Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas(1998)

"One of the things you learn from years of dealing with drug people, is that you can turn your back on a person, but never turn your back on a drug. Especially when it's waving a razor-sharp hunting knife in your eye. "

Raul Duke

Plot Synopsis

(from imbd.com)

In a fire-apple red convertible under the desert sun, Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo drive to Vegas with a suitcase full of drugs. Suddenly Duke notices black bats flying over their heads, and he tries to kill them with a flyswatter. Gonzo takes over driving. Duke inspects the contents of the case in the trunk: marijuana, mescaline, cocaine, amyls, ether, liquor, LSD, and a huge assortment of other drugs. He takes some of them and they drive off with a dead bat on the road behind them.

A report comes on the radio about drugs killing American soldiers, which is quickly changed to "One Toke Over The Line". Gonzo sings the wrong tune. They spot a hitchhiker and Gonzo begins to pull over, but Duke panics. "We can't stop here! This is bat country!" They drive back and pick him up nonethless. It turns out he had never been in a convertible before.

Duke begins to get paranoid that the hitchhiker will think they are part of the Manson family, so he decides to explain the situation. He introduces Dr. Gonzo, his Samoan attorney. They explain how they are going to cover the Mint 400 race and find the American Dream, and how they got there.

Flash back to them sitting in the Beverly Heights Hotel, where they get a phone call about being assigned to the Mint 400 Race. They decide to cover the event through Gonzo Journalism. They rent a convertible and scare the salesman by driving it backwards at high speeds and stealing his pen. They buy some drugs and shirts, and a tape recorder. Then they eat some mescaline and go swimming.

On the road, Gonzo encounters heart troubles and pulls over. The hitchhiker watches each of them take "medicinal" amyl nitrite and become completely twisted. Gonzo pretends to be completely confused as to why they are in the desert, then they scare the hitchhiker with crazy stories about their plans to murder the drug dealer "Savage Henry". He jumps out the back of the car and runs off.

Duke takes some acid and Gonzo spills their cocaine. "You're a fucking narcotics agent! I knew it!" Duke drives faster so they can make it to the hotel before he completely loses it......

see full synopsis at imbd.com

Scenes

Scene depicting LSD and ether effects:

Scene of Raul Duke under the effects of Ether:

Quotes

Reviews & Interviews

"Based on a novel by Hunter S. Thompson based on true life experiences of Hunter S. Thompson, this film is set apart from others in that it is real. "What elevates the tale from being a mere drug chronicle is the same thing that lifted the book into the realm of literature. It's the sense that Gilliam, like Thompson, is always totally in command of his medium, while abandoning himself utterly to unpredictable forces beyond his control."

(Michael O'Sullivan, The Washington Post)

On film effects:

"The camera becomes, as it were, a third participant in Duke and Gonzo's debauchery, reeling, vibrating and distorting as the chemical vortex swallows them-and us-deeper and deeper into its altered state. Every few minutes, it seems, something is jumping off the lurid screen, whether it is the ever-present cigarette holder jutting from Duke's leering face or the limp head of a deer carcass on the hood of a jeep. There is no sober, detached point of view from which one can safely observe the proceedings. This has the paradoxical effect of making the film, like a train wreck, both difficult to look at while at the same time compulsively watchable.

......Gilliam's touch is light and deft as he quietly suggests the larger social context against which Duke and Gonzo are set spinning like dervishes. Without being heavy-handed, Gilliam lets the audience glimpse just enough of the world outside the hallucinatory Wonderland of Las Vegas to remind us exactly how hysterical and horrific our long, strange trip to the cusp of the 21st century has been."

(Michael O'Sullivan, The Washington Post) see full review here.