http://eattheblinds.blogspot.comIn the United States, race relations are and will remain a relevant issue for many years to come. The current Presidential Race has revealed that, despite the superficial progress this country has made, race relations haven't really improved all that much. Yes there's a black man on the brink of becoming the first black President, but considering it has taken almost 300 years for this country to even consider the black man to be a worthy candidate is, in itself, a reflection of how blacks in the US remain second class citizens politically, economically and socially. Today, blacks comprise 13 percent of the national population, but also 30 percent of people arrested, 41 percent of people in jail and 49 percent of those in prison. One in ten black men in their twenties and early thirties are in prison or jail. Thirteen percent of the black adult male population has lost the right to vote because of felony disenfranchisement laws. This is hardly the picture of equality.Hollywood has had many kicks at the racial cat, but few have been as brazen as Larry Cohen's 1972 Bone. Cohen opens the film with a title card that declares "The year is 1970. The most powerful nation on earth wages war against one of the poorest countries -- which it finds impossible to defeat. And in this great and affluent nation exists its smallest richest city...And it is called Beverly Hills." With this opening Cohen defines the battlefield of a class war that spans the globe, one where the white ruling elite (aka The Establishment) is intent on keeping its vice grips tight on the throat of the poor. But to the eroding Establishment's chagrin, the poor -- oppressed, disenfranchised and pi$$ed off -- are fighting back. Cohen isn't subtle about getting his point across and this opening shot of a light bulb turning on then off sends a clear message to the audience: like it or not, you will be illuminated.The characters within Cohen's story represent the ideological instead of the individual. Yaphet Kotto who stars as the titular character epitomizes white establishments greatest fear: black, big, strong, motivated, angry and smart. Bone represents the uprising, more specifically the black power movement, and, ultimately, the same poor people who the most powerful nation in the world cannot defeat: the Viet Cong. Bone's presence sets into motion a series of events that reveal things are not as cozy as they seem in white America: its broke (both financially and spiritually), its in denial and its in decline.Andrew Duggan is Bill, a famous, rich, car dealership owner/car salesman, who is selling a failing American Dream. When Bone pulls the veil off of Bill, the Establishment is revealed as a bankrupt and immoral sham. Bill's only love is for paper and after Bone sends Bill on an errand to clean out his bank account or suffer the loss of his wife, Bill sides with his money despite a half-hearted attempt to maintain his carefully constructed and maintained public appearance.Cohen recognizes the white elite are an obvious and easy target, and as quickly as Bill is emasculated, Cohen redirects his critique to the Uprising, showing that once the disenfranchised have a taste of wealth, they too lose sight of their ideals. Bill's wife Bernadette symbolizes the ignorance/innocence of the status quo and once Bone gains her respect/acceptance, he allows himself to be seduced by her. This slave/slave owner's wife seduction symbolizes a misdirected/idealized quest for power that is reduced to fu**ing the same force that has been fu**ing you your entire life. But this conquest results in selling out to the same system, thusly subsuming the Uprising through assimilation. In other words, once the Uprising buys into the system, the Uprising becomes the Establishment.But Cohen doesn't stop there, in fact, he goes to great length to ensure that no one gets a free pass. The secondary characters within Bone also represent particular demographics, and they too are indicted with equal impunity. Bone's strength is that it chooses not to make a hero out of anyone or any cause and in doing so, it distributes the blame equally. We are the sum total of all our decisions and no matter how hard we fight to change things, all we're ever capable of doing is rearranging the chess pieces on the chess board.Watching Bone today makes you realize that as much as times have changed, they remain exactly the same. That's not to say Bone isn't dated by specifics (wardrobe, production design, The Vietnam War, etc) - it definitely is a film that encapsulates its era - but what is striking is its depiction of an America bitterly divided (see above still for visual metaphor) by race, sex, class and ideology. Sound familiar?

This movie didn't have much to offer in the way of well, anything.Everything's kind of played for laughs and made in the semi-surreal documentary style of filming that was sort of in vogue at the time.The acting was OK by everyone except Yaphett Kotto who never has learned how to not overact. You can argue that he's supposed to be playing a maniac, yet he acts the same in every movie he's been in.I had high hopes for this movie, Larry Cohen's directorial debut, Yapphet Kotto playing a racist homicidal rapist, etc. But Kotto seems about as harmless as a parakeet and the story is just very flat. Just mediocre all the way around.

BONE (3+ outta 5 stars) Very odd film that gets better and better the more times you see it. The plot sounds like an average thriller... but the movie is really a comedy... a very black, very subversive comedy. A well-to-do middle-aged couple (Andrew Duggan, Joyce Van Patten) have their bickering interrupted by a mysterious, threatening black man (Yaphet Kotto) who seems to come out of nowhere. He ransacks the house, looking for money. After coming up dry he sends the husband to the bank to withdraw some cash... if he doesn't come back in an hour he is going to rape the wife. Well, the husband takes the opportunity to run out on his wife and have a one night stand with a crazy woman he meets outside of the bank. The wife and her captor, in the meantime, actually begin to form a bond... and soon take off after the errant husband to seek their revenge. Or do they? Excellent performances and dialogue. I was a little taken aback by the movie the first time I saw it because I wasn't sure where it was going... so you'll need to keep an open mind to fully appreciate it. Why was Yaphet Kotto never a big movie star? He OWNS this movie! (Then again, he pretty well owns EVERY movie he appears in.) Classic opening dream sequence of Andrew Duggan selling used cars filled with gruesome accident victims!

"Bone" opens with a shot of the bucolic veneer of affluent white America. There is something glib and greasy in the ease with which the Beverly Hills couple, Bill and Bernadette, interact with each other at the side of their pool. Their leisure is an act of aggression. There is something under the surface, unnamed, ignored.The rat in the pool is like a stopper that keeps the veneer in place. When the rat is removed, the stopper is unplugged and we then watch as their delusions slowly go down the drain. As the characters speak of their son we see flashbacks that serve the dual purpose of representing the delusional story that the parents tell themselves, and perhaps even their mental image of the nightmarish reality of the situation.These visual spikes tear into the veneer that has been spread before us. Each character has created an image of themselves in their heads. It is an idealized version that they don't live up to. This movie is not only an indictment of an era, it's a stab at that which makes us human. The impact of the film not only punctures the skin, ripping off the veneer, it pushes past flesh and strikes bone.