Badlands (film)

Badlands
Badlands promotional poster
Directed by	Terrence Malick
Produced by	Terrence Malick Edward R. Pressman
Written by	Terrence Malick
Starring	Martin Sheen Sissy Spacek Ramon Bieri Warren Oates
Music by	George Tipton James Taylor (theme "Migration")
Cinematography	Tak Fujimoto Stevan Larner Brian Probyn
Edited by	Robert Estrin
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date	October 15, 1973
Running time	95 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$500,000 (estimated)

Badlands is a 1973 American crime film written and directed by Terrence Malick, starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek.Warren Oates and Ramon Bieri are also featured. The story, though fictional, is loosely based on the real-life murder spree of Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate, in 1958, though such a basis was not acknowledged when the film was released.

In 1993, four years after the United States National Film Registry was established, Badlands was selected for preservation by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Badlands is set in 1959 and is narrated by the impressionable 15-year-old Holly Sargis (Spacek), a teenage girl living in a dead-end South Dakota town called Fort Dupree. Holly lives with her sign painter father, although their relationship has been strained since her mother died of pneumonia some years earlier. One day she meets the 25-year-old garbage collector Kit Carruthers (Sheen). Kit is a young, troubled greaser, who resembles James Dean, an actor Holly admires. Kit charms Holly, and she slowly falls in love with him. Holly's narration, describing her adventures with Kit in romantic clichés, is juxtaposed with the gradual revelations of Kit's increasingly antisocial and violent behavior. Holly's father disapproves of the relationship between Kit and Holly, and shoots her dog as a punishment for spending time with him. Kit comes to Holly's house and shoots her father dead. They then fake suicide by burning down the house and go on the run together, making their way towards the badlands of Montana. Kit and Holly build a treehouse in a remote area and live there happily for a time, fishing and stealing chickens for food, but are eventually discovered by bounty hunters. Kit shoots the three bounty hunters dead and the couple flee. They next seek shelter with Kit's friend Cato, but when Cato attempts to deceive them and go for help, Kit shoots him, and also shoots a teenage couple who arrive to visit Cato shortly thereafter.