Donald Pleasance has ruined his pants, which I guess happened soon or later, because they appear to be decades old. Don Calfa has the solution, with an item he once bought at Macy’s bargain basement. Soon, Pleasance is dressed in the most spectacularly weird fashion: Depression-era newsboy from the waist-up, but from the waist-down, it’s white bell-bottoms covered in stars and smiley faces. It isn’t like there are going to be any clothing retailers nearby, as he, Calfa and Kate Reid are deep in the Canadian Rockies, looking for gold in 1973’s The Rainbow Boys.
This trio is looking for a gold mine Pleasance supposedly inherited from his father. Whether or not the mine will be there is something I will not reveal, as it is as likely to be there as not. He has a tendency to tell rambling stories which I was never certain if they were knowing fabrications, inventions of a fractured mind, or a combination of the two. This is a guy we hear talking about German bombers in WWII dropping land mines, and how one was stuck in a tree in his yard.
Still, this mission provides something that had been missing in the lives of all three of these people. We never learn much about them, but they all seem to scarred from various things in their past. Calfa was apparently in prison, though we don’t know why. Reid was likely married for only a brief time and is still bitter and cynical. We’re never even fully certain what has reduced Pleasance to this bizarre assortment of personality quirks, complete will an apparent touch of mild Tourette’s.
Despite some of the dialogue rather mildly addressing adult themes, the three leads are like children. Each is impulsive and prone to extreme mood changes. Calfa is like a kid who is excited by pictures of naked women, without fully understanding why they find themselves aroused. Reid seems to be channeling Lucy from Peanuts. Pleasance is extremely proud of a house he built entirely by himself, from items salvaged from the river, though the result puts the “shack” in “ramshackle”. It’s like he built a kid’s treehouse, except on the ground. Even their mission of going to get gold feels naïve, as their enthusiasm for this seemed to me like little kids looking for pirate treasure.
A fourth character is Calfa’s unusual means of transportation, a shamble that is almost a physical representation of the mess that is Pleasance’s mind. This trike is obviously a custom-made job, a hybrid of a motorcycle, the bench seat of a sedan, two car tires and God only knows what else. It seems to have a max cruising speed of less than 25 MPH, and it’s a wonder it will stay together even at those speeds. Supposedly, he drove all the way from NYC on it.
Still, it will carry them up steep, winding, dirt roads into the mountains. Alas, the wheels will come off the film when the wheels come off the trike. I was surprised to find myself gut-punched by the moment it rolls off the road and shatters into a great many pieces after a long fall.
It is at this point the picture continues in the same manner as before, except it becomes more wearing than charming. In a way, it’s a bit like how I feel about exuberant children: amusing for an hour or so, and deeply tiring afterwards. I stopped caring whether they would strike gold, or even find the mine. I just wanted it to end.
The Rainbow Boys is in the general wheelhouse of the works of Jim Jarmusch, whose oeuvre I don’t care much for, and Aki Kaurismaki, whose films I love. I really wanted to like it more than I did, this oddly compelling film that is as jumbled but endearing as its leads and, especially, that trike.
Dir: Gerald Potterton
Starring Donald Pleasance, Kate Reid, Don Calfa
Watched on Vinegar Syndrome blu-ray