Hardcore (Paul Schrader, 1979)

The only explanation I can come up with to explain why the glass partition in the nudie booth where George C. Scott hooks up with/enlists the help of Season Hubley is so thoroughly jizz-laden, is that the spunk cleaners must have been having some kind of labour dispute. I mean, how else can you explain why the glass, and, I suppose, the floor (some guys are dribblers), was covered with, to quote N.P.H., "love stains"? Unless what we saw was the result of only ten minutes of self-abuse. Think about it, it's 1979, and people loved to ejaculate sperm in places other than their home. Nowadays, no one does anything away from home. They jerk off, they watch movies, they jerk off to movies, they play video games, they read books (or book-like facsimiles) and they consume massive amounts of carbohydrates all within the confines of their own home. In Paul Schrader's Hardcore, however, if your teenage daughter runs off to do porn in L.A., you going to have to physically get on an  airplane (i.e. leave your home) and pretend to be a shady, toupee-wearing smut peddler if you ever want to see her again. Imagine someone doing that today. Actually, if this film was made today, I bet the parents would be the one's driving their kids to audition* for, oh, let's say, "Anal Face-Fuck Fuck-Face Fuckers Vol. 17" -- thanks to E! and MTV, depravity and indifference are in vogue.

And the reason has nothing to do with bad parenting skills on the behalf of the parents. It's because porn is viewed differently today. At the present time, thanks to the internet, porn is everywhere. But back in the 1970s, porno was still seen as taboo. Oh, sure, the climate that created porno chic was a real thing. That being said, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, specifically, its Dutch Calvinist community, porn is the personification of pure evil.

I don't know if this was done on purpose, but the first twenty minutes look like something straight out of one of Lawrence Welk's wet dreams. Meaning, it's extremely square and lame as fuck. Seriously, Christmas caroling, turkey craving, tobogganing... white people in sweaters?!? What is this shit?

Call me callous and somewhat deranged, but I let out a mild cheer when Jake VanDorn (George C. Scott) learns that his daughter Kristen (Ilah Davis) has gone missing. It's not that I want anything bad to happen to her, it's just that I want this small town nightmare to end; it's like watching a greeting card come to life.

Anyway, over in California to attend some kind of church camp, Kristen apparently took off while at Knott's Berry Farm. And like any good father, Jake flies over to L.A. to talk with the police. Since the cops are swamped with cases involving missing teens, Jake decides to hire Andy Mast (Peter Boyle), a sleazy private detective.

I'd like to say, before I continue, that I couldn't help but notice how pervasive Star Wars was in this film. Now, of course, I'm acutely aware how insanely popular the movie was back in the late 1970s, but I had no idea it was this popular. There are at least three separate instances in Hardcore where the film is referenced. The first comes when Jake pokes around his daughter's bedroom looking for clues that might shed some light on her disappearance and we see a Star Wars calendar on her wall. The second occurs when a Star Wars billboard is briefly visible on the side of a building near Jake's hotel. And the third, and my personal favourite, takes place when Jake enters a sex club and we see two strippers mock fighting on stage with light sabers.

What I think I'm trying to say is this: It baffles the mind to think that something that was originally conceived to amuse ten year-olds in 1977 is still being talked about. In fact, J.J. Abrams–yeah, that's right, the guy who did the score for Night Beast–is apparently making a new Star Wars movie. Weird, wild stuff.

Okay, let's get back to George C. Scott's journey into the scummy yet strangely beautiful world of porn, shall we?

Realizing that neither the police nor Peter Boyle are fully committed to finding his daughter, Jake strikes out on his own. This strike out, by the way, is signified by a deep, synthy-sounding synth flourish followed by the sound of a screeching guitar; the film's score is composed by Jack Nitzsche, Cruising (another film with great synthy-sounding synth flourishes).

Of course, who is the first person George C. Scott runs into during his initial foray into the porn world? Why, it's Repo Man's Tracey Walter! Just as Jake is about to start browsing the shelves of an adult bookstore, the clerk (the aforementioned Tracey Walter) informs him that there's a fifty cent browsing fee. Can you believe that? A browsing fee.

The next stop on his foray are a couple of pseudo massage parlors that offer "body-to-body contact." As you might expect, Jake gets nowhere at these places, and leaves with nothing but a bruised face (his failure is punctuated by being thrown face-first into a parked car by a bouncer after getting rowdy).

Deciding to employ a different tactic (and a different wardrobe), Jake pretends to be a businessman from Detroit who is interested in becoming a porn producer. After getting his foot in the door, Jake eventually meets Nikki (Season Hubley), an adult film actress, who agrees to help him, for a sizable fee, naturally.

Even though Season Hubley's Nikki walks the same streets as Princess, her character from Vice Squad, I think her performances are vastly different. And that difference has a lot to do with George C. Scott, who brings out the best in Season. Not to imply that she isn't good in Vice Squad. It's just that Wings Hauser is no George C. Scott. Look at George's body language when he enters the adult bookstore run by Tracey Walter and compare it with the body language he displays when he enters another adult bookstore later on in the film. He was able to convey a change in his character simply by the way he walks. Now that's fine acting.

While the film ultimately has more to do with snuff films (pure fantasy), Hardcore is a pretty authentic look at the porn world pre-videotape. Well, everything except the scene where the show a porn being shot outside at night. Edit: Having recently seen Alex de Renzy's Pretty Peaches, I can confirm that some porn films did in fact shoot outside at night. Nonetheless, I'm sure it's still kinda rare.

* Audition? How cute. Your teenage daughter is making a D.I.Y. version of "Anal Face-Fuck Fuck-Face Fuckers Vol. 17" in her bedroom as we speak. Go check. I'll wait... Pretty rad, eh?

Liquid Dreams (Mark S. Manos, 1991)

When the luminous Mink Stole (Desperate Living) first appears onscreen and extends her glad-hand to Candice Daly's character, my initial thought was: Yay! Mink Stole! Why the yay? It's simple, really, Mink Stole rules and you rarely ever see her act in movies that are not written and directed by John Waters (Mondo Trasho). However, when that initial yay-based thought had subsided, another thought popped into my head immediately afterward. And that was: Call me crazy, but it would seem that Mink Stole and I have the exact same arms! As I was thinking this thought, it dawned me: I don't think it's a good idea for grown men living on the fringes of heterosexuality to openly admit that they have the exact same arms as Mink Stole. Then I thought: Fuck that shit, I'm not ashamed of my puny arms. In other words, say it loud and say it proud: I have the upper body of a twelve year-old girl. Deal with it. Okay, enough about my tiny little girl arms, let's get down to the nitty-gritty of this cinematic alkaline potassium compound. It's called Liquid Dreams and it is hands down one of the most aesthetically pleasing films I've seen in a long time.

Remember when you saw Front 242 live in concert back in the early 1990s? You do? Excellent. Do you recall all those television sets in the background that were playing weird images on a loop? Actually, I'm not entirely sure if it was Front 242 now that I think about it. All right, let me try again. Did anyone see an industrial band in concert during the early 1990s? Well, if you did, you'll recognize a lot the imagery used throughout this hyper-stylish sci-fi noir/erotic thriller.

Part Videodrome, part Wizard of Oz, part Dr. Caligari, part Baby Face, with a dash of Liquid Sky thrown in there for good measure, Liquid Dreams takes place in what looks like the not-so distant future.

And even though place names like, "Ohio" and "Kansas" are used in the early going, the film shirks nationalism and seems much more interested in creating a unique sense of time and place. It attempts to depict a world that exists purely on its own terms. Something I wish more films would try to do, as I'm getting little tired of films that are set in the real world.

Proving that you don't necessarily need a big budget in order to fashion a completely fabricated world from scratch, writer-director Mark Manos and co-writer Zack Davis set their dystopic vision in a large building called "NeuroVid," which I think was created by using a large model.

While I'm itching to give you a guided tour of the NeuroVid Complex, let's first talk about that opening credits sequence, as it's a doozy. Starting with an explosion of static noise, we're shown a rapid fire series of bizarre images set to what sounds like a Clock DVA* B-side circa The Hacker. Boasting masked figures moaning, scat porn (I'm not 100% sure about this one), blurry images, video glitches, lips smeared with blood and random acts of sadomasochism, the makers of Liquid Dreams have already signaled to me that they mean business. Which, I'll admit, caused me to let out a bit of a sigh of relief, as I thought I was about to watch a bland straight-to-cable erotic thriller.

The cab driver (John Doe) who picks up Eve Black (Candice Daly) pegs her as a small town girl from Ohio in search of a lost love in the big city. Telling him that she is in fact from Kansas and is in search of Tina (Karen Dahl), her long lost sister, Eve instructs the cabbie to let her out in front of an ominous-looking building.

When she enters the lobby, we get our first real taste of NeuroVid, the only channel available in the NeuroVid Complex. Finding her sister's apartment on level three, Eve is shocked to discover her sister lying dead in her bathtub. Asking Cecil (Tracey Walter), a NeuroVid employee with a stutter, to help her, Eve begins to panic. Who did this to her and how did she end up in this place? are the questions that are probably going through her mind right now as she watches Cecil snap pictures of Tina's naked corpse.

Looking like he just stepped off the set of a classic film noir, Lt. Rodino (Richard Steinmetz) enters the room and begins asking Eve a bunch of questions. Wearing a fedora and seemingly always in the process of lighting a cigarette, Lt. Rodino's forthright manner manages to irk Eve, who is still somewhat shell-shocked.

When Eve makes it clear that she has no intention of leaving until she finds out who was responsible for her sister's death, Lt. Rodino asks her, using the most condescending tone in his vast arsenal of condescending tones, if she has any idea where she is. While his tone is a tad dickish, he is right, Eve has no clue what's in store for her if she decides to hang around NeuroVid.

Noticing a video monitor on the wall (every room is equipped with one), she turns up the volume and experiences the audio-video assault that is NeuroVid first-hand. I must say, even though we only get a brief taste of what NeuroVid has to offer, the moment when Eve turns up the volume has to be one of the most industrial moments in film history.

After Lt. Rodino leaves, Eve thinks that she can simply start living in Tina's apartment. Wrong! You see, the apartments in the NeuroVid complex are strictly for employees of NeuroVid. Which means... well, I'll let Juno (Juan Fernández) explain it to her. Kicking her out before she even had to a chance to ask how much the rent is, Eve is sent packing.

Luckily, Paula (Frankie Thorn), who is wearing red gloves and a headband covered in polka dots, sees this and decides to help Eve out by getting her audition to work at The Red Top, a club located on the fifth floor that sort of acts as training ground for new girls (and you can't get any more new than Eve). Borrowing one of Paula's outfits, a tight red dress, Eve is "interviewed" by Maurice (James Oseland), who tells her to dance on his desk without knocking anything over. You would think that Eve's long, shapely legs would be knocking things over left, right and centre, but she doesn't upset a single item on his desk. Boo-ya!

Given the stage name "Dorothy," Eve is assigned a first floor dormitory (she seems glad her room's video monitor is on the fritz, but Cecil tells her he'll come by to fix it later - NeuroVid, NV for short, is mandatory), and she gets a quick refresher course on the many rules and regulations that come with working at The Red Top by Juno, her new boss (that's right, one minute he's kicking you out onto the street, the next he's telling you that you'll be making 500 units a week).

Now, The Red Top isn't your average strip club. The men ask the women if they want to slow dance, and when the men start to get grabby, the woman takes him to a private area located behind a red curtain. Once there, the man is escorted by a couple of "Escorts" (men in grey jumpsuits) to The Hot Box. What happens in The Hot Box is a bit of a mystery at first. But as we soon find out, the reason the women are instructed to take the men behind the red curtain when they get grabby is because that's when their brains are teeming with endorphins.

One of the first men Eve/Dorothy takes behind the red curtain is Angel (Paul Bartel), a throat, ear and foot fetishist (his line pertaining to Eve/Dorothy's sweaty feet brought a tear to my eye). Curious to know what happens to the men once they're inside The Hot Box, Eve/Dorothy decides to take a peak. And let's just say Eve/Dorothy is appalled by what she sees.

Told that she has "television potential," Eve/Dorothy reluctantly agrees to appear in one of NeuroVid's videos. This leads to the film's best sequence, a video shoot on a farm set featuring a male reactor (those who appear in NV videos are not called actors, they're called reactors) dressed like a deformed scarecrow and two half-naked guys in crow masks dancing around  Eve/Dorothy, who is dressed as a farm girl in white hold-up stockings.

Instructed by the video's director, Felix (Mink Stole), to listen to her muze, the scene mixes Rinse Dream-style kookiness with Belgian electro-industrial music (Insekt, Vomito Negro, A Split-Second, The Klinik, Snowy Red, Liquid G, etc.), as the vocal sample, "freedom from the flesh," is repeated over and over again.

In-between the shots of Eve/Dorothy shooting her NV video, we're shown snippets of her performance at Twilight, the strip club that serves as a jumping off point to being chosen to participate in The Ritual. And once you have performed in both a NeuroVid video and danced at Twilight, you're pretty much guaranteed to be asked to partake in The Ritual. And as you might expect, The Ritual takes place on the penthouse floor, where The Major (Barry Dennen), the NV big cheese, rules over his sick, twisted, self-contained mini-empire.

As both Paula (who lounges in white hold up stockings while watching NV like a pro) and Marilyn Tokuda's Violet (a fellow Red Top dancer who is obsessed with Eve/Dorothy's leather jacket) would say, in the world of NeuroVid, "you're either up or out." That's right, there's no turning back for her. If Eve really wants to know what happened to her sister, she's going to have to keep climbing the NeuroVid ladder all the way to the top.

Black stockings, white stockings, blindfolds, syringes, Mink Stole (Female Trouble - "I wouldn't suck your lousy dick if I was suffocating and there was oxygen in your balls!"), talk of "peak experiences," siphoning endorphins, Paul Bartel (Eating Raoul - "Why don't you go to bed, honey? I'll bag the Nazi and straighten up."), mismatched opera gloves, industrial inspired music (composer Ed Tomney's electronic score is amazing), muze blocking, skinny arm confessions, Tracey Walter (Repo Man - "The more you drive, the less intelligent you are."), and neon diner clocks, Liquid Dreams, to put it simply, is what awesome looks like.

If you're like me, and you thought someone should make a movie that totally looks like it was inspired by the cover of "The Ritual Should Be Kept Alive (Part 2)" by The Hybryds (who, like everything that was cool circa 1990, are from Belgium), your prayers have finally been answered.

Oh, and, by the way, if you have twenty-five minutes to kill, you should check out "The Ritual Should Be Kept Alive (Part 2)," it's trippy and intense. And lastly, don't even think about trying to take advantage of my freakishly tiny arms, I have the legs of a Welsh rugby player. Meaning, I'll straight up kick your ass.

* Clock DVA is actually pronounced "klok dvah." I used to say, "klok dee-vee-ay" back in the day. I know, how embarrassing.

Repo Man (Alex Cox, 1984)

Canoodling my subconscious like a gentle virus, Repo Man is a film that has lived with me for almost twenty years. From the days when I would tape snippets of dialogue from off the television and splice them with homemade industrial music to the time I used to be driven around the seedier parts of town in a large automobile made out of metal, this film has been a trusty companion. My thoughts on everything from friendship to employment, to youth culture and faith was shaped by the nonsensicality that transpires in this amorphous teaching tool masquerading as a ninety-minute movie produced by the wool-hatted member of The Monkees. I have even used the film to help boost my self-esteem whenever I've found myself cornered by those who have the gall to think they're hipper than me. Now, I know what you're thinking, and no, I don't use the fact I've seen the film well over thirty times to stymie their shifty, hipness-challenging advances. Nope. I tell them I own the soundtrack. However, this bit of information alone doesn't do the trick. Uh-uh. It's actually when tell them I own the soundtrack on vinyl that their hipster asses begin to crumple under the weight of my overwhelming coolness. The rush of smugness that courses through my retired porn star body as I over enunciate the word "vinyl" is downright exquisite. Educational and life affirming purposes aside, the wonderfully subversive film by Alex Cox still manages, after all these years, to exude the nourishment my undeveloped nerve endings crave so dearly just through the simple act of watching it. The fact that I have it memorized doesn't take anything away from the sheer nihilistic delight the film bestows upon me each time I look at it.

A surreal tonic for the disaffected soul, Repo Man is one of the few films that can unify the members even the most adversarial of subcultures. Well, except Mods, they never seemed to "get it" (even though there are actual Mods in it). But for everyone else, it's like watching deranged poetry.

A punk rock-fueled opus that appeals to new wavers, rude boys, industrial freaks, astrochemists, car thieves, Stacey Q fans, and linguistics majors, the film teaches us that life can be intense sometimes and that excessive driving can cause brain damage.

Lacking the proper parental guidance necessary to survive in the city of Los Angeles circa 1984, the film follows the misadventures of Otto (Emilio Estevez), an aimless juvenile delinquent who finds the structure he needs under the guise of Bud (Harry Dean Stanton), a street smart fella who repossess cars from people who have fallen behind in their payments. Learning the ropes from Bud, and to a lesser extent, Lite (Sy Richardson), Otto finds the repo business to be tough yet lucrative (it sure beats stacking cans of beans). Things are complicated slightly for Otto when he meets Leila (Olivia Barash), a UFO enthusiast and a young lady who just happens to possess a severe form of cuteness. Anyway, she's looking for a Chevy Malibu with space aliens in the trunk, and asks the rooky repo man to help.

Called me jaded, but that sounds like an easy enough task. Only problem is a secret arm of the U.S. government (lead by a metal-handed, leg-tastic Susan Barnes), the Rodriguez Brothers (Del Zamora and Eddie Velez), Otto's repo co-workers, and Debbi (Jennifer Balgobin), Duke (Dick Rude) and Archie (Miguel Sandoval), a trio of crime-obsessed punks, are also looking for the much sought after Malibu. Which is being driven by J. Frank Parnell (Fox Harris), an unstable individual whose mind might already be starting to erode.

Despite many attempts to sully his status as a cult movie hero with multiple acts of out-and-out lameness since its release, Emilio Estevez manages retain an air of blank dignity as Otto (his wide-eyed defiance and hatred of authority still reverberate). However, this air is no doubt retained due to the fact he gets to rub shoulders with the legendary Harry Dean Stanton, whose Bud has the temperament of a sage. Extolling handy wisdom at the drop of a drink (none of the products in this film have names that go beyond what they actually are), Stanton is quietly brilliant as the gruff and weary car taker backer.

Speaking of quietly brilliant, my two favourite performances are just that, quietly brilliant. The dishevelled Fox Harris (Dr. Caligari) and the equally dishevelled Tracey Walter are tremendous at displaying calmness in this topsy-turvy world. As well reciting the films most memorable monologues: Mr. Harris' being the one about the wonders of the neutron bomb and his overall mental, while Tracy's focused on the origins of humanity.

Comedically, I'd say Dick Rude's Duke and Zander Schloss as Kevin (Otto's pre-repo friend and co-worker) are the funniest characters in Repo Man. Spewing some of the films most quotable lines ("Let's get sushi and not pay" and "There's room to move as a fry cook."), Dick and Zander prove themselves to be adept comics whenever they appear on-screen.

On a non-comedic level, nothing quite beats the image of mohawked Jennifer Balgobin (Dr. Caligari) pointing a gun while in a silver raincoat. The super-adorable Olivia Barash brings a playful femininity to her plucky fruitcake role. Vonetta McGee shines whilst kneeing one g-man in the crotch and chairing another in the face. ("Shut up, Plettschner.") And I was surprised to find myself drawn to the steely presence of Susan Barnes this time around, and just like Miss Balgobin, the sight of a leggy Susan pointing a gun was just as alluring. (On the film's DVD commentary track, Sy Richardson sanely points out Susan's great legs as well.)

Gliding though the cockeyed proceedings like a drunken research scientist is the dreamlike music score by The Plugz. Sure, the film features songs by the likes of Black Flag, Circle Jerks and Iggy Pop, but it's The Plugz that make the film literally soar into the stratosphere. Their surf tinged guitars and electronic knob twiddling create a terrific aura, especially during "Reel Ten."

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