Renowned auteur Terrence Malick made his directorial debut with 1973's Badlands. In it, Kit Carruthers (Martin Sheen) is a twentysomething disaffected garbage man who meets and falls in love with a 15 year old naive schoolgirl, Holly Sargis (Sissy Spacek). Holly's dad doesn't approve of their union, though, and is summarily shot by Kit, who then takes Holly on an interstate crime spree, leaving a trail of bodies along the way. Based on the same real life Starkweather / Fugate crime spree of the 1950s that inspired Natural Born Killers, Kalifornia and many other movies, Malick gives a gentler treatment to this story of two lonely people brought together by happenstance and whose union is forged in blood. Its use of voiceover, gorgeous, naturalistic cinematography and sensitive lead performances presage what would later become signatures of the director's work.