#gassss

Gas-s-s-s - No, I didn’t fall on the keys, that’s the title. Well, on the box anyway. The screen says Gas! Or It Became Necessary to Destroy the World In Order to Save It, so ask Roger Corman which it is. 

So there is this gas, released on a military/political animated goof up in the opening credits. The gas kills off everyone over 25 and a young couple set off across the US on a roadtrip to see how people are rebuilding the world, plus back home there are some little Nazi wannabes making life a real drag. Along the way they are joined by various others including a casual revolutionary, his rock music  nuts pregnant girlfriend, another girl that can’t stop eating and the fella frustrated she’d rather eat than have sex. They also encounter various local cultural obstacles including a town run by a team of jocks training fir their team to pillage, rape and loot (what, don’t they already do that), a car dealership run by cowboys that steal cars but can be defeated by gunfights involving shouting out the stars of westerns, a golf course taken over by ultra conservative Hell’s Angels, and so forth....

It’s a comedy. And very much an artifact of an era. Just so you know.

It’s a curious case, neither as funny nor as deep as it means to be in it’s MAD magazine influenced satiric way. Made during the fade out of the 1960s, it goes for both sympathetic and mocking of the ideas of the youth culture of the era. Unlike that other “kids take over the world AIP film” I saw the other day, this one has an upbeat, utterly silly, ending. A lot of the film thudded along haphazardly, but at times I would find myself laughing or appreciating a point it was hitting. Not the greatest thing ever, but still some fun,

Besides, any film where Edgar Allen Poe drifts through on a motorcycle, his gal Lenore behind him, and his raven on the handle bars waiting to give the expected punchline at the end...well, I have to smile at that!