A gas-leak at a chemical warfare plant in Alaska increases the rate of neuron depletion in humans over 25, killing off all the adults in the world; a band of happy young people drive across the Southwest in search of a new existence, encountering jock fascists who want to run things like a football game and rival gangs at a country club who have turned the golf course into a mutinous dictatorship. Political allegory with rock music and psychedelic flourishes should have contained funnier satire. From what we can see, the point being made is that--left to their own devices--kids will screw up the planet just as badly as their elders have done. Producer-director Roger Corman, coasting on the exhaust of "Easy Rider", had some quirky ideas, but nothing is developed far enough to sustain interest. Even the bits of outré comedy stop short of becoming revue material (à la TV's "Laugh-In"), though perhaps a more exaggerated format would have been successful here. The handling isn't far-out enough. Some of the low-budget style looks good, and many of the cast members went on to bigger and better things. *1/2 from ****

Roger Corman is undeniably one of the most versatile and unpredictable directors/producers in history. He was single-handedly responsible for some of my favorite horror films ever (like the Edgar Allen Poe adaptations "Masque of the Red Death" and "Pit and the Pendulum") as well as some insufferably cheap and tacky rubbish quickies (like "Creature from the Haunted Sea" and "She Gods of the Shark Reef"). Corman also made a couple of movies that are simply unclassifiable and – simply put – nearly impossible to judge properly. "The Trip", for example, as well as this imaginatively titled "Gas-s-s-s" can somewhat be labeled as psychedelic exploitation. In other words, they're incredibly strange hippie-culture influenced movies. Half of the time you haven't got the slightest idea what's going on, who these characters are that walk back and forth through the screen and where the hell this whole thing is going. The plot is simply and yet highly effective: a strange but deadly nerve gas is accidentally unleashed and promptly annihilates that the entire world population over the age of 25. This *could* be the basic premise of an atmospheric, gritty and nail-bitingly suspenseful post-apocalyptic Sci-Fi landmark, but writer George Armitage and Roger Corman decided to turn it into a "trippy" road-movie comedy. None of the characters is even trying to prevent their inevitable upcoming deaths; they just party out in the streets and found little juvenile crime syndicates. "Gas-s-s-s" is a disappointingly boring and tries overly hard to be bizarre. The entire script appears to be improvised at the spot and not at all funny. Definitely not my cup of tea, but the film does have a loyal fan base and many admirers, so who am I to say that it's not worth your time or money?

"Author: Brian Washington ([email protected]) from Los Angeles, California This was a weird sort of science fiction comedy from "Professor Corman". This film pretty much reminds me of a spaced out version of the short lived show "The New People", which came out a year earlier. The whole idea of everyone over 35 being killed by a gas that didn't work on the younger population was a wild idea to begin with, but the surrealism of this movie even made it wilder to look at. Too bad that Corman's last film for A.I.P. couldn't have been a schlock classic like many of his earlier. At least on the bright side we get to look at a very young Cindy Williams, Talia Shire and Ben Vereen in what was one of, if not their first roles in a motion picture." Wonderful little films like "A Bucket of Blood" and "Little Shop of Horrors" were not "schlock." Using childish terminology isn't helpful in a review.

This was a weird sort of science fiction comedy from "Professor Corman". This film pretty much reminds me of a spaced out version of the short lived show "The New People", which came out a year earlier. The whole idea of everyone over 35 being killed by a gas that didn't work on the younger population was a wild idea to begin with, but the surrealism of this movie even made it wilder to look at. Too bad that Corman's last film for A.I.P. couldn't have been a schlock classic like many of his earlier. At least on the bright side we get to look at a very young Cindy Williams, Talia Shire and Ben Vereen in what was one of, if not their first roles in a motion picture.