Bone

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.)

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In the United States, race relations are and will remain a relevant issue for many years to come. The current Presidential Race has revealed that, despite the superficial progress this country has made, race relations haven't really improved all that much. Yes there's a black man on the brink of becoming the first black President, but considering it has taken almost 300 years for this country to even consider the black man to be a worthy candidate is, in itself, a reflection of how blacks in the US remain second class citizens politically, economically and socially. Today, blacks comprise 13 percent of the national population, but also 30 percent of people arrested, 41 percent of people in jail and 49 percent of those in prison. One in ten black men in their twenties and early thirties are in prison or jail. Thirteen percent of the black adult male population has lost the right to vote because of felony disenfranchisement laws. This is hardly the picture of equality.

Hollywood has had many kicks at the racial cat, but few have been as brazen as Larry Cohen's 1972 Bone. Cohen opens the film with a title card that declares "The year is 1970. The most powerful nation on earth wages war against one of the poorest countries -- which it finds impossible to defeat. And in this great and affluent nation exists its smallest richest city...And it is called Beverly Hills." With this opening Cohen defines the battlefield of a class war that spans the globe, one where the white ruling elite (aka The Establishment) is intent on keeping its vice grips tight on the throat of the poor. But to the eroding Establishment's chagrin, the poor -- oppressed, disenfranchised and pi$$ed off -- are fighting back. Cohen isn't subtle about getting his point across and this opening shot of a light bulb turning on then off sends a clear message to the audience: like it or not, you will be illuminated.

The characters within Cohen's story represent the ideological instead of the individual. Yaphet Kotto who stars as the titular character epitomizes white establishments greatest fear: black, big, strong, motivated, angry and smart. Bone represents the uprising, more specifically the black power movement, and, ultimately, the same poor people who the most powerful nation in the world cannot defeat: the Viet Cong. Bone's presence sets into motion a series of events that reveal things are not as cozy as they seem in white America: its broke (both financially and spiritually), its in denial and its in decline.

Andrew Duggan is Bill, a famous, rich, car dealership owner/car salesman, who is selling a failing American Dream. When Bone pulls the veil off of Bill, the Establishment is revealed as a bankrupt and immoral sham. Bill's only love is for paper and after Bone sends Bill on an errand to clean out his bank account or suffer the loss of his wife, Bill sides with his money despite a half-hearted attempt to maintain his carefully constructed and maintained public appearance.

Cohen recognizes the white elite are an obvious and easy target, and as quickly as Bill is emasculated, Cohen redirects his critique to the Uprising, showing that once the disenfranchised have a taste of wealth, they too lose sight of their ideals. Bill's wife Bernadette symbolizes the ignorance/innocence of the status quo and once Bone gains her respect/acceptance, he allows himself to be seduced by her. This slave/slave owner's wife seduction symbolizes a misdirected/idealized quest for power that is reduced to fu**ing the same force that has been fu**ing you your entire life. But this conquest results in selling out to the same system, thusly subsuming the Uprising through assimilation. In other words, once the Uprising buys into the system, the Uprising becomes the Establishment.

But Cohen doesn't stop there, in fact, he goes to great length to ensure that no one gets a free pass. The secondary characters within Bone also represent particular demographics, and they too are indicted with equal impunity. Bone's strength is that it chooses not to make a hero out of anyone or any cause and in doing so, it distributes the blame equally. We are the sum total of all our decisions and no matter how hard we fight to change things, all we're ever capable of doing is rearranging the chess pieces on the chess board.

Watching Bone today makes you realize that as much as times have changed, they remain exactly the same. That's not to say Bone isn't dated by specifics (wardrobe, production design, The Vietnam War, etc) - it definitely is a film that encapsulates its era - but what is striking is its depiction of an America bitterly divided (see above still for visual metaphor) by race, sex, class and ideology. Sound familiar?

I first saw Bone aka Housewife back in high school (over ten years ago) after a friend dubbed for me his VHS copy. It was a scratchy print, yet it didn't stop me from being mesmerized by this film. The movie stars Andrew Duggan and Joyce Van Patten as Bill and Bernadette a down on their luck Beverly Hills couple that one day find a rat in their pool. As usual, they have no luck getting a hold of pest control but guess who shows up instead? None other than Bone, played by Yaphet Kotto, a psychotic, intimidating, yet lovable black man with paint stains on his shirt. Bone kindly gets the rat out of the pool and then takes Bernadette hostage. Bill is sent on a mission to withdraw all the money from his account(s) or Bernadette gets it (in more ways than one). To give away anything more would be criminal. Watching the gorgeous new DVD of this was like falling in love all over again. Yet, I couldn't help but think there's no way in Hell a film like this could get made today. Here's why: a) It makes you sympathize with a potential rapist. b) A scene of a woman, Jeannie Berlin, talking about an incident of child molestation before hopping in to bed with Bill is one of the films most hilarious moments. c) Bone's character truly challenges so-called 'racial tolerance' amongst a liberal couple. There's no way you could get a masterpiece of agitation like this released by the P.C. Gestapo that currently runs Tinseltown. Owned! In my opinion this is Larry Cohen's best. God Told Me To comes in a close second. It shows what a truly visionary, subversive director he was before cranking out mediocre works like Phone Booth. What happened Mr.Cohen? Maybe Brain DePalma knows. Yaphet Kotto gives, as usual, a knockout performance. Mr.Kotto is an amazing, underrated actor whom I'd love to see get a starring role again. Oh wait, did I mention how cool the soundtrack is?

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.

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!