STANLEY (1972)
My favorite bit of IMDb trivia regarding Stanley? And I quote - "Screenwriter Gary Crutcher wrote the film's script in only three days while high on amphetamines." I think that says it all, folks. What am I doing with my life? Alright, I'll curb the melodrama. Stanley certainly plays it cool. Twice in the first thirty minutes, we watch our main character fall asleep. Our main character is not Stanley, by the way. No, we follow a Native American Vietnam vet named Tim(my). You could call him a serpent empath of sorts. He loves...loves his rattlesnakes. He finds humans to be pathetic wastes of flesh, so I guess we do have one thing in common. Anyway, Tim wants revenge on the poachers who "accidentally" killed his father. That's where his slithering friends come into play. If the premise sounds familiar, director William Grefe is pretty open about the fact that he was directly influenced by Willard. Just replace rats with snakes, add Floridian swamp water (Stanley was shot in the Everglades), and voila!
Grefe also helmed Sting of Death, which I covered late last year. Scientifically speaking, it was fun on a bun. Stanley doesn't have that same blithe spirit. Part of the problem is ol' Tim. He's so miserable, it's hard not for the viewer to share in his misery. The laggard pacing further weighs heavy on the body of the film. Oh, and it runs for 108 minutes. Why 2.5 Z'Dars? The acting is actually decent. It would have been easier to invest in the story if it didn't ask us to identify with a guy who beds a 17-year-old (after killing her father, no less). If Stanley were resculpted for modern audiences, it would stand a chance of being an intriguing character study. There's a prizewinner in here somewhere. Alas, it's obscured by crawling mounds of future wallets.
No comments:
Post a Comment