The Michigan Daily-Wednesday, May 14, 1980-Page 9 .... r ....... .... ... v .. ..... ........... . . . . ::. . ..: vv:":":+rv."v:w:v:.:w:, .. M HOLL YWOOD GONZO A strange and terrible saga By ANNE SHARP Before we examine Where the Buf- falo Roam on a purely art-for-arts sake basis, I would like to make reply to David Felton, who in a recent issue of Rolling Stone called Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, the fictionalized subject of the film, a "drug-crazed greedhead" for accepting royalties from such a "cheap piece of exploitation." First off, I find this kind of raving comic in the extreme, coming from the pages of a mag which for years has lionized Thompson as a counter-culture hero for, among other things, his appalling overconsumption of every drug known to man. Second, times are getting tougher than they were in the relatively carefree economic climate of the Nixon- era, when Thompson became addic- ted to pharmceutical thrills, high- speed driving and generally trashing everything in sight. It costs a lot of money to be Hunter Thompson these days, and selling screen rights to one's writings, no matter how talentless and uncool movie people might be, is a marvelous way to raise funds for another bout of Gonzo Journalism (Thompson's trademark literary style pioneered, by the way, in Rolling Stone). Rather than. call Thompson a sellout, one should rather admire him for his efforts to salvage the film when he saw it was turning into an infunny flop (he wrote several segments for the film and acted as creative consultant), rather than denouncing the whole thing a la Gore Vidal and his Caligula. TO BE BRUTALLY frank in the grand old Daily tradition, Buffalo sucks the big Wazoo. Not that it had to be that way. Thompson's pieces are wierd, hilarious and fast-paced-Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, for instance, is a perfect subject for a film comedy. Thompson himself, with his mirror glasses. cigarette holder and middle- aged dignity half-masking a personality part Bugs Bunny, part Tasmanian Devil, is a self-made cartoon charac- ter; he is in fact, the prototype for Uncle Duke in Garry Trudeau's strip "Doonesbury." It's a fact of the movie biz that, while talented UCLA cinematography grads bus tables or starve in the streets, in- competent hacks like producer Art Lin- son are allowed to direct, and ruin, big studio films like this one. With Linson's approval, Buffalo's screen writers scrapped most of Thompson's gags for their own, and the new ones just aren't funny at all, just violent and over- bearing. Thompson himself, while wat- ching the filming of Buffalo, was heard to ask, "Why am I always beating up Negroes and midgets in this film?" Bill Murray, who portrays Thompson, like many other New Comedians, is rather esoteric in his humor; to watch him rough up a chauffeur in a hallucinatory frenzy or wastea teletype machine with a Luger or trash a fancy hotel room playing football with midget Cuban bellboys, is, well, slightly em- barrassing. The big cheat of Buffalo, aside from the Neil Young soundtrack (i.e., several variations of "Home on the Range" in minor keys), is its total lack of a cohesive plotline. One wouldn't mind that so much, but they promised us one; in the opening scene, Murray/Thompson announces that this is the story of his lawyer friend Lazlo (Peter Boyle), presumed dead in some mad adventure. But it isn't really. Lazlo just shows up for a few minor vignettes amidst the mad whirl of Murray's antics. Except for one segment in which Lazlo joins a bunch of gun-happy South American revolutionaries, he mainly acts as Murray's straight guy as Murray picks up and frightens hitchhikers, spikes a syringe of smack into a Red Cross nur- se's arm, etc. As a result, one really doesn't care about Lazlo, or, ultimately, about anything the film of- fers ... Oh, hey, hand me those binoculars, will you? I think I see Ralph Steadman coming out of a bakeshop. e A bad day for horror By ADAM KNEE Friday the 13th, which recently opened at the Briarwood and Univer- sityNDrive-in theaters, depicts what its advertisements call "a 24 hour night- mare of terror" in what turns out to be a ninety-minute nightmare of boredom. This horror-suspense piece-which deals with a group of counselors who get sliced up, one by one, while preparing to reopen a summer camp-has no real chills and is so slow moving that one is truly concerned not about who the murderer is, but about when thefilm will end. In the picture's opening sequence, two young counselors have an intimate conversation, marred because the sound is horrible and because the ac- tors seem too embarrassed to recite their lines clearly, and as they start sexual intercourse, we get to experien- ce the thrill of their brutal murder. The optimistic viewer supposes that this may be the beginning of a campy horror-film parody, but the possibility soon proves all too slight. The story quickly takes the shape of a typical murder mystery, and the actors con- tinue to appear as though they ob- viously wish they were elsewhere. AND ONE can hardly blame them. Both Victor Miller's dialog and plot are shallow, contrived, and wrought with cliches. The first part of the film is filled with minor events unsuccessfully aimed at tensing up the audience; for example, one counselor feigns drowning for a laugh, while the town crazy, perhaps played by some retired vaudeville performer, continually shows up at inoportune times and places shouting, "You're all doomed." The writer attempts to create an empathy with his simpl:e, stereotyped charac- ters by showing them as friendly, sex- and marijuana-loving youths, always ready with witty remarks. For exam- ple, a young man chops a snake in half, and when asked if it is dead, he quips, "Either that or it's got a very small. clone." Much of the film's technical work is also absurd. When we see a reflection of lightning against a character's skin, it is yellow rather than white, and the en- suing rainy is audible long before it is visible. Tbsdialpg in spletimT just enough out of synchronization to be irritating, and now and then a bright light within the frame causes a distor- tion or washes out part of the picture. To save money, Friday the 13th was shot on location at a camp in New Jer- sey, and it looks like it. There are a few nice nature shots-dark clouds moving slowly over the camp's lake, for exam- ple-but for a good deal of the time, the cinematographer seems at a loss for what to do with his camera; framing is occasionally awkward, and some camera movements are unnecessarily repeated. To make matters worse, many poor shots are held interminably. Director Sean Cunningham and editor Bill Freda lack a faculty essen- tial for all good horror filmmakers: a sense of rhythm and timing. Because of this, all of the supposedly scary sur- prised in the early part of the film fall flat. When the ostensibly drowned counselor surfaces from under the lake, we aren't jarred because it doesn't happen suddenly. The local madman's appearance in a pantry is not startling because the cutting is not quick enough and because he is too far back inside the pantry when the door is opened. The ac- tion scenes involving the murderer also suffer from clumsy or non-existent editing. The only effective means Cun- ningham has of disturbing the audience at all are the presentation of extreme gore, or the use of a removed hand-held camera toimply the propinquity of an evil observer and the use of foreboding music, the latter two means implemen- ted to the point of tedium. Indeed, the special make-up effects in the graphicly violent scenes, created by Tom Santini (known for his work on Dawn of the Dead), is the sole outstan- ding feature of the entire film. We see slow and vivid decapitation, throat- slitting, knifing, and assorted other maulings. The murderer's presence scares us only because we are afraid of how disgusting each successive attack will get. Friday the 13th, then, thrives on blood; it is the only horror here. Our real fear should be that this execrable waste of celluloid, totally void of in- tellectual or artistic merit, may do bet- ter at the box office than other more- deserving films of its genre. T7AR DY BREAKFAST Continuous performances from 7:30am.-100P.m. (Also ser ved Monday through Fridat.) ThAnn Arbr Flm Coopratie Presents at Aud. A $1.50 WEDNESDAY, MAY 14 CUL-DE-SAC (Roman Polonskijl1967) -7:00-AUD A A tale -of a middle-aged, whimpering asexual whose gorgeous wife loves him enough to dress him in her nighties. Interrupting this strange form of bliss is a gangster needing a hideout. Mean and sadistic or slapstick comedy, depending on how you look at it. One of Polanski's best, it won awards at the Berlinand Venice Film Festival. Stars DONALD PLEASANCE, FRANCOISE DORLEAC, JACK MacGOWRON, JACQUELINE BISSET. ROSEMARY'S BABY (Roman Pal onski, 1968) 9:00-AUD A Forerunner of the whole devil worship genre, ROSEMARY'S BABY, in the hands of the master of the macabre, Roman Polan- ski, remains one of ;the most horrifying documents of justified paranoia ever filmed. Did Mia Farrow really become pregnant at a Satanic orgy or was it a gruesome nightmare? In Polanski's cinema of mood, one answer is as frightening as the other, JOHN CASSAVETTES, RUTH GORDON, SIDNEY BLACKMER. Tomorrow: FILMMAKER JON JOST WILL BE IN ANN ARBOR. Showing are iwo Jost films: SPEAKING DIRECTLY (7:00) and LAST CHANTS FOR A SLOW DANCE (10:04). Mr. Josi will given t between ihe iwo shows. FREE. 0a fr81t !ef 4t : 'rih §k a g . - -& .' w"+b~