It was with a mixture of apprehension and giddy excitement that I popped "Gas-s-s-s" (also known as "Gas! -Or- It Became Necessary to Destroy the World in Order to Save It") into the DVD player some time ago. You see, I'd been reading Roger Corman's "How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime" and felt the urge to catch up with a few of those several hundred films he's had a hand in. I've seen (and loved) pretty much all his Poe films and, despite a bit too much self-congratulating in the book, love the fact that he really did a lot for independent filmmaking and gave so many people their starts in the industry. However, I've also seen some of his other films too...
Given the cost constraints, time constraints and just general skill constraints, I can certainly appreciate what Corman did in many of his quickie films. Sometimes it works and a little fun gem pops out (e.g. "Bucket Of Blood") and other times it doesn't (e.g. "Creature From The Haunted Sea"). So there was "Gas-s-s-s" and I wondered where it may fall on the spectrum...
Turns out, somewhere in between. I pretty much rank it along with the psychedelic "The Trip" due to the concept and its occasional inventiveness. Though it's down right silly at times (not always in the best way - the humour fluctuated all over the place)and poorly acted for much of it, there's this one short segment of the movie that stood out for me. It happens when the wandering heros of the movie stumble upon an outdoor concert with Country Joe And The Fish playing and the visuals get all psychedelic man. The music wasn't great, but for a few minutes all these images flew across the screen. In order to see them a bit better, I did a frame by frame step through of that section of the film and found some really great stuff (pardon the 46 screen captures that follow):
Maybe Roger knew what he was doing after all...
2 comments:
I actually saw this on the big screen a couple of times. AIP did some re-editing which finally caused Roger Corman to make a final break with them. Is the animation sequence in the DVD? My memory is that that part was done by Jimmy Murakami. Murakami might have had a hand in this sequence as well. Mostly known as an animator, Murakami also did one live action film, for Roger Corman, Battle Beyond the Stars.
Peter, the animation sequence is indeed on the DVD - though my memory of the film (aside from these cool images) is fading fast...
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