EASY FAVORS

More way-out-West nonsense, slightly less pretentious but equally flaky, from the author of Borderland (1975). Beautiful young Adriana, beleaguered by beatings from her boyfriend, sells everything and catches a bus for Patagonia, New Mexico, in search of her long-lost grandfather, a Mayo Indian. In Patagonia she falls in with young A. J. Nelson, a cowboy-outfitted chemist from the East who is investigating the properties of various cacti by feeding them to his cow; he's seeking some undiscovered balm in cactus that will make him famous and rich, but meanwhile he's living with big-bosomed Dolly, a nude go-go dancer who's in hock to wife-beating drug-peddler Reymundo. Adriana moves in with Dolly and Nelson, and after a week in the sack the twosome leaves Dolly behind and goes off into the hills to hunt cactus and find Adriana's grandfather. The old Indian turns up, and he's a likable cactus eater with a mind tuned into the Great Energy: he saw the first atom blast while crossing the desert hills, and ever since he's been colorblind except when on his hallucinogen. He also has the secret knowledge that he long ago killed Adriana's grandmother by hitting her too hard (yet another wife beater). And once everyone has bared his or her soul, Nelson drives off to Tucson with rare cactus buttons from the old Indian and with both Dolly and Adriana as his fulltime mistresses. The point? None in sight--except that wife-beating is bad. But those partial to flipped-out zaniness with metaphysical leanings may find this a mild, upbeat diversion.