Very disappointing...

Simply A Masterpiece

Highly Overrated But Still Good

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Impossible to say how Roger Corman's attempt at a loose kaleidoscopic comedy-satire in the Richard Lester vein would have turned out had not American International Pictures re-edited it against his wishes. He left the studio after 15 years with them after this.The script is decidedly weak, a common Corman failing, full of potentially intriguing, half-formed ideas that are never realised. Meanwhile the cast of unknowns never get any real chance to build up their characters into anything sympathetic or likable. It's as if the director isn't really interested in them.It's an adequately stylish, and zippy enough production. But like much of Corman's later stuff for AIP, it also has an air of opportunism about it, riding the post-Easy Rider youth-counterculture boom while having only an outsider's empathy with it (Corman was 44 when he made this).Still, if nothing else he does get a chance to say an ironic farewell to Edgar Allan Poe (the author of Corman's earlier celebrated cult film series), who here appears in period dress riding a Harley Davidson with a stuffed raven on his shoulder!

A gas is let loose upon the world that kills anyone over twenty-five years old.Coming from Roger Corman, I wanted to like this, but it never seemed coherent and I think not enough thought was put into a plot or story arc. There are things I enjoyed, such as the permit guy with the whip and how this was an alternate version of "Logan's Run" (this film came out after the novel but before the film, so whether or not there was an influence, I have no idea).There was a problem in that almost no one was under 18. This seemed to be teenagers and young adults cutting loose, but who was watching all the infants?

"Author: Brian Washington ([email protected]) from Los Angeles, California This was a weird sort of science fiction comedy from "Professor Corman". This film pretty much reminds me of a spaced out version of the short lived show "The New People", which came out a year earlier. The whole idea of everyone over 35 being killed by a gas that didn't work on the younger population was a wild idea to begin with, but the surrealism of this movie even made it wilder to look at. Too bad that Corman's last film for A.I.P. couldn't have been a schlock classic like many of his earlier. At least on the bright side we get to look at a very young Cindy Williams, Talia Shire and Ben Vereen in what was one of, if not their first roles in a motion picture." Wonderful little films like "A Bucket of Blood" and "Little Shop of Horrors" were not "schlock." Using childish terminology isn't helpful in a review.

With heedless energy, low-budget freedom and a youthful exuberance befitting its characters, Gas-s-s might be the greatest apocalyptic thriller ever made, specifically because it's neither apocalyptic nor a thriller.The film functions in much the same way Mike Judge's Idiocracy did 35 years later, very funny films that depict silly futures that, if considered rationally, are terrifying and on-point.The film details (well, sort of) the country after a mysterious gas kills everyone over the age of 25, and we follow a select group (including Ben Vereen and Cindy Williams) as they attempt to live, survive and make hilarious non-sequiturs among the southwest desert.The film is a laundry list of psychedelia, societal breakdown, cultural criticism and a lot of silly, clever wordplay. In addition to being spot-on about some of its criticisms about the immaturities and problems a youth-led culture would have (and would be a very relevant critique about all the hippies and their ilk of the time, functioning almost as the voice of reason), it moves quickly and throws joke after joke after joke at the screen, and a lot of it, though delivered and moved on from so quickly that you're barely given the time to comprehend it, and it's just hugely entertaining through its short running time.I've now seen three Corman films, and loved two of them, with this one neck and neck with A Bucket of Blood for my favorite.Don't make me choose.{Grade: B+ (8.5/10) / #8 (of 25) of 1971}