Bone

An superb and breathtaking movie - purely character driven, unpredictable and mesmerising. Fabulous performances all round, an intriguing script, some good satire and excellent pacing throughout.

I'd recommend seeing it without any preconceptions - don't read any plot summaries, and don't be put off by any conclusions you may draw about the movie in the first 15 minutes...

This is an absolute gem!

I have to say I love the movie's intent just as much as the movie itself. I had a friend of mine watch it with me who tends to do what we all do sometimes, even myself. That is live the pretend so-called life instead of doing what the so-called hippies do. We often look down on people seem to not have "done something with their lives", and at the same time secretly admire them for doing what they want with their lives. When the movie finished she just stood there saying, "I don't get it", but the look in her eyes told me she got it all right. The funny thing is the movie really is like a judgment on America and it's lifestyle that will be even more significant as this lifestyle and the way it kills us becomes more apparent.

Rent this movie and watch it with some of your affluent buddies who are one bad investment or FCC investigation away from poverty. They might learn what life is all about before it is too late.

Larry Cohen's BONE (1972) is a strange but interesting little film from an era when it was actually okay to lambast the capitalist mucky-mucks. Bone (Yaphet Kotto) is a young black tough who wanders into Beverly Hills and menaces a bourgeois white couple played by Andrew Duggan and Joyce Van Patten. Duggan is a slimy car salesman and Van Patten plays his trophy wife. (They have a grown son, who is in a Spanish jail for trying to smuggle hashish.) The film is supposed to be a satire of white racism and male privilege--and it is, but it's uneven at best. The film is well acted but a stronger, more coherent script would have helped. (Bonus moment: there's a hilarious moment when a hippie girl deliberately puts down a banana peel in a grocery store and--you guessed it--a hapless clerk goes sailing into a display in one of the best pratfalls ever recorded on film.)

Larry Cohen would become famous for schlock horror and thrillers, but his directorial debut was this absurd little black comedy. The basic plot is a lot like the one that features in any number of exploitation films, although the consequences are handled differently. It would seem that Cohen was tying to make some points on race and culture classes; but that side of the film doesn't come across particularly well, and it's better to enjoy Bone for what it is. The comedy was never going to appeal to a mainstream audience because its pitch black and at times, it's difficult to tell if the film is actually meant to be funny. The plot focuses on Beverley Hill's couple Bill, a used car salesman, and his wife Bernadette. Their lives are thrown into turmoil one day when a black man named Bone breaks into their house and demands money. However, all is not rosy for him either - as it soon transpires that despite having the biggest house in the neighbourhood, Bill and Bernadette aren't well off at all, and their marriage doesn't seem to be as happy as first assumed.

This film stands out from a lot of other seventies stuff simply because it is so bizarre, and because of the odd way in which the plot plays out. Cohen sets up the film so that it's not always obvious where he's going to take it, and while there aren't a great deal of surprises with the plot; it at least isn't predictable. The acting is of a rather high standard considering that the film is very much a B-movie. Granted, none of the cast deserves an award for their performances; but all fit into their respective roles well, and none of the performances are particularly over the top. Larry Cohen would go on to prove himself as a more than capable director in the years after this film was released, with films the likes of The Stuff, It's Alive and The Ambulance; but even here, on his directorial debut, Cohen still manages to direct his film with style and panache, which elevates above the level of most similar films. Overall, despite not being as trashy as his later films; Bone is still well worth tracking down for the Larry Cohen fan, and gets a definite thumbs up from me!

At last I have found the holy grail of modern cinema. 'Housewife' is the film many people spend half their lives looking for. The stylized approach to incidental music, flashback techniques and the coming together of elusive plot strands all go towards making a truly first class motion picture. This film stands as a beacon shining in the darkness from continent to continent, breaking every mould, chasing its own hysteria which the film makes no bones about concealing. 'Housewife' is the yardstick for a truly wonderful film.