4/23/09: Maybe I’ll Come Home in the Spring (1971)
We haven’t managed many traditions over the course of RightWingTrash. The most consistent one has involved dwelling on our miserable career. Now we have to choose between one last goof on Earth Day or catching up on our April 15th routine of writing up a film you can afford to own after paying taxes. Fortunately, that decision’s covered by how we’re within easy reach of the public-domain
Maybe I'll Come Home in the Spring.
This made-for-TV movie was Sally Field’s first attempt to break away from the wholesomeness of her work on
Gidget and
The Flying Nun. That wouldn’t work out until her turn in 1976’s
Sybil. This movie is more sappy than sordid, but also makes for a perfect time capsule of the post-60s hangover that America was enduring. Field stars as Denise Miller, who we first see hitchhiking while going through a series of quick flashbacks and fast-forwards. We see her overage hippie boyfriend Flack (played by David Carradine) jumping through a window, and memories of her wealthy suburban home. This is all during the opening credits, which are almost over before someone thinks to cue Linda Ronstadt singing the title song.
The last suburban flashback is poor Denise remembering how her parents caught her having sex with her wholesome old boyfriend. This is meant to be a traumatic moment for Denise, but it would help if Sally Field didn’t look to be barely 24 years old. We also hear a voiceover of a phone call where Denise assures her parents that she’s doing fine as a teenage hippie runaway. “It’s not begging,” she explains. “I just ask people if they have any change they don’t need.”
By the end of the credits, we see that Denise has made it back to her posh suburban home. She’s in her old bedroom, but her parents are too busy to notice. That’s left to her younger sister Susie—whose own bedroom is a perfect time capsule of early 1970s girlhood. Susie’s hair even looks like a macramé project. Mom and Dad (played by Eleanor Parker and Jackie Cooper) are thrilled that Denise has come home, but they’ve got their own bad habits left over from the previous decade. The entire family is on vitamins (“It’s easier than keeping track on whether we’re on a well-balanced diet”) and other medications. Denise is also baffled to hear that her parents are on a diet, as she flashes back to eating out of garbage cans. Meanwhile, Susie is impressed by her prodigal sister: “You look like you lost 20 pounds…you sure look great!”
We then see Flack interrupting a sitar concert/marshmallow roast in a quest to find his girlfriend. Seems that he wandered off on his own long enough for Denise to start hitching cross-country. He steals an exterminator truck to find her, and will later move up to an ice-cream truck. Denise is busy playing with her old dollhouse and giving herself a nice shag haircut. She almost had dreadlocks going—which reminds us that this film could be remade today with a Green Day soundtrack.
In one timely moment, we learn that Susie and her pals are doing methadrine. You didn’t hear too much about that back in the ’70s. We learn that’s the same drug that once sent Flack jumping through a window. Mom and Dad are flipping out and searching Susie’s room, while Denise’s flashbacks reveal how they’re screaming all the wrong things that made their other daughter run away from home.
It’s no surprise that Mom and Dad are inept. After all, they’re kind of liberated. That’s seen when they hold a big alcohol-fueled party for Denise with all their fashionable fellow adults. Denise has yet more flashbacks letting us know that she equates the scene with the pot-fueled orgies of her recent past. She’s supposedly drug-free now—which doesn’t explain one weird scene where she discovers a magic twig that leaves a colorful trail as she waves it around. Maybe she’s just getting high on life. Denise uses the twig to spell out “Happy,” so maybe that’s a good sign.
Flack will eventually make it to the suburbs, there’ll be a lot more yelling, and Susie won’t learn anything from Denise’s example. You’ll end up feeling bad that Denise and Susie didn’t have the chance to be raised by Archie Bunker. You’ll feel even better that you didn’t have to raise a teenager during 1971. You can also feel pretty good about director Joseph Sargent, who’d put that magic twig behind him and go on to direct
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three and 1980’s
Amber Waves—which is one of the best conservative TV-movies of all time, and certainly not trash.
Make it your own: In that great tradition of public domain, you can choose from several cheap pressings—but we like
the DVD pairing of
Maybe I'll Come Home In The Spring with the 1985 teen-prostitute drama
Children Of The Night.
