Solid jokes and some funny supporting turns help this scattershot sci-fi/counterculture
burlesque. Olive Films has released on Blu-ray GAS-S-S-S (or as it’s titled
onscreen: GAS! – OR – IT BECAME NECESSARY TO DESTROY THE WORLD IN
ORDER TO SAVE IT), financed and released by American International Pictures,
directed by Roger Corman, written by George Armitage, and starring Robert Corff,
Elaine Giftos, Bud Cort, Talia Shire, Ben Vereen, Cindy Williams, Alex Wilson,
Lou Procopio, Phil Borneo, Alan Braunstein, David Osterhout, voicework of Lennie
Weinrib, and Country Joe McDonald. When GAS-S-S-S bombed with the critics and
the public when released in late 1970, it was the final footnote to the end
of a lot of things: the end of AIP’s spate of trippy counterculture movies;
the end of producer/director Corman’s relationship with AIP; and almost
the end of Corman’s days as a director. Seen today, GAS-S-S-S is, at best,
hazy, disorganized satire of America’s last days of the 1960s, but with
enough funny ideas and good one-liners to keep you sticking around to the finish.
Only an original trailer is included on this quite nice 1080p HD 1.85:1 widescreen
Blu transfer.
In a (barely) animated pre-credit sequence, we learn that at the dedication
of a new U.S. military chemical/biological warfare unit in Alaska, a bottle
containing nerve gas (instead of champagne) was used to christen the lab, resulting
in a worldwide pandemic that killed everyone over the age of 25, through an
accelerated aging process. Far from lamenting the loss of older family and friends,
the various factions of the youth of America celebrate. Their dream has come
true: no adults, so it’s time to remake America. Hippie anarchist Coel
(Robert Corff, FRIGHT NIGHT) hooks up with Cilla (Elaine Giftos, THE STUDENT
NURSES, EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX* (*BUT WERE AFRAID TO
ASK), the lab assistant and mistress of the doctor who came up with the gas,
as they survey the coming revolution at Southern Methodist University. They
don’t like what they see. Not unlike their adult counterparts, the various
youth groups hate each other, so it’s time to split Dallas, particularly
since the fuzz now rule it like a banana republic. On the road, Coel and Cilla
meet other refugees from the struggle, including black bandit Carlos (Ben Vereen,
THE ZOO GANG) his ditzy white girlfriend, Marissa (Cindy Williams, BEWARE! THE
BLOB, THE FIRST NUDIE MUSICAL), Carlos’ fellow gang member Hooper (Bud
Cort, HAROLD AND MAUDE, INVADERS FROM MARS '86), and Hooper’s girlfriend
Coralee (Talia Shire, THE DUNWICH HORROR, PROPHECY). Off through the desert
landscape to New Mexico, seeking The Oracle who promises answers to their questions,
the group encounters car thieves, fascist football players who rape and pillage,
and hippie commune members who only offer peace and love.
Despite the perception among
some today that the director was critically orphaned during his career, there
were mainstream reviewers who took Roger Corman (THE MASQUE OF THE
RED DEATH, THE ST. VALENTINE'S DAY MASSACRE seriously in the 1960s, particularly
during his universally well-received cycle of Poe titles. However, by the time
GAS-S-S-S bombed in ’71 (the same year his United Artists WWI epic, VON
RICHTHOFEN AND BROWN, crashed and burned), the few serious critics that had
remained in his corner finally left. Considering GAS-S-S-S’ troubled production,
it’s difficult to assign specific blame for its failure. Right off the
bat one might offer that it was simply a matter of timing; by 1971, the counterculture,
on most fronts, was turning into a major bummer, and maybe audiences just weren’t
in the mood for tripping out to a satire lambasting it (1969’s EASY RIDER
did spur mainstream Hollywood to go hog wild with “youth” pictures...but
most failed at the box office, perhaps in part because Hopper’s deeply
pessimistic classic was already sounding the hippie death knell).
Certainly Corman’s continued difficulties with AIP heads Samuel Arkoff
and Jim Nicholson didn’t help, either. Both parties agreed drastic post-production
cutting was done on GAS-S-S-S, with Corman stating it was unwanted and crippling
from now-newly conservative studio heads (done when he had left the movie with
AIP while setting up VON RICHTHOFEN AND BROWN in Europe), while Arkoff claimed
Corman agreed to cuts being needed, assigning his own editors to the task, but
then disavowed the changes when the editors didn’t salvage an already
faulty product. Corman and screenwriter George Armitage (VIGILANTE FORCE, HIT
MAN) both stated GAS-S-S-S began shooting with an unfinished script—a
script that was constantly revised in part because of production difficulties
(apparently the weather was a persistent problem). Laying blame aside, when
you combine an incomplete script, being rewritten on the fly, with a technically
difficult production, injurious post-production tampering between a warring
studio and the director, and top it all off with a final product that comes
over as fuzzy at best, then you’ve got yourself the Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse in terms of a doomed picture.
If GAS-S-S-S is really just a send-up of previous Corman pictures (as some critics
assert), rather than a humorous take on America and the counterculture...then
it’s not a particularly cohesive self-examination from the director. We
see bits and pieces of Corman’s conventions, but they add up to less than
their individual parts. Unless an approved director’s cut could somehow
be assembled for comparison (highly doubtful), it’s impossible to say
who’s responsible for the existing movie's diffused, disjointed tone.
What is there on the screen, though, is often amusing at least, and
sometimes interesting...but not at all effective. Scripter Armitage’s
jokes hit more than miss, but the herky jerky nature of the movie’s construction
flattens out the laughs. The opening cartoon is a disaster (what a dumb way
to open this kind of movie), followed by the first confusing sight of Coel,
running through campus toting a crossbow (we’re never told why, nor do
we get any backstory on Cilla’s involvement with the gas’ production).
However, a few of the opening jokes are laugh-out-loud funny (the doctor, tongue
depressor at the ready, ordering a patient to, “Say, ‘Ahhhhhhhh’m
prepared to pay,’”), and after a few truly weird scenes of apocalyptic
disaster in Dallas (almost like from another movie), we’re ready to go
along with GAS-S-S-S’ quirky, clashing nature (I hit the floor with that
hilariously dubbed rookie cop, with Corman and Armitage anticipating all those
poorly-looped chop socky epics by a few years).
The ideas in GAS-S-S-S are potentially interesting, as well; too bad they’re
not expanded upon, or assembled for maximum impact. Cindy Williams’ 1960s
music-obsessed fan (“Hi! Remember The Twist? What started White Americans
dancing again?”) is a potential knock-out (is that her way of hiding from
what has happened to society?). However, she’s used mostly for cheap laughs
instead of genuine pathos. The fascistic footballers may be shallow and obvious
skewering of an easy target (a lot of raping went on in those hippie communes,
too, guys...), but the point of Armitage’s outrage—what that may
be is hard to say—is muted by the fact that Corman shoots the players
as basically likeable buffoons. Alex Wilson’s Genghis Khan-like football
captain isn’t frightening; he’s hysterical (god why wasn’t
Wilson, of THE GRISSOM GANG and DIRTY LITTLE BILLY note, used in an Altman movie...instead
of overrated Bud Cort?). But then again, Armitage and Corman seem to have big
trouble handling the rape theme here (a valid story element for the post-apocalyptic
genre). We’re made to think Cilla avoided rape by lecturing her
three painfully shy attackers into a stupor (a funny idea), but then she admits
to Coel, with a sad, resigned, plucky smile, that she was raped, and
that she just “laid back and enjoyed it.” Uh...is this suddenly
a 1960s ring-a-ding-ding Sinatra movie? I wonder if cheap laughs would have
resulted if Corman had actually filmed those rapes. Of course he wouldn’t
have, though—Corman was always too refined and respectable to do anything
truly exploitative in his exploitation movies. That kind of disturbing,
cutting edge moviemaking (think Peckipah’s deeply perverse, masterfully
compromising rape scene in STRAW DOGS that same year) was way beyond Corman
the director.
The rest of GAS-S-S-S is more of the same: funny one-liners and potentially
thought-provoking ideas, basically going nowhere. Corman stages a rock concert/“happening”
at a drive-in theater (where the double feature was THE SOUND OF MUSIC and TEN
DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD) for no apparent reason (he also throws in an aborted
“guess the body part beneath the psychedelic lights” love scene
that looks like it was cut from THE TRIP). A good bit about Hell’s Angels
becoming country club conservatives starts well enough, but quickly fizzles
out (reality is weirder than Armitage’s now-quaint mockery: today, wealthy,
respectable businessmen buy $30,000 dollar Harleys to pretend they’re
badasses on the weekend, while the square, old-fashioned, meat-eating footballers
Armitage attacks as fascistic, patriotic goons, are now multimillionaires who
piss on the national anthem for millions to watch on TV). And worst of all,
the finale at the commune stops the movie cold when it should be delivering
the goods. Phil Borneo has an inherently funny, Gene Wilder-ish quirkiness to
his delivery that promised a lot, but his commune leader character isn’t
developed by the time Armitage and Corman throw away the movie with a deus
ex machina ending that’s as unsatisfying as it is decidedly unfunny
(forget the Mel Brooks-copied Yiddish God voiceovers...what is a true icon like
Alfred E. Neuman doing with the likes of dubious “heroes” JFK and
Che Guevara?). GAS-S-S-S had all the ingredients for a tasty satire on late
1960s America in all its f*cked-up glory...too bad it didn’t have a more
conscientious chef.
The 1080p HD 1.85:1 Blu-ray transfer for GAS-S-S-S is a considerable upgrade
from the old MGM "Midnite Movie" double feature release. Fine image
detail is much improved, while colors fairly pop (when there are colors amid
all the surprisingly dreary desert shots). Depth is minimal, but contrast is
nicely balanced (even with those solar flare-outs), and grain, except when exaggerated
by the original lighting and film stock, is pretty tight. The PCM mono audio
track is a bit of a disappointment, considering the memorable soundtrack, but
it’s quite clean and crisp. English subtitles are available, along with
the sole extra: an original trailer. (Paul Mavis)