The Wayward Bus

FXM recently put a movie in its rotation that was new to me: The Wayward Bus. It's going to be on again tomorrow at 3:00 AM and 9:40 AM.

Rebel Corners, CA, is a small place in the middle of nowhere that doesn't seem to have anything but a diner that also serves as an end of the line bus stop. Alice Chicoy (Joan Collins) runs the diner, with some help from counter girl Norma (Betty Lou Keim), who has dreams of becoming an actress in Hollywood. Alice's Mexican-American husband Johnny (Rick Jason), drives a feeder bus from Rebel Corners to the larger town of San Juan, a route that has no direct connection by the larger bus lines since the roads are bad.

The Grey Fox (I'm guessing Fox couldn't use "Greyhound") bus line has runs that end in Rebel Corners, and one of those buses pulls up, bringing several interesting characters. There are the Pritchards (Kathryn Givney and Larry Keating), together with their neurotic daughter Mildred (Dolores Michaels); traveling salesman Horton (Dan Dailey), who reminded me of the Keenan Wynn character in Phone Call from a Stranger; a man desperate to get to San Juan before the courthouse closes for reasons that are only divulged at the end of the movie; and Camille (Jayne Mansfield), a woman with a past.

Johnny is going to drive all of them and Norma to San Juan, along with his junior mechanic "Pimples" (Dee Pollock), a prospect that his wife is not thrilled with because the bus Johnny drives is in crappy shape and the weather isn't going to be good. Still, Johnny needs the money, so the bus sets off, and Alice turns to drink. Their marriage has been on the rocks, no pun intended, and it's easy to see why.

Sure enough, the rains pick up and there are some landslides that block the already lousy main road to San Juan. But the passengers still want to get there, and Johnny decides to take them down a dirt road that's going to prove to be even more dangerous than the main road. Along the way, we learn a little more about some of the passengers as Horton and Camille strike up a relationship, while Pritchard wants to break it up because he's got some preconceptions.

The Wayward Bus was based on a novel by John Steinbeck, and with that pedigree you'd think the movie would be better than it turns out to be. I think that has more to do with the script than the acting, surprisingly enough. Collins and Mansfield have the sex symbol reputation (and in Collins' case, the descent into Dynasty) that leaves them not getting enough credit for what they do. Collins does have one big bad moment with a drunk scene, but other than that, I really think it's the pedestrian storytelling at fault. The Pritchard storyline is way underdeveloped, and San Juan turns out to be a surprisingly large place. There's no explanation for why anybody would have ended up in Rebel Corners in the first place.

So in the end I think I'd call The Wayward Bus an interesting misfire. It's not on DVD as far as I can tell, but at least the print FXM ran was in the proper Cinemascope ratio, and not both letterboxed and pillarboxed like some of the recent Cinemascope showings.