Review of Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas / Where The Buffalo Roam

Introduction

Oh give me a home,
Where the buffalo roam,
And I`ll show you a house,
With a very messy carpet.

Can`t remember where I first read that gag, but it must have been more than 20 years ago.

Where the Buffalo Roam is based on various books written by Hunter S Thompson, who committed suicide in February 2005, and then sent his ashes into space over his Colorado home in August 2005, firing them from a 153 feet high "supergun".

Bill Murray plays Thompson in this account of various of his travels and and scrapes around the USA during the 1960s and 1970s. Peter Boyle plays Karl Lazlo an attorney Thompson met in the late 1960s.

Video

A 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer awaits us on Where the Buffalo Roam, and it`s a reasonable effort given the age of the film. It starts out very well, but soon deteriorates (mostly from an artistic point of view, but sometimes in a technical sense). Some bits are very dark, some are light and breezy and it can feel set bound at times, until you get out into a wonderful location now and again.

Audio

A DD2.0 soundtrack for Where the Buffalo Roam, which is the original mono replayed over left and right channels. It`s not much to write home about, and only really comes alive when the music pops up. Most of the music comes from Neil Young, and it`s probably the best thing about the film.

Features

Not a thing for Where the Buffalo Roam.

Conclusion

Where the Buffalo Roam is complete and utter mess of a film which has almost no redeeming features. Neil Young`s soundtrack is about the best thing here, everything else is a mess. I had heard good things about this, and was expecting much. It really tells us very little about Thompson, and it certainly fails to explain his constant substance abuse, and the very real effects that it must have had on him.

But what could you expect from the pen of a man who once shot an assistant whilst trying to chase a bear from his property, who invented "shotgun golf" and who blew up Jeeps just for fun? This is not really a lead character who most people are going to want to engage with. And it`s probably a very difficult story to film unless you are a bit of a mentalist like Terry Gilliam (whose Thompson film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is also in this 2 disc DVD set). To get this as your first directing job, as Art Linson did, must have been a nightmare.

It just doesn`t work as a film, and the DVD is just an average effort. Avoid this and go and watch something worthwhile instead.