Rhinoceros

A hungover Stanley (Gene Wilder) meets his pompous and condescending best friend, John (Zero Mostel), at a restaurant. John's inevitable criticisms about Stanley's drinking and dishevelment are interrupted by a rhinoceros charging through the street outside. This provides the staff and the patrons some amusement until the creature charges through the restaurant and destroys everything. At the office, Stanley arrives late as the boss and the other workers are having an argument about the absurd news reports regarding these animals. The attractive but not overly bright Daisy (Karen Black) insists she saw the rhinoceros with her own eyes. Stanley says the same thing, but it's not until a coworker on the street below changes into a rhinoceros before their eyes that they grasp the importance, and absurdity, of what is happening. Soon, everyone is becoming a rhinoceros, and Stanley is feeling the pressure to conform.

"What you are about to see," reads the introductory title card, "could never take place. Several eminent scientists have assured us of this fact, for, as they are quick to point out... the world is flat."

Are they? That dismal attempt at irony is an omen for the rest of the movie. Whatever value Eugène Ionesco's absurdist play may have had on stage, this film adaptation is a leaden allegory, filled with room-wrecking slapstick, that is exhausting, exasperating and tedious. Zero Mostel, who won a Tony for playing the same role on Broadway in 1961, has a transformation scene that is fascinating for its sweaty excess, but his antics can be better appreciated in "The Producers" (1968) in which he and Gene Wilder are actually funny. In this film, the two play off each other just as well, but it doesn't come to much.

No rhinoceroses appear, which might sound like admirable restraint (if not an impoverished budget), but the movie already opened up the play considerably and added a dream sequence and a lot of Keystone Comedy antics. Not showing us rhinoceroses just seems irritatingly coy.

OK, this is one weird film that I caught very late one night, I only decided to see it because it had Gene Wilder in it, who is one of the funniest men in history. I was totally surprised by how bizarre it was. The plot is about Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder talking and all these people turn into (unseen) rhinoceros'. Later on the story goes from zany comedy to mild horror as our 'heroes' try to stop themselves from turning into rhinoceros'...If you're in a good mood you could find some enjoyment out of this, but if you like your films straightforward then avoid this like the plague.

Tom O'Horgan's "Rhinoceros" is based on Eugène Ionesco's play. An exercise in the theater of the absurd, the play was intended as an indictment of Nazism, showing how everyone simply acquiesces to events around them. I guess that the movie doesn't really focus on the political aspect as much, but it's still a funny movie. Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder basically reprise their roles from "The Producers", only this time it's a world in which all the people are turning into odd-toed ungulates. Nothing can stop the transformations!

Admittedly, it's a totally outlandish idea. But, that's a characteristic of the theater of the absurd. We don't actually see any members of the family Rhinocerotidae, we just hear their snorts. Nonetheless, I was laughing almost the whole time. Wilder is particularly funny as the uptight office clerk who falls apart as he watches all his acquaintances change. Zero Mostel's transformation is the best, while Karen Black's character is the most dynamic in the whole movie.

Pretty neat.

I saw this movie thinking it would be a wacky comedy because it had Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder in it (they were both in The Producers so I figured it would be that level of comedy with slapstick and obvious jokes). Instead this movie is not like that at all, it was a complete surprise with a bizarre story line. Gene Wilder plays a guy who starts hallucinating and seeing the people around him in his life and in his town actually turning into rhinoceroses (or is it rhinoceri I have no idea?) It is definitely strange to watch and it is definitely more of a satire and drama and a comment about society at the time in the 1970s than it was a straight up comedy but it's definitely worth watching and good, it will stick with you.

I've always preferred Japanese existentialism to French existentialism. This film dwells more in the latter, but the execution is to die for. An incisive meditation on alcoholism, herd mentality, isolationism, individuality, solipsism, and the ebb and flow of life's absurdity. Themes of sexual frustration also abound, hence the oft-mentioned horn(s). All of this heavy stuff is masterfully leavened with feather to nose doses of well-timed humor. Zero Mostel was a comedic genius and his "transmogrification" into a rhinoceros is one of his greatest performances and also one of his most hilarious. It gave me paroxysms of gale-force laughter. Karen Black was naturally kooky as ever and it really worked well with the palpably absurd material and lines she was fed. Wilder was wildly inconsistent as usual, often annoying and endearing in the same scene. Let's remember what Wilde said about consistency though, it is the last refuge of the unimaginative. Though I believe Wilder was channeling Sartre's epigram of Hell is other people here. In any event, more like a Hippo than a Rhino, he brings specific gravity to the proceedings, though very little gravitas; Mostel more than makes up for Wilder's shortcomings though. If only he were utilized in more scenes. Listen closely and you may catch the name Eugene Ionesco dropped in the dialogue (what a self-congratulatory dandy!). Still, it's one of those films you'll surely get a charge out of. Hard to find, but worth the search.