4 gibbles out of 5
Director: Larry Cohen
Bone is a strangeass movie. That’s about as eloquent as it gets. I did my Larry Cohen bid for a while, starting with the classic films – It’s Alive, Q, The Stuff – and moving around his career to all the strange stuff he’s touched. Cohen movies have a definite feel of – and I’m stealing this term (and apparently the same picture… damn) from this post – a feeling of commodity. Cohen’s low budget to a fault, his guerilla film-making style always in sync with the straight-ahead momentum of most of his movies. Even quieter affairs like It’s Alive give the sense that if a take is good enough, it’s going in the picture.
But Bone was his first deal, and while that down and dirty environment is still there, there’s a bit more wandering here, and a bit odder substance to the movie, as a result.
We have a white car salesman and his white wife, apparently a rich couple, living in a nice house in LA. There’s a rat stuck in their pool. After a call to their “service” to have the rat taken care of, a large black man (Yaphet Kotto) in work overalls appears, and maybe he’s there to take care of the rat but maybe he’s there to rob the family. Hubbie (Andrew Duggan) is sent to the bank to retrieve some moneys while Yaphet, claiming he has nothing to lose, holds the wife (Joyce Van Patten) hostage. Oh, and if the husband doesn’t return with the cash, wifey will be gettin’ the ol’ rape and murder for sure.
The Cohen we know is here in several forms: the behavioral aspects that could come across as canned or curious in other films make sense when shot and presented in this manner, a sort of nervous energy that Cohen gives his movies with an unsteady camera, short cuts, and layered dialogue which starts in one scene and then continues as voiceover in another while characters transition to the next stage in the plot. Again, perhaps this is born out of monetary concerns, and keeping things as trim as possible, but it doesn’t feel sloppy. It feels necessary. The oddball characters pop up when Andrew hits the town for some cash, meeting a woman who believes all dentists are conspiring against her and another woman who would rather be subjected to sexual abuse than be kicked out of a movie theater. But again, it’s a unique flavor to Cohen’s movies, where the momentum makes this acceptable and part of the vibe instead of feeling like a tangent thrown in for a laugh.
But Bone differs in that it’s a weirdass movie. All those other weirdass Larco affairs are B-movies, and so their weirdness just seems like part of the mish-mash territory inhabited by B and D and Z grade films. Bone is not a B-movie. It approaches art. It has surreal elements and intent. After unsuccessfully pitching it to several markets, Cohen starting billing it as a comedy. Todd Solondz must’ve been taking notes – a comedy about a black rapist who misses the days when he could terrify white chicks thanks to his “nigger mystique.” That’s right.
So look at those gibbles – 4 out of 5. Bone is a unique experience. It’s slow, and sloppy, and degrading at moments. And it’s a strange movie without a sense of completion, the plot evolving in an unexpected way that trails off into an odd blandness once it gets where it’s going. But it is so ridiculous at points, and so of its time (1972) and yet oddly affecting in today’s world where notoriety has equaled mainstream success for some questionably “talented” sorts… that Bone shouldn’t be ignored. It feels more purposefully constructed than future Cohen projects (and many films in general), and I get the sense that it would be a big hit in the indie crowds if released today. You have to wonder if Cohen would’ve stayed a fringe director if Bone’ s splash had equaled the effort put into it.
Rat strangling was always my stock move to impress the ladies.
vaguely-offensive 