Slither

James Caan died last year, and TCM ran a night of his movies as a programming tribute. This gave me the chance to record a couple of movies I hadn't seen before. One of those was Slither, which I recently sat down to watch.

Caan plays Dick Kanipsia, who's just gotten out of prison. Seemingly not having any place to go, he goes with fellow parolee Harry Moss, who takes Dick to his old place which at least seems to be standing still. However, the two don't realize that somebody has been following them, and that somebody opens fire on the house, shooting Harry. Harry decides to go out in a blaze of glory by blowing up the house, but not before informing Dick of two names: Barry Fenaka (Peter Boyle) and Vincent Palmer (Allen Garfield), whom Dick should look up.

Harry was part of a scheme that embezzled a mid six-figure amount of money, which would be nice today but was a heck of a lot more money back in the early 1970s. Harry and Barry somehow stole the money, and then when the heat came down on Harry, stashed it with Vincent, who was supposed to keep it safe until Harry got out of prison. Barry doesn't know Vincent's name or identity, which is why he wasn't able to screw over Harry.

Dick goes looking for Barry, hitching rides to the presumed destination, and running into Kitty Kopetzky (Sally Kellerman, who also died in 2022) along the way. Her car has broken down, and she's on her way to the Pacific coast for, well, reasons that aren't well explained. But Dick is able to fix the car, so the two wind up together, at least until Kitty holds up a diner. Dick is no dummy so he ditches Kitty and goes looking for Barry himself.

He eventually finds Barry, now married to Mary (Louise Lasser) and trying to live a respectable life which includes owning one of those old aluminum Airstream trailers to do the camping thing. Barry learns that Dick is there on behalf of the now-dead Harry, and decides to take Dick along on the quest to find Vincent. However, they set off on their way, and we keep seeing this odd black van that's trailing them. And then we see a second van just like the first one.

Along the way, Barry and Dick make it to the office of the Vincent Palmer Investment Advisors, where they're informed that Vincent no longer works for the company, having sold it to the guy there, at which point the guy gives Dick and Barry a forwarding address. This seems more of an excuse for Barry and Dick to wind up at the beach, where Dick is able to run into Kitty again. Kitty actually joins them on the search for the money.

In reading about Slither on Wikipedia, I noticed Caan said that he took the film for the paycheck, and that there's nothing there. I can't help but say that I largely agree with him. Some of the individual scenes work, but the movie as a whole feels like the writers couldn't exactly figure out how to make the plot come together. It also didn't help that the characters felt more like Hollywood caricatures than actual people.

In short, Slither is one of those movies that languished in obscurity; upon watching, it's not too difficult to see why.