cult film freak: KEVIN COSTNER WITH JUDD NELSON & SAM ROBARDS IN 'FANDANGO'

Kevin Costner in FANDANGO Year: 1985 Rating: ****

Director Kevin Reynolds didn't know who was in the room when his student film PROOF screened... and it was none other than Steven Spielberg, who'd later hire him to enhance the story about a group of early-1970's Vietnam War-era college students, one a coward forced to prove his worth by parachuting in a rural Texas stopover where the instructor's a burnout hippie, played by scene-stealing Marvin J. McIntyre...

Who's the only actor returning for the feature-length version FANDANGO starring newcomer Kevin Costner (in the kind of zesty youthfulness liken to SILVERADO) as the best looking and most confident instigating leader while Judd Nelson... the same year he'd portray an extremely cool high-school student in THE BREAKFAST CLUB... proves his versatility here as the complete opposite...

Kevin Costner in FANDANGO with Judd Nelson

His neurotically-complaining Phil Hicks is not only constantly goaded by Costner as Gardner Barnes... including giving up his own car for a trip across the landscape-filled Texas to find something called DOM...

But he's in a different yet similar situation as Costner's second-banana Sam Robards, who, having broken up with the fiance his mentor once dated (Suzy Amis), has to constantly, like Nelson, butt heads with Costner, personally glad that the marriage — curbed by a Vietnam draft notice — seems to be called off...

Judd Nelson and Kevin Costner in FANDANGO with Sam Robards

Meanwhile, Nelson's problem is he's a pathetic "weenie", resulting in the parachuting dare that PROOF was entirely — flanked by several other equally-involving vignettes including shooting fireworks with local cutey Elizabeth Dailey or trying to hitch a literal ride on a train...

Wrapped in a terrific cult road-movie also featuring Chuck Bush as the group's gentle-giant mascot while the only real flaw's a drawn-out wedding finale, where one of the title's meanings becomes embarrassingly real — yet it's a nearly perfect beer-guzzling, music-pounding trip getting there.