Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Ketrivie It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin The movie really just wants to entertain people.

JasparLamarCrabb Howard Zieff's wonderfully absurd directorial debut casts James Caan as a recent parolee pursuing some stolen loot and running into one kook after another. From a script by W.D. Richter, the film is a series of vignettes, one more ridiculous than the last. It's all played at such a high level of insanity, it's impossible to dislike it. Caan is exceptional, befuddled beyond belief by the likes of Sally Kellerman, Peter Boyle, Allen Garfield and Louise Lasser. Each one of them is bizarrely idiosyncratic: Kellerman is hopped up on goof-balls and runs roughshod over Caan with each interaction; Boyle is so positive and upbeat about everything it's easy to forget what a sleaze he's playing; Lasser, as Boyle's insanely supportive wife, is hysterical. One of the great 70s road movies, now residing in the "where-is-it-now?" file. The cinematography is by the great László Kovács. Alex Rocco, Richard B. Shull are in it too. In her 147th film, 74 year-old Virginia Sale plays a very wry bingo caller.

rmyers7 I just watched this again for the first time in many years. I had recalled what a twisted dark comedy this was, but I did not remember it in sufficient detail how it came to be that way.It has a wonderful, almost prototypical, '70s comedy cast but I don't think that the secret lies there. I really think that it comes from the writing and direction. There is an ambiguity and ellipticality to just about every sequence. As a viewer you are never sure quite what anything means and quite what was important in what you have just seen. But later, if you have been observant, little things start to come together in disturbing patterns.An example without getting spoilerish -- early on James Caan is thrown out of a ride that he has hitched because the driver has decided that he is a useless slacker (in reality the character hasn't had a chance to do anything useful as he's just been released from prison). The landscape is reminiscent of the stubble field of the airplane chase in 'North by Northwest'. However, there is an emergency phone with an attractive young woman (Sally Kellerman) in a stalled station wagon right there. She is on the phone asking for help, and seeing Caan asks him to help, which he does. Just then a cop pulls up (directed by the call?) asks if she needs assistance. She answers no. The cop tries to ascertain who owns and is driving the car. Upon finding out that it is her, and noting her increasingly erratic behavior, he tells her that Caan has to drive, as she's barefoot. Is the cop trying to hassle them, or is just trying to get them safely on their way and away from him when she is clearly not fully there? Shortly thereafter Caan asks her what she is up on, she answers that she had a glass of wine with a salami sandwich. It's pretty clear that alcohol is _not_ her intoxicant of choice. Later we see her popping unidentified pills several times.Watch for patterns and reappearances, some of them are quite subtle.I've got to give a shout out to my local video store which had a VHS copy (1990) on the shelf. This isn't available on DVD.

Skragg I usually either don't like, or hate, action comedies - though Slither isn't one entirely. But, as far as it IS an action one, it's the best one ever made, and (to me) about the most underrated comedy of ANY category. Most comedies or dramas about cops and robbers (or about criminals, period) promise to be about the CHARACTERS more than anything, but this one keeps that promise completely. I do have one complaint about the Sally Kellerman character, and that's that, in most of the film, she was a sort of WOULD-BE maniacal character, and that one scene of her actually holding up a diner spoils that in a way. But at least that scene gave James Caan the chance to do what he did best in the movie, which was acting horrifed or disgusted by everything that happened around him. Somehow, this doesn't wear thin anywhere in the movie, especially in his scenes with Kellerman. I usually don't like crude dialogue when it's there just for the sake of it, but the laundromat scene, where she grosses him out with her talk, is done just right, and that's why it's funny. I have what is probably a real minority opinion about the film version of MASH, and that's that it works EXCEPT for the "Burns and Houlihan" scenes, which (to me) were a real waste of both her and Duvall (including that hugely famous scene). All I can say is that anyone wanting to see Sally Kellerman in a FUNNY role should see Slither instead. The same is true of Peter Boyle and Louise Lasser, and all the character actors in smaller parts, all the way to the ones in the bingo hall scene. I don't know why most other comedies of this category can't at least APPROACH this one.

moonspinner55 I saw "Slither" when it was first released to theaters in 1973 (it played as a second-bill to "Uptown Saturday Night"--now there's a combination!). I knew nothing about this picture, nobody seemed to know where it came from, yet by the finish I couldn't wait to see it again. Today, it is as fresh and darkly comic as a Coen Brothers movie. James Caan (at his best) plays low-keyed, amiable, freshly-sprung ex-con who, right off the train, gets involved with a series of lunatics. They involve him in a scheme to retrieve some embezzled loot, and one by one start taxing Caan's patience. Sally Kellerman is terrific as a sexy neurotic; she's very flaky and funny giving her insights on situations which stops everyone in their tracks. Peter Boyle and Louise Lasser are a hoot as a suburban couple who get mixed up in the mayhem, leading to a riotous car chase involving a motor home and two vans. If the conclusion doesn't exactly deliver on the early promise, that's OK because "Slither" is totally unconventional (even its title is obscure!). *** from ****