Best Freinds — Best Freinds( Blu Ray)
Best Friends came out in 1974/ 1975- it's a low budget US production, & was the first film directed & produced by Noel Nosseck- who a few years later went onto helm gritty/ blaxploitation drama LA gang film Youngblood, as well as a fair few TV movies. And as debuts go Best Friends is pretty well scoped & shot film- with a blend of some great shots of US countryside & coastline, and slow-if-gentle pulling in plot, that in the end gets you’re very much involved with the outcome of the characters.
The film starts in a fairly campy 1970’s manner- as we get a blend of upbeat country-rock , & seriously cheesy, at points fairly homo-erotic pictures of the two Best Friend leads- Jesse(Richard Hatch from 70’s TV Sci-Fi series Battlestar Galactica), and cheeky ‘n’ unpredictable Pat(Doug Chapin). As we get into the film we find Jess, his girlfriend-soon-to-be-wife Kathy(Susanne Benton), and Pat’s girlfriend Jo(Ann Noland) waiting at the station for Pat to come back from his time severing in Vietnam. Fairly soon the four decide to hire an RV, and drive back across the states for one last road trip before they both settle down into civilian working & married life. Fairly soon it’s clear that Pat is rather spontaneous & playful young man- as he buys a motorbike on a whim which he rides in front of the RV, is constantly joking, and later convinces his girlfriend Jo to dance topless on a bar stage, next to a cross looking old stripper. Fairly soon the group starts to get in disagreements, flights & issues due to Pat's behavior- and it becomes clear he’s more than a little unbalanced as he starts manipulating his friends. As things progress the mellow/laid back tone of film & it’s lulling-to-grooving county/ southern rock soundtrack recedes more & more. As we drop into the more taut, tense, later fairly jolting & shocking thriller part of the film- though still even at this point the tone will suddenly switch back mellow/ playful which is most jarring & effective.
It’s fair to say that Best Friends is a film that takes a little time to warm-up/ pull you in- first we, of course, have the camp-as-hell credits, then when we meet the four- and to start with the acting either feels a little underplayed or overplayed. But hang in there as both the acting & the pull of the plot gets better & better, with the gradually shifting tone of the film played in a rather clever & original manner. All in all, I was more than pleasantly surprised with Best Friends and must say it’s a fairly distinctive drama-sliding-into-thriller example of 70's filmmaking.
Moving onto the Blu Ray- and the new 2K scan of the film looks nice, really bringing out the 70’s tones ‘n’ colors, as well making the more than a few landscapes & sunset shots really visually sing. On the extras front, we get four stand-alone & on-screen interviews- first, we have an around thirteen-minute one with the films director/ producer Noel Nosseck- he talks about how he moved from working for a company making educational films to this his first feature, how the film was funded, the films scriptwriting which found him & the writer going on a road trip, and how it was difficult to find an audience for the film as it neither drama nor exploitation, falling somewhere between the two. Next, we get just over a half-an-hour interview with the film's cinematographer Stephen M. Katz. A fifteen-minute interview with Robert Gordon- the films editor, and last a ten minute one with Rick Cunha who scored the film.
One of the wonders and joys of Vinegar Syndrome is you really don’t know what you're going to get from one release to the next, but you're always guaranteed you'll get a fairly distinctive, quirky, or down-right one-off film- be it horror, thriller, drama, action film, genre parody, art film, hard or softcore, or crazed genre-blending. And with Best Friends VS have done it again- if you dig unpredictable 1970’s pictures this is most certainly for you!