86 minutes – Experimental, Drug culture, LGTBQ
Language: English
Festival release date: April 24, 1977 – New Films New Directors Festival
Release date:
Production company: St.Lawrence Film Productions
Restoration:

Released in 1977, The Rubber Gun was as distant from every other Canadian film made that year as it is in time from its first screening to its latest, a restored version 47 years later, enjoying a special screening at the 2024 Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, where the film is set. Stephen Lack, who cowrote the screenplay, plays Steve, a would-be painter-artiste and devoted drug dealer. He meets a character nicknamed Bozo (director Allan Moyle), who is a sociology student and is secretly studying diverse personalities for his McGill University master’s thesis. They become friends and when Bozo comes to Steve’s studio, he meets various members of his communal family, including Pierre (Pierre Robert), a bisexual prostitute and heroin addict, who would also like to replace Steve as leader of the group. Pierre has a plan to steal drugs from a locker at Montreal’s Windsor train station, but Steve is convinced it’s a trap. Undercover cops have the area staked out, but the more desperate members of his group are prepared to risk it all for that one big score, just as Steve finds himself at a crossroads.

The Rubber Gun was nominated for two Genie Awards in 1980.