They are white, fat, disillusioned, corrupt, cynical and in a mid-life crisis, the five door-to-door salesmen of the Anaheim, California branch of the "American Bible and Gun Club". Even the best Dale Carnegie training in recent decades cannot help it to become a flourishing mobile outlet. The only things that sell more-or-less satisfactorily are the two things on which America was built: guns and bibles.

Bill, the hard leader of the group, sets off with his long-serving employees Sidney, who gave up his calling as a rabbi to sell good books, and Stan, who is being kept awake at night by a possibly cancerous tumour in his neck, for the firm's annual conference in Las Vegas. There for the first time are Mike, the unsuccessful and lazy son-in-law of Bill, recruited from the golf course, and Phil, the newly-hired, slightly psychotic ex-LAPD cop.

On arrival in Vegas, the Anaheim crew receive a rude awakening. Due to constant heavy financial losses, the American Bible and Gun Club is to close its Californian branch and reopen in Vegas. That hurts, but the show must go on and Bill reveals his great idea: in the poor caravan parks to the north of the city awaits unrealised potential, as the tenants are "good American people who are too proud to admit that they're poor".

What begins as an attempt to rescue the Anaheim crew soon turns to disaster: instead of higher earnings, the men are confronted with mental derangement, sexual obsession, drugs, violence and death – for as long as business can continue...

• The Bible and Gun Club is one of the very, very few pearls of cinematic history in which not only is everything coherent and nothing can be faulted, but in which everything – pace, editing, photography, acting, screenplay, direction, even the credits – everything is so brilliant that it is like being on an 87-minute long roller-coaster: no sooner is it over do you want to do the whole thing again. The opening sequence alone is far and away the funniest, wickedest, truest... in short, the best this reviewer has ever seen. But we won't reveal anything here. Never before has a film about white, heterosexual, right-wing, repulsive men been so entertaining. No wonder, it being a farewell to this species, along with its abortive American Dream. This bunch with their clever assortment, consisting of the Collectors' Edition Bible Set and a Defender 500 pump-action shotgun is so far removed from reality, it is no wonder one or two minds go overboard.

The men in their stiff suits got stuck somewhere in the 60s with their sales techniques and philosophies on life. Screenplay writer and director Daniel J. Harris has incorporated this in the plot – for instance, with the making of a typical 60s porno film in a Las Vegas hotel to which two of the salesmen were invited as voyeurs and then, completely wild, create havoc. Harris borrowed from 60s-style cinema verité, including the requisite costumes, product design, and pure 60s Vegas lounge and strip music.

The film team achieved the fast pace with voyeuristic camerawork in harsh black-and-white, which exclusively follows the movements of the dynamic actors. Perfect editing goes with a cunning and seemingly precise screenplay. What audiences might not notice, however, is the high proportion of improvisation, and the daily rewritings of the script during filming. Indeed, many scenes are real – that is to say, documentary: on occasion the team pretended to be filming a documentary and asked members of the public if they could film them being harangued by reps from the American Bible and Gun Club. The results are more shocking, spontaneous and funnier than any writer could have thought up.

The director describe the actors as being "among the best professional unknowns in America today", and this verdict has nothing to do with the usual promotional nonsense. It's true. Having been seen on TV and in theatre plays, only three of them have ever been in independent films. Unknown to a wider audience, they all bring a unique authenticity to The Bible and Gun Club. Of course, it was not for nothing that actors were engaged who had had, in one way or another, experience with bibles, weapons or porno's – and door-to-door selling.

• South African Daniel J. Harris has, in The Bible and Gun Club, delivered the final word on the commercialisation of sex, violence and religion. Wherever the film is shown, the news that it is necessary to have "a well-read family and a well-armed home" – well-armed with a cinema ticket, that is, will spread like wildfire. Indeed, public pressure was so great that the official contribution to Slamdance 97 had to be carried over, after the festival, to the subsequent Slumdance for a third shown. Trust me, everybody, I know a cult film when I see one.

Queer Watchlion
(The English version got lost somewhere in our files, check again in a few days)

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