Do you want to watch a film in where 3 weirdos talk to each other for over an hour before one of them snaps and holds the other two hostage.
Well then do I have the feeling for you.
I think the director was going for this suspenseful captivity film.
We're supposed to believe that Heath Lamberts was 23. The guy was like 30 something in real life and he looked older than that. But okay he's a newlywed young hippie with his attractive girlfriend (or wife whatever)
And the two of them are on one hell of a rocky Foundation. Or at least they are for the first 2 minutes. After that their marriage just seems kind of doll and un-interesting but they seem to be doing okay. They were even starting to connect more romantically until Allen Alder intervened.
After that the whole thing is a mess. I thought Alan Alda was going to take an interest in the guy's wife and that he was going to try and steal her way, or the two of them were going to have this kind of on-again-off-again flirtatious relationship, where maybe things go a little too far.
But then the hippie couple reconnects in the end or she runs off with him. 70s films don't tend to have a lot of Happy Endings especially in the low-budget Realm.
But instead the movie takes a completely different turn and it turns out Alda's character is this nut ball with these two freaking dogs, who puts the one hippy guy through this regiment boot camp training program. Before breaking down completely and keeping both of them prisoner in their own house.
Getting to the point where he's about to have them killed with his own dogs.
It's this weird escalation and it feels oddly out of place. Like the first half of the film is more character-driven and it's just these weird people kind of interacting with each other.
But then the last 20 minutes turned into this suspense thriller where you start to wonder if anyone's going to get out of this alive.
Personally I wish the entire film was like the first half. But that's not what the film is banking on and the poster makes it look like it's going to be a suspenseful situation.
Now I went into this completely blind and I was kind of hoping that we get the story where the guys boot camp program ends up teaching our hippie dude to become a bit more assertive and thus better with his own relationship. Or even to make him better at being a comedian or whatever the hell he wants to do.
He's either a clown or a painter and I don't know if the movie really wants him to do both or neither.
The film itself is okay. The acting is pretty standard for your cheaper early 70s film. The story is kind of weird and disconnected it's at least interesting and I was left thinking ''Well what the hell is going to happen in the next 20 minutes''
And it moved along at a pretty brisk speed as well. Which is made all the more impressive given that we have the exact same scenery for out 95% of the film and there's only really three actors. You could almost make this into a play if you tried hard enough. You just need to have one water scene.
Comments
Post a Comment