As his entitled, spendaholic wife Bernadette (Joyce Van Patten) sunbathes nearby, Beverly Hills used-car salesman Bill (Andrew Duggan) discovers in his swimming pool a giant black rat. This unwanted animal trespasser, however, isn’t nearly as dangerous as Bone (Yaphet Kotto), an imposing African-American thief and rapist who appears shortly thereafter to terrorize the couple. In Bone, Kotto’s lascivious criminal is a catalyst for revelations about middle class deceit, greed, selfishness and hypocrisy, as his presence immediately exposes the well-to-do household’s financial debt, deception and adultery. Mixing righteous anger with a devilish sense of humor, writer/director Larry Cohen dishes out scathing socio-economic commentary by habitually upending audience expectations with unanticipated role reversals, and though his irony can be a bit schematic and stale, his wicked wit – highlighted by a drunkard’s gonzo story about her husband’s death-by-dentist’s-X-ray – is pitch-black perfect. A neglected member of the late ‘60s-early ‘70s rebellion against societal (and cinematic) traditions, Bone’s portrait of bourgeois baseness is too familiar to be truly revelatory. Yet made with go-for-broke button-pushing flair and a perceptive attention to character detail, it still benefits from a trio of superb performances (especially Kotto as the titular depraved-but-sympathetic tormentor) whose three-dimensionality prevents the film from drowning in its own edifying allegory.
