By Richard Winters
My Rating: 8 out of 10
4-Word Review: Black man terrorizes couple.
Bill (Andrew Duggan) is a slimy used car salesmen residing in Beverly Hills with his bickering wife Bernadette (Joyce Van Patten). He spots a rat in his pool and initially thinks a black man, who calls himself Bone (Yaphet Kotto), is there to remove it. However, Bone has other ideas as he accosts the couple and forces them back inside their luxurious home and begins ransacking it in an effort to find some money. When he is unable to he instructs Bill to go to the bank and take out all the money he has there and come back with it, or he’ll rape his wife. Bill immediately does as he’s instructed, but along the way starts to think he’d be better off without her and decides to not to take the money out and instead goes on ‘a date’ with a young woman (Jeannie Berlin) that he meets while standing in line at the bank. When the other two realize they’ve been had they then conspire to track Bill down and kill him in an effort to collect on his life insurance money.
This was the directorial debut of Larry Cohen who up until this time was mainly known for writing teleplays for many popular TV-series from the 60’s. While he is now famous for doing campy, low budget horror flicks this feature was far different from those and leans more in the arena of black comedy without much suspense. The story though is laced with a lot of social commentary, which is what stands it out and it’s just a shame that this has gotten lost in shuffle with all of his other efforts, some of which were quite cheesy, while this one has some impactful moments and signs of a serious filmmaker with strong potential.
The film though does have a few drawbacks, which I’ll get out of the way first. An ethically dubious car salesman is probably the oldest cliche out there as well as a bickering rich, white couple making the premise seem a bit predictable. The husband and wife are shown to be at odds immediately and thus there’s no surprise then when hubby decides not to try and save her.
While Kotto is certainly a big guy he still should’ve come with a weapon (a gun, or at the very least a knife) and the fact that he’s able to take control, so quickly without one makes it seem a bit too easy. He just pops-in as if he were a genie, a few shots showing him casing the neighborhood would’ve helped alleviate this, and he should’ve been wearing a mask to disguise his identity, unless he was planning to kill them, but without a weapon that wasn’t likely to happen. He’s also able to find incriminating financial information about the hubby a bit too conveniently as this is a big house and yet within a matter of two minutes he comes upon it, which seemed too rushed.
The excellent acting though more than makes up for these other issues. Duggan certainly looks the part of an aging, compromised suburban businessman whose eaten up with guilt and depression. While only 49 at the time he appears more like 69 and I could’ve done without the scene where he runs down the street topless making his sagging skin and chest muscles quite evident. Van Patten is equally terrific and surprisingly goes fully nude in a well-shot and edited assault moment. Jeannie Berlin has some fine moments too as a gal Duggan picks-up who initially seems quite ditzy, but eventually reveals a very sad and painful experience from her past, which manages to be quite profound. Kotto too is good particularly his sinister smile even though Paul Winfield was the original choice and I think would’ve been better, but Cohen found his acting to be ‘too genteel’, so he went with Kotto instead.
What I really liked were the segues and intermittent cutaways that help reveal the darker side to the Duggan character like his imaginary car commercials were he starts to see bloody crash victims inside the vehicles he’s trying to sell. The imagery showing a German Shepheard dog that he used for those commercials and what he ultimately does with him is also quite alerting. The shots dealing with their adult son in jail and the climactic sequence in some sand dunes are quite strong to the extent it gives the movie a powerful punch at the end and makes it almost criminal that this isn’t better known.
Alternate Titles: Housewife, Dial Rat for Terror
Released: July 22, 1972
Runtime: 1 Hour 35 Minutes
Rated R
Director: Larry Cohen
Studio: Jack H. Harris Enterprises
Available: DVD, Amazon Video, Tubi
Scopophilia 