29 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
BETTER THAN EVER ON DVD...., November 5, 2002
This is a revision of my earlier concerns. "Spetters" is blissfully intact on DVD and looks better than ever. The directors' cut I had on tape didn't look this good. I was afraid it had been edited when I saw it was listed as "R" but it's unrated still and 8 minutes longer than on my tape. This film is about the lives of three young men who race motorcycles. They long to compete with their hero (Rutger Hauer) who is wealthy and famous. They come from diverse middle class backgrounds. One is abused by his violent father and bashes gay men for their money. Their lives are disrupted and changed forever by a beautiful ambitious blonde who rolls into town with her fast food wagon that she operates with her butch gay brother. Her involvement with the boys will lead to triumph and tragedy as well as sexual awakening. Renee Soutendjik walks off with the film as the golddigging blonde. She is amazingly beautiful and sensual in her earthy performance. She would play another vamp of a different kind in Verhoevens' "The 4TH Man". "Spetters" is a must see for Verhoeven fans of his earlier pre-Hollywood work. It is also sexually explicit and contains a disturbing homosexual rape scene. This scene is important to the story developement but it is graphic. Some may be put off by it. Still, "Spetters" tells a story and I can't recommend it enough for lovers of truly cinematic film.
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Saucy Holland Days, June 16, 2005
Director Paul Verhoven may be best known to the mallrats as the helmer for over-the-top sci fi like "Robocop","Total Recall" and "Starship Troopers" and most lamentably for his so-bad-it's-good sex soaper "Showgirls", but he had arguably already left his best work in the sack of his native Holland a decade or two earlier. 1980's "Spetters" (a Dutch slang term for male ejaculate) remains the in-your-face director's most audacious and fascinating work to date. Popular in Holland but largely ignored upon its initial U.S. release, the film has slowly built a cult following over the years, thanks to word-of-mouth amongst film buffs and some critical backpedalling due to Verhoven's subsequent box-office successes. Following the hormone-fueled misadventures (from comedic to tragic) of a trio of motocross-obsessed teenage pals and thier girlfriends, the film is a sort of Dutch take on "Saturday Night Fever" or "Quadrophenia" with a pinch of social satire tossed in. The young (mostly unknown) principal players all deliver energetic, superb performances and are ably supported by Jeroen Krabbe and Rutger Hauer (re-united after thier memorable work together in "Soldier Of Orange", another early Verhoven "must-see"). The MGM DVD thankfully restores the 8 minutes of "graphic" sexuality (not really that shocking to Europeans) that was excised in order to earn an "R" rating and make the film more palatable to our "puritan" American tastes (Tarantino can chop off as many limbs as he likes with a Samurai sword and keep his "R" rating, but to risk having our precious children get an on-screen glimpse of human anatomy? Oh, the horror!). Verhoven's director commentary is chatty and lively as per usual (you can't shut this guy up, actually-he gives you WAY too much information at times!) Highly recommended.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Must be seen to be believed., January 27, 2003
Now here's a movie I'm surprised I hadn't heard about sooner. An early work (released 1980) directed by Dutch madman Paul Verhoeven, it begins like a standard teen exploitation flick -- the story of three working-class boys obsessed with motocross racing. They go to discos, they race their bikes, they have sex with their adoring girlfriends (there are, refreshingly, as many nude penises in evidence as there are nude breasts, by the way), they hang out in the garage and try to be macho. Enter Fientje, a gorgeous, calculating, unabashedly sexual gal who's sick of her life as a wandering french-fry-monger. She tries to attach herself to each of the three friends in turn, in the hopes they'll lift her out of poverty.
You think you know where the plot is headed, right? These three lads will be undone by the gold-digging spider woman. But trust me, you have no idea what you're in for, as Verhoeven and his screenwriter almost gleefully put each character through unimaginable amounts of emotional and physical hell.
Some of these tortures are so sudden, so melodramatic, and handled so very strangely that there's just no choice but to laugh out loud. Clearly, Verhoeven et al were chomping at the bit to tackle taboo social issues of the day (teen sexuality, homosexuality, police corruption, the plight of the disabled), and tackle they do, but with little regard for subtlety or, in some cases, logic. Case in point: a sequence in which a lad is gang raped by five men... leading him to realize he himself is gay! Later, one of the rapists becomes a kind of mentor to him. Riiiiight.
Still, it's the filmmakers' willingness to charge headlong in unexpected directions that makes this movie utterly addictive. It shouldn't work, but you can't keep your eyes off it. I could watch it a million times and never get bored.
Technical points: the photography is cleaner, crisper and more monochromatic than one would expect from the era -- in this way it's way ahead of its time. The soundtrack dates the film, though, in occasionally hilarious fashion -- the classic '70s pop tunes are cool, the ambient score of cheesy synth music is not. The acting's rather impressive throughout, particularly the older actors portraying the main characters' fathers.
The DVD also features a dense commentary by Verhoeven that's worth hearing mainly for the way the director puts the film in historical context. Some -- though not all -- of the films weirder sociological ideas make a bit more sense after hearing what he has to say.
Bottom line: cult film fans will love this thing. NOT a date movie.
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