'WE KILL FOR LOVE'......THE STEAMY WORLD OF THE LONG LOST STRAIGHT-TO-VIDEO SEX THRILLER.....

We Kill For Love (2023)

      Having toiled away at buying movies for video store inventories throughout the 80's and 90's, we could hardly stay away from this documentary......

.......a long exhausting, pretentiously self-important history of the cheapo erotic thrillers that cluttered up rental shelves and late night pay-cable TV schedules.

        Yes indeedy, over the course of our buying sprees we probably stocked up on more than a few of the titles covered here. And in the landfill pile-up of hundreds upon hundreds of film clips, we don't think this doc missed a single one. 

        Many of these films, as you might guess, owed their birth to the Paul Verhoeven's 1992 earth-mover "Basic Instinct", the film that served up the combo platter of violent death and Sharon Stone's vagina to a panting America. 

         Producers, directors, writers and actors, with only a few bucks between all of them, rushed in to flood the market with fast 'n cheap knockoffs. All  you really needed was a few sets, a hot babe and a studly hunk with 6 pack abs and not many brain cells.  Sprinkle soft porn over a few dead bodies and you're got yourself an erotic whambammer that customer's will snap up when all the copies of A-list titles are out on rental......

          Titles? Completely inter changeable.....you could swap the adjectives and nouns freely... 'murderous obsession', 'lethal passion', 'heated danger', 'Obsessive Seduction', 'Fatal Arousal'..etc, etc.......

         'We Kill For Love' is determined to take you on an encyclopedic tour through every last one of them, with director Anthony Penta creating a brooding ominous aura of a private eye film noir  investigation of the genre.  We'll leave it up to individual viewers to decide if they find this construct either clever, unintentionally funny and just plain annoying.  At a tiring running time of 2 hours and 43 minutes, we'd go with the latter. 

        What's interesting to note: The sheer amount of sex thrillers in production generated its own little community of actors and filmmakers who worked exclusively in the genre and many of them are represented here, in both the clips and in live interviews. Prime among them (the wise old mentor of such films) is actor, producer Andrew Stevens (son of beloved 1960's starlet Stella Stevens.....and one of the best, most effective contributors to the documentary. 

     Apart from the silly, private eye-noir framing stuff, this is as complete, comprehensive and  intelligent a view of this long lost genre as you're ever likely to enjoy. (We can't imagine if anyone would get around to making another one.....)

       The copious amount of clips harvested from these films, identical in their cheapness and sexual monotony (hot-to-trot femme fatales and their male targets stripping down for action) may lead you believe you're watching one single epic 10 & 1/2 hour erotic thriller.......the 'Lawrence of Arabia' of soft porn cautionary tales......

       Devoted cinephiles will want to check this out, as well as retired video store customers whose hearts picked up the pace every time they rented 'Simmering Tumescence' for the 7 or 8th time. For everyone else, the film feels like a tumble through a rabbit hole to land in an odd cinema universe long gone, a world more lost than Jurassic Park......

       2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2).

          

'FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT'.....JERRY LEWIS'S ELUSIVE DISASTER THAT NEVER SAW THE LIGHT OF DAY.....

 From Darkness To Light (2024).....a revealing, exploration of 20th century cinema's most maddening, notorious never-seen film....

        We speak, of course, of 'The Day The Clown Cried', the 1972 Jerry Lewis film that collapsed amid bitter disputes between Lewis and the film's producer. 

         Just a recitation of the storyline induces cringes and severe upward eye-rolling.....a washed up circus clown in World War 2 Germany condemned to a concentration camp and forced to entertain Jewish children as he leads them into the gas chambers.

         The assembled footage of this movie, as of today, has only been laid eyes on by Lewis and a mere handful of people. One of the few, actor Harry Shearer, said even if you imagined how bad it could be, the actual film would dwarf your imagination in its capacity for awfulness. 

          We don't doubt that for a second. Through the post war years and through the 1960's, the arrogant, egomaniacal Lewis reigned as a comedy partner to crooner Dean Martin and then as writer-director and star of his own hit comedy movies. Praised for his filmmaking innovations (like video playbacks), Lewis split his persona between playing the slapstick idiot or the oily, insincere showbiz hipster. 

         By the 70's his films degraded to near unwatchable and Lewis began to reveal himself to the public as the bitter, angry detestable man he'd been all along. 

        If nothing else, "From Darkness To Light" sheds some long overdue light on the inception, the production and the aftermath of 'The Day The Clown Cried'. Included are a rare interview with Lewis, who long refused to ever discuss the film, and actual extended film clips. 

          Lewis could only get the film financed and produced in Sweden by Nat Waschberger, a fast buck Euro-Trash schlockmeister. ("That Man In Istanbul"). After briefly meeting with Jeanne Moreau, Lewis managed to secure Bergman star Harriet Andersson for a supporting role, but the rest of cast was made up of third-rate non-entities.  (Which becomes painfully apparent in the film clips.)

           While actually still in production, the legal rights to the story and script became impossibly tangled and Lewis returned to the U.S. with copy of the film still unseen by all but a few. He donated it the Library Of Congress with the proviso they could hold selected screenings by 2024. As of this moment, no such screenings have happened and most likely the film will never be made available to the general public in any form. 

           From the clips shown in this documentary, it's painfully obvious that evoking realistic pathos was light years beyond Lewis's skill set. The scenes on view resemble outtakes from an aborted Ed Wood Jr. project. 

            Even more illuminating are the chunks of Lewis's interview about the film. Even as he grudgingly admits to his own failures, he remains defiant, combative and ultimately.....sad.  Mel Brooke, Rob Reiner, Sarah Silverman and Martin Scorsese chime in with their own insights and opinions. 

            Given that this could be as close to "The Day The Clown Cried" as we'll ever get, no cinema buff should miss it....

            4 stars (****).

 

          

'BRATS'.....ANDREW MCCARTHY MIGHT WANT A LITTLE CHEESE WITH HIS WHINE.....

Brats (2024)     Let's now crank the clock back to June of 1985. New York Magazine publishes "Hollywood's Brat Pack",  an article by freelance Journalist David Blum.

         Blum hung out with a group of young actors who were making a name for themselves in successful movies targeted for teens....and frequently their films featured groups of them together in the same film......(the core group included Andrew McCarthy, Rob Lowe, Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Demi Moore, and Anthony Michael Hall.....non Brat Packers, but sort of an auxiliary, included Tom Cruise, Timothy Hutton, Jon Cryer, Sean Penn and a few others....)

          Young audiences loved both them and their movies, so big surprise, the kids became overnight sensations......and being kids with Hollywood suddenly at their feet, they enjoyed the hell out of their skyrocketing fame and fortune. 

          What they were too naive to realize -  their chronicler Blum was as hungry for attention as they were. Seeking an eye-catching hook for his article, he labeled them the 'Brat Pack', a junior varsity version of Frank Sinatra and friends' notorious 'Rat Pack'.

          In other words....... Entitled, hard-partying sybarites who cared less about their craft and more about havin' a blast and getting seated in all the exclusive clubs up peasants could never get anywhere near. 

         Depicted as spoiled, overpaid jerks, the Brat Packers distanced themselves from each other. And inevitably, since the public has a short attention span for such stuff, the negative publicity dissipated. The BPers went on with their careers, to varying degrees of success and failure....(just like every other actor).  

         But Andrew McCarthy, a more sensitive soul than the others, absorbed the article not only as a pivotal moment in the zeitgeist but a profound earth-changing event in his own world view.

         Apparently, nobody was around to tell this guy to get over himself.......

         So 39 years later, he has directed 'Brats' a documentary on the Brat Pack phenomenon and the article's effects on the actors involved. 

         The upshot?   Andrew.....time to move on, buddy. Let it go. Stop obsessing and whining over the article that people either don't remember at all, or never heard of it, or did hear of it and don't give a **** about it. 

         Some of the BPers made themselves unavailable to McCarthy and we don't blame them. Who in God's name wants to hash over this crap again as if it's important. 

          McCarthy does conduct a few semi-interesting conversations with Estevez, Cryer, Rob Lowe and Lea Thompson and others, but it's clear they don't attach anywhere near the importance to the article that he does. Yawn.....

         And when he does track down and confront David Blum himself, you start to realize the film is nothing but a therapy session for McCarthy over his lifelong umbrage about the article. 

          Blum possibly disappoints McCarthy by refusing to sound ashamed and apologetic about 'Hollywood's Brat Pack'. But McCarthy appears to have made the film as a form of self-therapy for himself and believe it or not, hugs it out with Blum. 

          Fans of the actors and era might take a passable interest in this look backward......but personally, given McCarthy's entire premise for making the film, we'd have awarded this a higher rating if he'd given in to his angst and punched David Blum......

          ......or at least throw a cream pie in his face. 2 stars (**).