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Hollywood 90028
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Grindhouse Releasing Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (9th December 2024). |
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The Film
 Freelance cameraman Mark (The Doll Squad's Christopher Augustine) is in love with film, believing that only celluloid is capable of showing people as they really are; as such, he aspires to work in documentaries more so than cinema and is honing his skills shooting 16mm pornographic loops for voyeuristic director Jobal (Dick Glass). One one of the rougher S&M-oriented shoots, he meets Michelle (Jeannette Sears then billed as "Jeannette Dilger") and feels like she is a kindred spirit, having compromised her ideals by being a kept woman for an inattentive wealthy musician and feeling that her work in pornography out of economic necessity has tainted any other opportunities she might have had. It is perhaps a good thing that he identifies so closely with her since the other women he meets tend to wind up with their larynxes crushed by his hands as he relives a childhood trauma forever replaying in his brain like a movie. With a body count sparse enough for the viewer to frequently forget that Mark is a madman, Hollywood 90028 is more a tale of broken dreams in tinsel town than a conventional thriller or proto-slasher. With its protagonist slowly unraveling psychologically, it is sort of like Taxi Driver without the momentum or a more leisurely version of the later killer photographer pic Double Exposure (more so than the likes of the more likely inspiration Peeping Tom). Rather than being a woman hater who targets "dirty" women, it is implied that Mark's childhood has been dominated by women – from the title sequence that shows him apart from his mother and sisters and a nagging, guilt-tripping phone call from his mother in which it appears that all the men in the family are regarded as screw-ups – but he seems to be trying to escape his trauma and triggered into reliving it. He projects an idealized image onto Michelle and identifies with her victimization; indeed, it appears that Mark identifies with the sense of loneliness and estrangement in his victims including the chatty, globe-trotting Gretchen (Sharky's Machine's Gayle Davis). In the end, the audience is far less shocked than Mark is about the outcome. The feeling of aimlessness for the viewer mirrors that of the characters – who carry on long conversations in voice-over during location sequences grabbed guerilla-style – but would still be boring if not for director Christina Hornisher's eye for striking yet unfamiliar Los Angeles locations captured at the right hours to appear desolate, including a visit to Bunker Hill, its surviving Victorians and derelict buildings bound for demolition and replacement with nondescript apartment buildings. Hornisher and editor Leon Ortiz-Gil (Battlestar Galactica) are coy in depicting the pornographic milieu and layer the film's other love scenes with dissolves as well as utilizing flash cutaways to illustrate some of the long monologues. The most impressive stylistic touches however are the bookending still photo montages, the stills under the opening credits utilizing slow shutter motion blur to suggest frenzied movement illustrating a trauma that might have been deliberate or childish exuberance gone wrong, while the climactic montage fixes one of its lovemaking partners in time and underlines the dead end attitude of both characters before a shocking cut to the film's most brutal closing shot which is more daring and technically ambitious than many of the film's studio contemporaries. The scoring of Basil Poledouris (Robocop) also lends an air of elegance as counterpoint suggesting the loftier artistic aspirations the characters leave unvoiced. Too "arty" to be an exploitation film, Hollywood 90028 still feels an appropriate pick for Grindhouse Releasing and as a cult film that is able to draw viewers into its alienated emotional core purely through mood and performance. 
Video
Completed in 1973 but not widely shown until 1976 in an R-rated cut – the film was originally rated X but the brief objectionable material was substituted with alternate shots apparently prepared at the time of production – and subsequent blink-and-you'll-miss-'em reissues under the titles "The Hollywood Hillside Strangler" (from AIP sub-distributor Hallmark) and "Twisted Throats", Hollywood 90028 became impossible to see stateside while intrepid British viewers could seek out the pre-cert VHS titled "Insanity" which ran more than ten minutes shorter than the U.S. reissue versions. Derived from a 4K scan of the original 35mm camera negatives, Hollywood 90028's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen transfer presents the original cut of the film (87:28). The opening sequences shot on location night exteriors and interiors with practical lighting have a warm bias that is near jaundiced in the skin tones; however, once the film proper starts, the colors are more naturalistic with healthy skin tones, popping primaries, and fine detail evident in the seventies hairstyles and the texture of clothing and décor. There is little to no damage evident apart from some instances of jitter around the opticals (although this may have been a side effect of the budget post-production rather than archival damage).  The disc also includes a standard definition video master of the "Twisted Throats" reissue version (84:45) which featured a number of brief pacing cuts with the largest cut lopping off a chunk of the pre-credits sequence.
Audio
The film's mono mix is presented in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 and sounds clean thanks to the entire dialogue track being post-dubbed, there is next to no ambient sound effects which might be due to limited studio time or deliberately to make the bustling locations seem as alienating as the more remote ones. Poledouris' score benefits from the spare sound design with the nuances of its small orchestra instrumentation. Optional English SDH subtitles are included. 
Extras
Extras this time around seem unnecessarily spread over two Blu-ray discs, particularly since apart from the feature presentation and a few short film-sourced extras, the longest video extra could have handled greater compression (perhaps the addition of the extras on the second disc was a late decision). The film is accompanied by a pair of commentary tracks. The first is an audio commentary by film historians Marc Heuck and Heid Honeycutt who provide some background on what little is known of Horniisher who was part of the first generation of film school-educated female directors and came from a UCLA film program graduating class of lofty colleagues (the school also having been know at the time for the experimental techniques seen in the film). Heuck, whose blog post was one of the first substantial pieces of scholarship on the film which he had discovered at a New Beverly screening, draws from his own research while Honeycutt discusses Hornisher's influences including her schooling and other film work. In addition to discussing the film's stylistic and experimental touches – along with its porn milieu – the pair also delve into its themes as well as its status in the retroactive genre of "L.A. noir." The second track is an audio commentary on the film's locations by film historian Shawn Langrick that is far more than a Google Maps tour, identifying not only streets but many of the bygone shops and buildings, the demolished and still standing Victorian and Queen Anne homes of Bunker Hill, and the now lost mural of the Los Angeles Fine Arts Squad prominently featured in the film. In addition to identifying some of the more anonymous-seeming locations – noting that the house that belongs to the hippie victim in the opening belonged to Hornisher's fellow UCLA film school graduate Tom DeSimone (Hell Night) as well as various indicators of the 1970 shooting period from posters and albums to some of the houses which were standing in the film but demolished the same year. Langrock also sheds more light on some of the personalities in the film, providing more background on musician/late life Scientologist Glass, Dilger who married Jefferson Starship's Peter Sears in 1974 and up until a few years ago kept a blog, as well as more on Augustine's career (although he too is present throughout the extras).  The disc also includes three alternate X-rated cuts which were either kept as trims or part of an unspecified alternate reissue version. "The Simple Story"(2:53) is Michelle's monologue with more explicit cutaways (although still "X" not "XXX") while the "Darkroom 2" (1:54) substitutes more explicit imagery in the pieces of film Mark holds up in front of the projector bulb, and the "Love Montage" (3:45) from the ending of the film which has some more explicit images overlaid than the version seen in the film. "The Cameraman" outtakes (3:12) consist of various unused takes of Augustine walking around Los Angeles, getting in and out of his car, and other cutaways. The disc also includes the Hollywood 90028 theatrical trailer (1:40) as well as the reissue Hollywood Hillside Strangler theatrical trailer (0:35) and radio spot (0:58) along with six still galleries and the plentiful Grindhouse Releasing prevues of coming attractions. As usual, Grindhouse has also hidden Easter Eggs throughout with the first disc including a 2024 American Cinematheque screening Q&A with actors Christopher Augustine and Gayle Davis (47:03) – which also seems indicative of initial plans for a single-disc release since another screening Q&A is prominently featured on the second disc – that suffers from poor audio quality due to the camcorder source since Augustine and Davis have microphones. Also hidden is a remote video introduction by Combat Shock filmmaker Buddy Giovinazzo (3:38) for the 2024 screening, and a sketch (1:07) depicting the supposed discovery of the film's negatives in a garbage bin. The second disc starts with "Hollywood Dreams: The Making of Hollywood 90028" (68:31) featuring the input of Augustine, Sears, Davis, and editor Ortiz-Gil. Augustine recalls working in music in New York and following a girl to Los Angeles where he became part of the band Every Mother's Son and did some television appearances. Davis recalls being in a dance class where Augustine played accompaniment and dating him. Both recall how they met Hornisher and were offered roles in the film while Dilger originally was going to just play the role of an actress in the S&M shoot only to replace the lead actress who was in a family-oriented television show at the time. They offer their takes on the film's view of post-Manson Family Los Angeles and the public perception of the counter-culture to which they belonged, shooting the film with Hornisher and her husband/cinematographer Jean Pierre Geuens (Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural) who brought with him the allure of "French filmmaking" and editor Ortiz-Gil does indeed note how the film appealed to him because it felt European. The film was Ortiz-Gil's first professional job and he had to rescue it from the lab whose manager ransomed it from Hornisher, finishing it at his stepfather's facility and becoming the victim of a malicious lawsuit that took years to clear up. While Augustine believes that Hornisher intended to shoot without sound and post-dub the entire film later, Davis and Sears note that sound was recorded on the shoot and that the screening for friends of Sears' boyfriend's industry friends at the time with no sound was a mishap. Ortiz-Gil, however, also suggests that they went back and ADR'd readings that did not sound right. They all discuss how life went on and their surprise when the film was rediscovered. The disc also includes "Christopher Augustine at The New Beverly: September 13, 2022 Q&A" (38:29) in which he covers some of the same ground but also discusses some of his music industry friends involved in the film (including Glass) and at the time was not aware Davis was still alive (they appeared together in the 2024 screening Q&A in the first disc's Easter Eggs). "Tom & Tina: The Early Years" (24:47) is an interview with filmmaker DeSimone who was in the graduate film program at UCLA at the time and was friends with Hornisher's older sister Anna who was an art student and danced with an anaconda on the side. He recalls hitting it off with Hornisher, seeing midnight movies with her, help on one of her films while Anna did the artwork on his last UCLA film. He also recalls getting Hornisher the script supervisor position on his film Terror in the Jungle – offered to him by producer Enrique Torres Tudela whose film Legend of Horror DeSimone edited – and also letting her play the role of a dead nun. Their lives diverged after school and more so with her husband Geuens' disapproval of DeSimone's drug use and work as a porn director under the name "Lancer Brooks" but they reconnected later in life when he was directing mainstream films and television and Hornisher had remarried, remaining friends until her death. The disc also includes four of Hornisher's short films 4 x 8 = 16 (2:52), The Sun is Long (6:00), And on the Sixth Day (5:11), and Sister of the Bride (21:17) as well as a "Los Angeles: Here & Gone" (4:14) location comparison and production credits. Easter Eggs include a softcore edit of the XXX film "The Erotic Director" (30:17) starring Glass, an interview with Davis on being part of the Action Faction Dancers (6:00), and an odd bit with horror host John Zacherle promoting Frank Zappa (7:21). 
Packaging
Housed separately from the Blu-ray discs in a cardboard sleeve is the Poledouris soundtrack on CD along with a reversible cover, a booklet featuring essays by Jim Van Bebber, Marc Heuck, David Szulkin, and Richard Kraft, and a slipcase cover.
Overall
Too "arty" to be an exploitation film, Hollywood 90028 still feels an appropriate pick for Grindhouse Releasing and as a cult film that is able to draw viewers into its alienated emotional core purely through mood and performance.
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