The basic story of Bone is simple: a rich couple deals with a home invasion. But this movie has Larry Cohen at the helm, so it's going to be anything but basic. The man who is there to take them for everything soon learns that the couple is anything but rich. And they're anything but happy. Bernadette (Joyce Van Patten, St. Elmo's Fire, Grown Ups) and Bill (Andrew Duggan, In Like Flint, It Lives Again) are a seemingly rich Beverly Hills couple. Bill's a used car salesman who feels that he's the only one working hard, symbolized by his wife refusing to even getting up to answer the phone while he cleans the pool. Then, a rat gets stuck in the drain. That's what brings Bone (Yaphet Kotto, Alien, Live and Let Die) into their lives.Mistaking him for an exterminator, they ask him to pull the rat out. He does and instead of hiding it from them, he confronts them with it. He then takes them hostage as he goes through their home looking for money.It turns out that the couple has little in liquid assets and is deeply in debt. Their son may be in Vietnam or he may be in jail. And it turns out Bill has a secret bank account that Bernadette knows nothing about. Bone commands him to clean out that account and bring him the money in an hour or he'll rape and kill his wife.Bill ends up taking his time as he realizes how little he loves his wife. He drinks with a lady (Brett Sommers from TV's Match Game) that explains how her husband died from too many dental x-rays. Soon, he's been seduced by a young girl (Elaine May's daughter Jeannie Berlin, The Heartbreak Kid, Inherent Vice) who steals from the system, attracted to her offbeat ways and youthful spirit.He comes home without the money. But meanwhile, after learning how to make eggs - she doesn't cook anymore - Bernadette and Bone have gotten drunk and ended up on the couch together. He explains to her how raping white women and the black mystique used to take him so far, but today, black and white love is commonplace. What started as him continually saying he was going to rape her has turned and she begins to seduce him, kissing him and "doing all the work." He talks about how black men have troubles now making love and she tells him that it's not just black men.After they bond, Bernadette tries to convince Bone to help her murder Bill for his insurance. They ride the bus to the end of the line, then chase Bill to the beach. He tries to win them over with a used car pitch to keep him alive, Bernadette smothers and kills him. Bone realizes that he wants nothing to do with this life and leaves.On Cohen's website, the characters in this film are broken down by how they relate to the world: Bill is The Establishment who may be open to change. Bernadette is liberation and feminism that has been held down. The X-Ray Lady is the real Establishment, the old guard ready to die off. The Girl is the hippy love generation already giving way to the darkness of the 70's. Then there's Bone - facing racism but willing to play with it to get what he wants, as he says, "I'm just a big bad buck, ready to do what's expected of him." He even talks about how he's held onto the past, enjoying his part of the world of racism because it was easier and there was a role. Now, in this new world, he doesn't know who to be.The character work in this film is superb. Witness the scene where the girl explains to Bill how she was raped as a child and that's why she's attracted to old men like him. Even when he tries to connect with her by telling her about the Street & Smith pulps her bought as a kid, she still tries to connect him to the rapist who took her virginity as she begins to make love to him.If I didn't say it yet, Yaphet Kotto is amazing in this movie. His performance is quite literally a tour de force. He's always great in everything he's in, but in this film, he's transcendent. I also love that he borrowed Cohen's red sweater for a scene late in the movie and never returned it.Amazingly, this was Cohen's first film. It's assured and poised, straddling the line between art film and exploitation.

I first saw Bone aka Housewife back in high school (over ten years ago) after a friend dubbed for me his VHS copy. It was a scratchy print, yet it didn't stop me from being mesmerized by this film. The movie stars Andrew Duggan and Joyce Van Patten as Bill and Bernadette a down on their luck Beverly Hills couple that one day find a rat in their pool. As usual, they have no luck getting a hold of pest control but guess who shows up instead? None other than Bone, played by Yaphet Kotto, a psychotic, intimidating, yet lovable black man with paint stains on his shirt. Bone kindly gets the rat out of the pool and then takes Bernadette hostage. Bill is sent on a mission to withdraw all the money from his account(s) or Bernadette gets it (in more ways than one). To give away anything more would be criminal. Watching the gorgeous new DVD of this was like falling in love all over again. Yet, I couldn't help but think there's no way in Hell a film like this could get made today. Here's why: a) It makes you sympathize with a potential rapist. b) A scene of a woman, Jeannie Berlin, talking about an incident of child molestation before hopping in to bed with Bill is one of the films most hilarious moments. c) Bone's character truly challenges so-called 'racial tolerance' amongst a liberal couple. There's no way you could get a masterpiece of agitation like this released by the P.C. Gestapo that currently runs Tinseltown. Owned! In my opinion this is Larry Cohen's best. God Told Me To comes in a close second. It shows what a truly visionary, subversive director he was before cranking out mediocre works like Phone Booth. What happened Mr.Cohen? Maybe Brain DePalma knows. Yaphet Kotto gives, as usual, a knockout performance. Mr.Kotto is an amazing, underrated actor whom I'd love to see get a starring role again. Oh wait, did I mention how cool the soundtrack is?

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.