Now This Message

By J.C.

SLITHER

Directed by HOWARD ZIEFF Screenplay by W.D. RICHTER

There is a fairly promising plot notion here, a little like one of Thomas Pynchon's wonderland allegories. A motley but not unlikable crew of misfits chases around rural California in quest of a greenback grail: $312,000 in cash embezzled from a talent agency years earlier. James Caan, Sally Kellerman, Peter Boyle and Louise Lasser barrel over the back roads towing an Airstream Land Yacht, pursued by two absurdly sinister motor homes painted deadly black and piloted by unseen, relentless drivers.

But Director Zieff does not make the fantasy of the script quite abstract enough, nor his odd, self-consciously cute characters quite believable enough. Whimsy and reality, neither fully realized, cancel each other out. Caan, a perennially baffled ex-con, basically plays straight man to Boyle as a bunko artist-bandleader and Lasser as the band leader's addled spouse, both of whom are amiably funny throughout. Keller man, a souped-up Bonnie Parker, pushes much too hard, perhaps in reaction to ZiefFs almost laboriously studied direction, which favors lingering takes and long pauses.

Still, Slither is intermittently interesting and almost always diverting.

There are some quiet laughs, and those ominous black campers exert a weird, compulsive kind of suspense, although they are a lot more intriguing in their cryptic malevolence than in the mundane explanation eventually dispensed by the scenarist.

The movie boasts some of Cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs' customarily exquisite work and an abundance of character actors chosen for their rather too picturesque physiognomies.

Zieff was formerly a prominent director of TV ads (Slither is his first feature), and he has cast most of the small parts with the sort of eccentric types who are generally seen on TV urgently requiring an Alka-Seltzer. This may be the reason why every candy bar, every can of beer or other easily identifiable product is conscientiously wrapped in brown paper or covered with a phoney label. Zieff must have worried that any time one of the sup porting cast picked up a prop, Slither might look like a commercial.

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