overcome but not necessarily probable. It's not like some of the youth films that have come out in the last couple of years that have been an unquestioning acceptance of all the values of the youth culture. I've just been around too long to accept anything unquestioningly. This would be a kind of questioning acceptance of many of the values but not all of this culture. For that reason I'm not certain Gasss will be a success...Also the film is a little flawed in some areas. Editing disagreements Roger Corman was angry about what AIP did to the film. He later wrote: Corman elaborated, saying: [God was] played by an actor with an outrageous New York Jewish accent and they were really startled by that. But cutting God really took the heart out of the picture. I think it was partially the fact that AIP had become a public company and Sam was Jewish and they didn't want to be accused of being anti-Semitic. Samuel Z. Arkoff of AIP recalled it differently: Reception Corman says the film opened at the Edinburgh Film Festival and he "got a cable from the organizers of the festival saying, "gasss explodes. Five minutes standing ovation." I thought, "Boy, I've really got one." The film premiered in New York as part of a retrospective on Roger Corman's work. In 1971, Corman stated: AIP hates the picture. They dislike it intensely and they would not give it a New York opening. Since it's a very inexpensive picture, they've been playing it around the country in drive-ins and small towns where it's been doing only moderate business. The projection is that it will break even and possibly make a tiny profit. They don't want to spend the money to open in New York because it's very expensive to open right in New York. They feel it will not do well here and will turn a possibly slight loser into a slight failure. Because of the retrospective we have an essentially free opening here. However, I'm not quite as optimistic about the picture as I was after the news of the Edinburgh Festival. The fact that its been playing around to only moderate audiences may indicate some weaknesses in the film. On the other hand, it could mean that it's been playing to the wrong audiences. According to Samuel Z. Arkoff, "when Gas-s-s-s was released, it was promoted