Review #1136: Gas-s-s-s.
Cast:
Robert Corff (Coel), Elaine Giftos (Cilla), Bud Cort (Hooper), Talia Shire (Coralee), Ben Vereen (Carlos), Cindy Williams (Marissa), Alex Wilson (Jason), George Armitage (Billy the Kid), and Country Joe McDonald (AM Radio) (#368 - The Little Shop of Horrors, #684 - It Conquered the World, #852 - The Terror, #931 - Not of This Earth, #1007 - Attack of the Crab Monsters, #1039 - Five Guns West, and #1042 - War of the Satellites)
Review:
Gas-s-s-s (also known as Gas! or It Became Necessary to Destroy the World in Order to Save It) is a black comedy in search of laughs at the end of the world. Needless to say, this is a clunky picture to sit through, moving at a pace more sluggish than anything seen in other films involving the youth culture of the late 1960s, where even films such as Alice's Restaurant (1969) and Zabriskie Point (released months before this film) manage to generate better entertainment value than this in part because they seemed to know where they wanted to go as a film - for the most part. With this movie, I can't be so certain Corman knew where he wanted to go. Did he want to make a satire about the end of days with hippie children (all under the age of 25) being the only survivors? Or did he want to make a movie that essentially devolves into a bunch of sketches involving hippies that happen to be apocalyptic? The fact that the film is 79 minutes long is somewhat of a blessing, since the idea of watching hippies in the desert for longer than 90 minutes would likely result in an actual apocalypse in the movie theater. With an ensemble cast like this, one might wonder if there's any sort of chemistry to give some laughs. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Corff (who now serves as a voice coach for various films) doesn't really present much charisma at any point of the film, not giving many laughs. Giftos isn't too much better, and it's amusing to see how uncooked their scenes seem to be from beginning to end. The other members of the cast include people who would become prominent for other products in the decade such as Cort (wearing sunglasses for all of his screen-time), Shire (credited as Tally Coppola), and Williams (would later star in Laverne & Shirley), but I'll be darned if I could note any sort of performance that generates consistent laughter, as if aimlessness was supposed to be the punchline. The groups and people that the film showcases throughout its run-time is as such: a police force that controls Dallas, a cowboy who steals their car, a meat-ravenous football team, a biker group that likes to ride around in golf carts, and Edgar Allen Poe in a motorcycle, spouting references from his work with a bird and lady at his side. After a while, it can get easy for the eyes to start wandering away from the film, as if the attempts to be "hip" are coming off as toothless and absurd, and I can only imagine how it would've felt upon original release. This was the last film that Corman directed for American International Pictures, and he had conflicts with the main studio executives (and founders), James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff, particularly with the ending shot, which went from one involving the top of a mesa to a simple kiss between the main couple - needless to say, the film wasn't a particularly great success. Corman had his reasons for the film's problems, stating that it was "...far too intellectual. Other people have told me that they think it's a meaningless film." In short, my thoughts on the film fall under the latter part of his statement, and this is disappointing when compared to other Corman directed films. On the whole, this is a movie without much charm or success in reaching the audience it wanted to reach in 1970, and it isn't much of a film to sit through over four decades later.
Overall, I give it 3 out of 10 stars.
