall day in August exactly 56 years in the future (so, 2027ish) and the place
is about 11 miles northish of the Institute, out in the nearby lava beds. The future point is located about ten feet
underground (thus the deep-set steel box we saw in the beginning) and thankfully the actual time travel box is
larger than this.
There are some quirks to time traveling this way, however. You can't wear anything metal on your body or it will
fuse with your skin (thus having to take your boots and watches off), though you can transfer metal objects in
the separate box. I don't know about the no pants thing, I really think that's just an excuse to have the pretty
girls strip down to their panties all movie. Strangest of all, it seems that anyone "much over 20" cannot time
travel safely, "something to do with the kidneys". This means that the Institute has to recruit young boys and girls
in their teens to do the actual time traveling. They have gathered quite a large group already, all very smart and
intelligent kids. This also allows Peter Fonda to use a bunch of totally unknown kids as his cast, probably paying
them with pot and pizza.
In this 2027 future, the explorers found that the entire world has been depopulated. They looked in all
directions, and checked all possible radio frequencies, even walked down to Aberdeen and American Falls, but
nothing was ever heard or found. The question for the Institute then was "why?". So they started sending
regular teams of boys and girls to do tests (like on the snakes) and experiments to see what happened and why.
So far, they have no answers as to what happened to the rest of humanity, but they suggest that it might have
been some man-made calamity.
The plan is to gather up a bunch of young people and send them off into the future, to bypass the catastrophe
and rebuild the human race. This is still in the early stages as our movie opens, as they're still probing the area
and checking the fauna.
Anyway, the girl (whose name is Isa) goes to see her father (whose name is George), who's also the head of the
Institute. They chit chat a bit, and George tells Isa that he has to go down to Denver soon to do some fundraising
and appease some government officials. They occasionally have important visitors, who they give a tour of the
Institute to, but never let on about the time traveling widget. He hints, however, that this trip is different as the
government seems to be asking a lot of questions lately.
By the way, the actor playing George is one of the three people in the cast who actually acted after this movie
(though nothing special). Ted D'Arms went on to have a spotty career of bit parts and background extras in
mainstream movies such as 1982's Drugstore Cowboy.
George also tells Isa that her little sister Karen is here, having come to join the Institute. Isa is happy for this
(it's unclear, but it sure seems like the sisters have not seen each other for several years at least, maybe more)
and her father instructs her to acclimate her sister to the Project and the Institute and take her for a time trip.
We don't know why Karen is now ready to join the Project, perhaps she reached an age where it was felt she
could handle the stress.
So Isa goes to see her sister Karen, who's in the Institute's infirmary having her metal braces taken out. Karen is
indeed a lovely young girl, well-built with long brunette hair and shapely legs. She looks like she could be on the
OC or One Tree Hill or something, all California surfer babe. She's also like 16, which makes my
drooling over her illegal and icky. Sorry!
Isa then drives Karen out to the lava beds to acquaint her with the land she will be visiting in the future. This is
Karen's first time out in the wilderness and she's amazed at how desolate and alone it is.
As Isa and Karen drive back to the Institute in their big white Chevy Blazer, they stop to pick up two hitchhikers,
an older scruffy man and a straggly blonde chick. This couple is just out wandering around the Northwest, living
the carefree life and enjoying nature, free love and certainly copious amounts of recreational drugs. We get
several Meaningful Looks from Karen and Isa, depressed that sometime in the future these easygoing friendly
people will be dead. They drop the hitchhikers off after a bit, and then drive on to American Falls.
So, Isa and Karen now go to the Institute's time travel room, which is a pretty bare garage set with white
concrete walls and floor (we saw it once before). The time travel mechanism (the bench and console) is linked by
thick power cables to a wall-mounted power unit (a nuclear reactor?), which is carefully calibrated to remain
stable. It seems that finding a stable future point was something of an accident, and they're unwilling to tinker
with the machines for fear of loosing their connection to the future. Isa walks Karen through the entire process
(which we saw earlier, but here, narrated by Isa, really seems spooky and cool). Karen appears a bit nervous, but
excited to try it out.
The two sisters make their first jump together, holding on tight to each other in their underwear (stop it, I know
what you're thinking, sicko...). Karen takes traveling through time better than I would, that's for sure. They get
out and wander around the lava beds of 2027 for a while, checking on a few snakes and whatnot. They chat a
bit about the future, and how Isa wants to have kids once they all transfer out here. Karen is clearly an
emotionally wounded animal, having been in a halfway house for a while, being raped there and developing a
distrust of people. They also talk about the two hitchhikers and their sadness in not being able to tell them about
the future. The two young actresses do a pretty good job here, reading some fairly heavy lines.
Walking back to the camp, Isa slips in the loose scree and falls, smacking the back of her head on some rocks.
Ouch! Isa is clearly in trouble here, suffering from a concussion and probable internal bleeding, fading in and out
of consciousness. Karen has a fair amount of difficulty dragging her back to the transfer box, getting her pants
off, and getting them both into the correct position.
They both zip back to the present, where Karen runs around the hallway outside the time travel room, but finds
no one. Where is everyone? Maybe while in the 2027 world it was daytime, in the present time it's the middle of
the night and everyone is sleeping? Rushing back into the room, she finds her sister Isa now dead, having puked
and presumably choked on it. Ick, did not need to see that. Thank you, Peter Fonda, thank you.
Her already fragile mind snapped, Karen immediately goes over to the bench, sits down and zips herself back to
2027. She has decided to escape her pain by running very far away from it.
We cut now to a few months or so on. Karen is still in 2027, having decided to stay here instead of facing her
sister's death. The work of the Institute continues, however, and Karen's father sends letters to his daughter via
other boys and girls. Karen doesn't want to read them and just wants to sit by herself and mope.
Ok, Karen is a spoiled bitch. No two ways about it. Sure, her sister died, fine, but her father also lost a daughter
and now his only other child won't even talk to him. Karen needs to see that she's not the only one suffering pain
and loss right now, and maybe she should try and be supportive for her father.
Hmm...ok, a quick edit there. Apparently, the government has decided to shut down the Institute. We never learn
the official reasons, but we can assume that they want to put the matter transfer project (remember they don't
know about the time travel effects) in the hands of the military. This is 1973, and The Man had his fingers in
everything.
We see the adults (including George) either taken away "for questioning" or disappear. The kids, however, react
quickly, gathering up all the supplies they can find and transferring into the future. In the end, there are 13 boys
and girls who make the jump to 2027 to evade capture by the government. Despite the dangers (which later
prove to be fatal), two of the adults also transfer to the future to be with the kids. Their leadership in the
beginning might be the only thing that keeps the group from fragmenting, though they both die of kidney
hemorrhaging later.
While all this is going on, Karen is still moping around, keeping to herself even as the rest of the kids arrive and set
up a large camp. At some point, Karen decides to go on her own back to the Institute to gather up some supplies
for her private exile. She wanders around the empty halls for a bit and then goes to the bathroom to wash her
clothes. In the mirror we get a few seconds of Karen's bare breasts (!), the only frontal nudity in the movie (well,
the horrid pan-and-scan cropping might have cut some other shots out). Again, since she's like 16, I feel the need
to turn myself in to the police just for watching that scene.
As she heads back to the transfer room with a few rolls of toilet paper (gotta have that in the future!) she runs
into a boy named Ronald. Ronald came back from the future to get Karen and take her back. It seems Karen
doesn't know about the takeover by the government and she's in danger here. Indeed, they just barely manage to
avoid capture by a sentry before transferring back to the future. From here on, she will be a part of the general
group, though will eventually abandon them again when she feels the time is right.
Ronald will be one of the main characters for the rest of the movie. He's a tall, outdoorsy sort of kid, with an
atrocious bowl-cut hairdo and big plastic framed glasses. While clearly attracted to Karen (go figure) he will
resist the urge for the rest of the film, and indeed proves to be one of the most level-headed of the kids. He's
played by Kevin Hearst, in his only credited movie role.
Back in the future, the kids find that their choices suddenly become very limited when they discover that the
power to the transfer machine has been cut off in the past. Clearly, the government has shut down the Project,
unaware of the kids now stranded in the future. Some of the kids freak out at this, while most of them accept
the challenge of this new world. Remember, the plan was for them to all be here eventually, so this is just an
unforeseen advance in the Project's timeline.
After some debate, they decide to head west for Portland, Oregon. The exact reasons are not said, but probably
because Portland is the closest port city to Idaho and they felt that the coast offered a better chance of finding
survivors. They also have to get out of the mountains before the winter snows begin to fall. While having basic
camping gear, they're clearly unprepared for a winter in the Rockies.
For some unknown reason, the kids break up into three groups. One small group of three will stay here with the
transfer box, a larger group will travel down the Snake River, and a pair of kids will walk overland and link up with
the river group at the Bruneau Dunes State Park south of Mountain Home. This last group is Ronald and Karen,
who set off across the lava beds headed southwest.
The small group that stays with the transfer box (perhaps hoping that it will be reactivated at some point)
consists of Arthur, Jennifer and some other random girl. Jennifer is only notable because she goes nutso later.
Arthur is played by 24-year old Keith Carradine (here looking like a low-rent Casper Van Deim-like beefstake with
long shaggy hair and muscled arms) who would of course go on to be the most successful of all our actors. I've
been watching him this year as Wild Bill Hikock in the HBO series Deadwood (great show, just don't let
your kids watch it...).
But we don't see a lot of Arthur's group, or the river group for that matter, as much of the middle third of the
movie focuses on Ronald and Karen's lonely trek across southern Idaho, from the lava beds to the Bruneau Dunes.
Along the way we get to know more about these two, and we can't help but admire Ronald, and really detest
Karen. While Ronald always keeps his focus and concentrates on the future and their survival, Karen constantly
whines and sulks and pouts and generally makes a pain of herself. She's never happy, always a downer and
doesn't seem to be carrying her share of the weight, either. She bugs him about everything and every night tries
to get him to make love to her! Only the knowledge that they may be the last remnants of humanity keeps Ronald
from tossing her into the Snake. I wouldn't have been so patient.
Along the way, they find some evidences of the still-unnamed catastrophe. We see a few dilapidated houses, some
rusty and dust-covered cars and finally an abandoned train. The hundred-car train contains uncounted numbers
of skeletons in plastic bags (though we don't see them, only hear Ronald's description), presumably victims being
shipped somewhere inland when the train crew was overcome. This is one of the only clues we have to the nature
of the disaster, suggesting a viral plague or something equally sudden. I'm telling you right now, people, be afraid
of the Asian Bird Flu. Seriously.
So, Ronald and Karen eventually reach the Bruneau Dunes (after swimming across the Snake in their underwear)
and set up camp. They wait a few days for the main group, which is running late. Just as they begin to get
nervous, fearing that something befell them, the main group shows up.
And they have brought a woman with them, a woman from this future! It seems that along the way they found a
group of second and third generation survivors, all under the age of 30. They have regressed back to a Stone
Age existence, living hand to mouth and wanting little more. While depressing, at least there are survivors in this
new world, which gives them hope for something better on the coast.
Karen now announces to the group that she thinks she is pregnant with Arthur's love child! It seems she missed
her period and she can just feel the baby inside of her. Karen's joy is squashed flat, however, when they
tell her the Big Secret. It seems that the process of transferring leaves you permanently sterile (a fact that only
recently was discovered by the adults right before the Project was shut down). Karen is crushed, and goes off
to herself to mope and cry. Ronald tries to get her to return to the group, to help them all carry on and find a
better future. She just wants to be left alone and wallow in her own self-pity. Karen is really pissing me off.
So, once again, Karen shows us to be a selfish bitch. She sneaks off from the camp in the early morning, taking a
pack and numerous valuable water bottles. It even looks like she takes one of their few boats to travel up the
river. She's going back to the transfer box to be with Arthur, for some reason, and she doesn't care what
happens to the rest of them. So off she goes, traveling all the way back to the lava beds (I guess she's smarter
than I thought, being able to find her way back without a map!) and eventually finds the old camp.
However, what she finds is not what she expected. Arthur is dead, as is the other girl, both killed by Jennifer,
who has gone crazy out here in the wilderness. Jennifer and Karen have a bloody fight, with punches, rocks and
knives (!), and Karen takes refuge inside the transfer box (the hatch locks from the inside apparently).
Down in the box, with the insane Jennifer incessantly pounding on the hatch with a rock, Karen begins to go a little
crazy herself. Then she suddenly notices the power light on the console! For some reason the power to the unit
is now back on. Stripping down again (this girl spends half this movie nekkid) she hits the buttons.
She reappears back in the Institute in 1973, surprising a technician eating his lunch. The Institute has been taken
over by the government and the military, though from the man's reaction, they still don't know about the time
travel properties of the machine. Suddenly confronted by a half-naked bloodied girl, the man runs from the room
to get help. Karen locks the door behind him, and then eats his sandwich! Bitch!
She has a plan, you see, though not a very well-thought-out plan. She wants to change the settings on the machine
so that she can go back (forward) in time to a point before the crazy Jennifer chick killed her true love Arthur.
The problem, of course, is that she has no idea how. So, with the arrogant blind faith of a teenager, she just
starts turning knobs and tweaking gauges on the reactor control panel, hoping that she gets it right. This is not
going to end well...
She then transfers again, but as you might have guessed, she blew it. Instead of appearing before Arthur
died, she appears at a time perhaps as much as a decade (or likely more) past that time. No one is here,
the skeletons of Arthur and the others have long since rotted away and nothing remains of the camp but
rusted-out water bottles.
She stumbles around a bit, and then...hmmm...that is really strange. A futuristic automobile pulls up, looking like a
Detroit concept car with a wide steel flared body and thick tires. A well-groomed man dressed in a silver
jumpsuit gets out, picks up the near-comatose Karen, and sticks her in the trunk.
As they drive away, we listen to the family inside the car talking. It's a bit confusing, but it seems like either
these future folks eat "savages from the wild frontiers" (ripping off Soylent Green, nice job, Peter Fonda)
or they use them to "power their cars" somehow (like human batteries, ala The Matrix, perhaps?). All this
lame talk is supposed to hit home how environmentally ignorant we all are (in 1973) and how if we don't respect
Mother Earth and eat granola the world is going to end. I guess, but it just seems a muddled way of ending the
movie.
The End.
Bonus! Some handy statistics for you:
2: Number of teenage girls we see in their underwear (I'm going to jail).
Written in October 2005 by Nathan Decker.
May you burn in hell, you hack...
"Ow! Ow! Fucking stop that! Ow! My agent told me they
were going to have a stunt snake do this scene! Ow!"
High tech, baby.
Matter transfer!
Isa.
George.
Karen.
Craters of the Moon National Park.
Isa showing Karen how to transfer (nice legs).
Isa dead.
Stop moping!
Don't look at those! Seriously, you are going to hell.
Ronald.
"Bye, now! Don't forget to write!"
Arthur.
Ronald and Karen out hiking.
Ronald checks out the train.
Local survivor woman.
Stop moping! Again!
Jennifer and her big knife.
This is probably the best staged shot of the entire
movie, with the guy's amazed look and Karen's blase stare over her shoulder at him. Might let Peter Fonda live
for now...
Excuse me, Karen, but can you even spell "temporal
mechanics"?
Git in the trunk!
1: Number of teenage boys we see in their underwear (I'm going to therapy).
0: Number of cigarettes smoked by our cast (kudos).
3: Number of dead people we see (plus most of humanity).