Badlands (film)

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 reallife 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.

Badlands is set in 1959 and is narrated by the impressionable 15yearold Holly Sargis Spacek, a teenage girl living in a deadend 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 25yearold 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. Hollys narration, describing her adventures with Kit in romantic clichs, is juxtaposed with the gradual revelations of Kits increasingly antisocial and violent behavior.Hollys father disapproves of their relationship, so he kills Hollys dog and forbids the couple to see each other. Kit kills him in retaliation. Kit and Holly 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 Kits 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. ........

Source: Wikipedia