Bernard Hirschenson was an artist first and a filmmaker second, and I can say with certainty that he deserves respect for his cinematography and editing skill. I have yet to see the film market categorize Pick-Up properly for what it is: outside the realm of your average drive-in experience. It's been called grind-house and soft-core, but the only description that fits is drive-in. The typical drive-in movie, on its surface, had as much legroom as the Dodge Dart parked in front of it and packed with teenagers, but quite a few drive-in movies dug deeper to defy classification. Pick-Up fits almost every existentialist argument and moral dilemma known to man into a story where essentially nothing happens (in the plot, that is, because your eyes cannot deny there is quite a lot happening). The only conveyed conflict comes after the opening when our stars are stranded in the Everglades. Then things get weird, but how weird is ultimately up to the viewer.
Carol and Maureen hitchhike with Chuck, who is driving a passenger bus converted into a mobile home. Their first glimpse of him is stopping by the side of the road to take a leak, so it seems pretty clear right away that these girls are stunning judges of character. Hey, it's the '70s! Don't be so uptight. A hurricane knocks out a road sign, and a wrong turn finds the bus stuck in the swamp. Carol and Chuck then spend the majority of the time joined at the hips and romping naked in the foliage. I always found something unsettling about this Garden of Eden motif because I am concerned about how many micro bacteria and parasites these performers had to endure in their private parts to make a movie. Watch virtually any Russ Meyer film, where a buxom naked star rolls around a muddy shore littered with debris from the current, and tell me it doesn't send a chill down your spine.
You almost find yourself believing that this is the only real point: good-looking naked people indulging in nature. That's basically what any plot synopsis gives you. That's what Mill Creek Entertainment's Drive-In Cult Classics 32-movie set gave me. That's the synopsis that IMDb gives, but it is drawing you into the trap. Enter Maureen. Vacant-eyed, chanting strange phrases sometimes difficult to distinguish from actual speech, and immersed in tarot cards and astrological signs, Maureen is a quicksand pit of emotional turmoil. While Carol and Chuck slosh in the germ-ridden flora, Maureen is sitting in the bus and staring into space, taking the audience on a mental journey consisting purely of metaphor. She begins this ride by wandering into the swamp and finding a sacrificial stone altar. A woman in a white robe appears, telling Maureen to accept the Scepter of Apollo. Maureen accepts it in more ways than one by writhing naked on the altar for a few minutes. The audience is then subjected to a multitude of images, metaphors, and flashbacks that seek to explain why Maureen is disturbed as well as how Carol and Chuck began their own prospective journeys. Describing these situations would be the spoilers of the film, so, without giving away any details, I'll just say all three of them suffered from the top-tier confusions of any young person being thrust into adulthood: religion, politics, overbearing parents, mistrust and/or betrayal of authority figures, and hormones. How these images are conveyed must be experienced to grant you any real understanding of what might be happening in these young people's lives. Maureen eventually finds herself sinking so deep that she turns to self-mutilation, forcing Chuck to attempt to understand her in coming to her aid. He subtly avoided Maureen as much as possible by spending time with free-spirited Carol. Carol is easy and Chuck is simple until the more complicated Maureen displays a quality of real distress that turns his attention.
It sounds simple, but Pick-Up displays these situations through elaborate editing. At times, the only way to know what is real is that these young people are in the middle of nowhere and waiting for Chuck's boss, a jarring presence on the bus's mobile phone, to try to locate them. Maureen's use of paganism to combat religious symbols might lead one to think the boss is God himself, interrupting to ask questions to which only He knows the answer because the audience is given no glimpse into where His conversation began. We don't know Chuck's relationship with him, and the boss seems to be the only connection to the civilized world as Chuck, Carol and Maureen question their desire to return to that world at all.
What stands out most to me is how much is open to interpretation. You walk in with the basics of an R-rated mid-70s drive-in movie: good-looking people take their clothes off and do things in front of the camera while "peace and love" act as the subliminal message, but then you take a detour into metaphysics and have to look for clues to remind you what is reality. I have seen reviews that claim this film was not made for a sober audience, but the film itself is sobering. I would wager anyone watching this movie on drugs at the time suffered a bit of a freak-out. Yes, some scenes play out like what I am to believe an acid trip is supposed to resemble, but I find it hard to believe anyone under the influence could watch this without having a few walls shattered. Perhaps I read too deeply into the symbolism in this film, but that is part of its beauty. Anyone is welcome to make as much or as little about anything, applying different meanings to each of the symbols the film throws at them. There is little doubt, however, even with the distractions of bare bodies, that anyone can walk away from Pick-Up without wondering what really happened between these three young people in the swamp.
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