Right after playing the tough, feisty Sonny Corleone in THE GODFATHER, square-jawed James Caan went another direction; and yet it takes about twenty minutes into SLITHER to realize this particular hardened ex-convict isn't really tough at all...
At least he doesn't prefer fighting, seeming dazedly reluctant when an old cranky farmer wants to break his arm for simply hitchhiking: what Caan holds back provides one of his best performances...
His former high school football star character Dick Kanipsia rolls with the punches instead of doling them out, and is the epitome of a rogue: the irony being he can't ever be alone, mainly stuck with quirky husband and wife Peter Boyle and Louise Lasser...
Boyle driving and Caan shotgun, towing Lasser in their beloved recreational vehicle, listening to big band jazz and searching for a ton of money that Caan's newly murdered prison buddy, played by the always intriguing Richard B. Schull, former partners with Boyle, had promised was...
Well all that stuff, which can fill volumes of exposition, is complicated in the usual pulpy fashion in which evolving/adventurous noirs tend to be...
And SLITHER, named after what Caan does to get out of painted corners as opposed to a snake-driven creature feature it sounds like, has the kind of story that only partially makes sense by the end during the usual 11th hour mystery-genre explanation... an intentional letdown having caused two-hours of roundabout trouble...
Although Sally Kellerman, as part hippy-dippy/part gun-wielding psycho chick Kitty, is Caan's real problem, and yet she's also the purest character being the only one having nothing to do with the main plot/chase that includes super-cool, supped-up black vans...
That have their own formidable soundtrack that ominously emerges from the upbeat jazzy mainline every time they visibly tail our kooky heroes, who spend most of the picture trying to figure out who, and/or what's, inside...
Making SLITHER work almost entirely between the lines: An underrated parenthetical classic.
At least he doesn't prefer fighting, seeming dazedly reluctant when an old cranky farmer wants to break his arm for simply hitchhiking: what Caan holds back provides one of his best performances...
His former high school football star character Dick Kanipsia rolls with the punches instead of doling them out, and is the epitome of a rogue: the irony being he can't ever be alone, mainly stuck with quirky husband and wife Peter Boyle and Louise Lasser...
Boyle driving and Caan shotgun, towing Lasser in their beloved recreational vehicle, listening to big band jazz and searching for a ton of money that Caan's newly murdered prison buddy, played by the always intriguing Richard B. Schull, former partners with Boyle, had promised was...
Well all that stuff, which can fill volumes of exposition, is complicated in the usual pulpy fashion in which evolving/adventurous noirs tend to be...
And SLITHER, named after what Caan does to get out of painted corners as opposed to a snake-driven creature feature it sounds like, has the kind of story that only partially makes sense by the end during the usual 11th hour mystery-genre explanation... an intentional letdown having caused two-hours of roundabout trouble...
Although Sally Kellerman, as part hippy-dippy/part gun-wielding psycho chick Kitty, is Caan's real problem, and yet she's also the purest character being the only one having nothing to do with the main plot/chase that includes super-cool, supped-up black vans...
That have their own formidable soundtrack that ominously emerges from the upbeat jazzy mainline every time they visibly tail our kooky heroes, who spend most of the picture trying to figure out who, and/or what's, inside...
Making SLITHER work almost entirely between the lines: An underrated parenthetical classic.