Fonda's co-star and love interest is the film's title character, a sassy but virginal 13-and-a-half year-old runaway, played by Brooke Shields, who was about that age when the movie was filmed. Throughout the picture nearly every man she encounters leers, lusts, or makes a pass at her, in retrospect giving Wanda Nevada an uncomfortable unseemliness that surely was not intended.

The movie itself plays a bit like a proto-Jim Jarmusch-type eccentric meandering comedy, while other aspects resemble Bronco Billy.

Set in Arizona circa 1953, the story opens with gambler and card sharp Beaudray Demerille (Peter Fonda) "winning" pubescent runaway orphan Wanda Nevada (Brooke Shields), who aspires to sing at the Grand Old Opry, in a poker game. Driving aimlessly they wind up in a pool hall where old drunken coot Texas Curly (longtime character actor Paul Fix, in his last film role) produces a huge gold nugget he claims he found while mining in the Grand Canyon.

Stumbling out of the bar, Texas Curly drops the pouch containing both the gold and a crude map of his gold mine. Wanda recovers the bag but, soon after, two career criminals, Strap Pangburn (Ted Markland) and Ruby Muldoon (Luke Askew), murder Texas Curly while attempting to steal the map he no longer has.

Sure enough, Demerille gets gold fever, sells his Studebaker to a racist trading post owner (Bert Williams) and, armed with picks, shovels, and four pack mules, heads with Wanda down into the Grand Canyon seeking their fortune.

Part fairy tale (which is how Fonda describes it), part quirky modern Western adhering to classical iconography with mystical flourishes, Wanda Nevada is a curiosity. It's not overtly comical, and the two villains especially alternate between appearing dangerous and deadly (such as when Strap slits Texas Curly's throat) to foolish and inept (during a funny close-range shoot-out with the heroes, where no one is seriously hurt). Other characters of varying interest come and go. One of the more charming ones is a daffy ornithologist played by Severn Darden. He's in love with Wanda, too, incidentally.

The relationship between Demerille and Wanda, unpretentiously played by Fonda and Shields, unavoidably recalls Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley and their child-brides, but Wanda Nevada projects such an air of fantasy that, in 1979 more than today, actual sex doesn't really enter the picture, though vague hints of it certainly do.

Shields herself, more specifically her manager-mother Teri (who plays a disapproving motel manager in the film), hardly shied away from portraying teens and pre-teen sex objects, child-woman characters in movies like Pretty Baby (1978), The Blue Lagoon (1980), and Endless Love (1981). Yet Wanda Nevada is by far the most innocent of these alternately daring and silly films.

This reviewer was interested in the film mainly because it features Peter's Dad, Henry Fonda, in one of his last (and more obscure) roles, playing a crotchety prospector in one brief scene, the only time Peter and Henry shared the screen. Hidden behind a bushy white beard, goggles, and a baseball cap the senior Fonda is nearly unrecognizable, but his voice sure isn't. (Fonda hedges his bets here, opting to underscore his father's appearance with the melody from "Oh My Darling, Clementine" on the soundtrack.)

The second half of the picture gets awfully mystical, with a spectral Indian protecting the gold with glow-in-the-dark arrows and sometimes transforming (?) into a malevolent owl, but this material isn't to be taken any more seriously than the rest of the picture.

These disparate ingredients don't entirely gel and, the movie a trifle overlong, doesn't quite sustain its simple charm. But it almost does, and there are many other good things about it, especially the photography and authentic early ‘50s atmosphere.

Video & Audio

Though its title elements are on the grainy side, the rest of Wanda Nevada looks great in its 1.85:1 widescreen 1080p transfer, bringing out the most of the location photography. The DTS-HD 2.0 mono is also very good. The disc is region "A" encoded. A trailer is tossed in as an Extra Features.

Parting Thoughts

Worth seeing, with enough engaging offbeat material to balance its weaker portions, Wanda Nevada is Recommended.

Stuart Galbraith IV is the Kyoto-based film historian and publisher-editor of World Cinema Paradise. His new documentary and latest audio commentary, for the British Film Institute's Blu-ray of Rashomon, is now available while his commentary track for Arrow Video's Battles without Honor and Humanity will be released this month.