I'd seen this before on TV - probably cut but still surprising it was shown at all. Quentin first saw this film when he was seven. Thought like most of the audience that it was a black comedy - you're laughing at redneck Peter Boyle. though it's difficult to laugh about now. Anyway, into his orbit comes exec Dennis Patrick, who has just gone crazy and killed his daughter's hippy drug-dealing boyfriend, and they become unlikely sort of friends, notably in scene where they join a hippy session and experience pot and free love... though very quickly that all goes wrong. the Boyle character is vile - probably still exists as a MAGA type - but so's is Patrick's.
A dirty, cold, snowy NYC is the backdrop, photographed by Avildsen himself. Written by Norman Wexler (Serpico, Saturday Night Fever).
Really quite queasy scene when the two couples meet - the wives are Audrey Caire and K Callan - the clash of cultures, with Peter Boyle on the knife edge of violent rage and a basement full of guns.
The ending is still absolutely shocking and ironic and ends in that sudden bitter taste way that somehow only films of the seventies had the power to do.
Also ironic are certain songs on soundtrack. Edited by George T Norris. The film was cut down from its original 150 minutes by William Sachs, who cut off the first chunk of the story and ended it more abruptly, and made more of Joe as the main character - all the right choices.
Young Susan Sarandon is the hippy daughter, who takes probably the moist pointless bath in the history of movies (and thus also possibly the most exploitative).
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