Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – a casino horror film?

Perhaps horror movie purists will argue that Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is not really a horror film, but although it doesn’t have any physical evil monsters, blood sucking vampires or evil spirits, it is certainly a horror film. After all, horror movies are really about what goes on inside, the inside being the minds and souls of the characters and the audience. The horror is not the dismembered hand crawling across the table; the horror is how we react to it.

The horror in Fear and Loathing, released in 1998, is a drug based horror. It was directed by Terry Gilliam and starred Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro. It was a box office flop losing $10 million it received only 50% from Rotten Tomatoes. The movie was based on the book of the same title written by Hunter S Thompson.

Raoul Duke, on a mescaline trip, and Dr. Gonzo speed across the Nevada desert towards Las Vegas, Duke apparently pursued by giant bats. They pick up a hitchhiker who takes fright and flees. They chase him to Las Vegas and on route Duke takes a quantity of LSD. They check into a hotel casino on The Strip, but Duke is now hallucinating and sees the hotel clerk as a moray eel and everyone at the bar as lizards engaged in an orgy.

Duke is in Las Vegas to report on a motorcycle race, but once there Duke believes that he is in a battlefield. Later Duke and Gonzo visit the Circus Casino. Duke plays roulette and returns to the hotel room to find that Gonzo, very high on large quantities of LSD, has destroyed the room.

Ever more horrors ensue and they include trashing another room, this time in the Flamingo Hotel Casino, and feeding LSD to a runaway Barbara Streisand obsessed teenager called Lucy. Eventually the hallucinations get worse as Duke sees Gonzo as a demon. Though certainly an interesting trip, it may persuade a few people to use an online casino like MobileCasinoAustralia.com.au rather than visiting the scene of such antics.

The visual style is stunning. Most of the shots are taken with a wobbling camera and the colours shift in response to Duke’s state of mind. This is a depiction of paranoia that penetrates further than fear, and shoots a poison arrow into the underbelly of the American Dream.