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32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fluffy bunnies and rainbows! Yay!, June 16, 2005
For those of you joining the party late, Richard Kern is a New York City based filmmaker/photographer who during the 1980's created a slew of short films that highbrow critics call "cinema of transgression" and everybody else calls "some sick and twisted s***." By fusing the arthouse aesthetic of Godard with grindhouse horror meets porn, Kern created a look and language for the post-punk subculture that grew (festered?) in the Lower East Side at the time. Appropriately, the soundtracks to his depraved fever dreams were often supplied by local underground acts such as Sonic Youth, Cop Shoot Cop, and especially Jim Thirlwell, a.k.a. Foetus. His performers likewise were local art scenesters such as Lydia Lunch, Karen Finley and the late David Wojnarowicz (forgive my spelling if it's off). For my money, though, his greatest star/diva/muse was the inimitable Lung Leg, whose drugged-out, nervous anti-acting virtually invented the "waif look" that models like Kate Moss would later water down for the mainstream.
The films in this collection assault the viewer with sex, violence, sex, and a general atmosphere of scuzz. Did I mention sex? Kern reveled in undressing his punk princesses and putting them in situations guaranteed to make doctinaire feminists howl in protest. In "The Evil Cameraman" a very skinny young adult woman (who nevertheless looks about 13) is bound naked with ropes and tortured by Kern in the title roll. It seems completely awful until you consider that the film depicts Kern as well, evil, a real scumbag. You instead identify with the women and laugh when Kern gets his comeuppance. Likewise, the phone-sex worker portrayed by Lydia Lunch in Kern's masterpiece "Fingered" is completely in control of the pathetic, depraved psychos who call her. She even manages to menace poor hitchiker Lung Leg later on, and the latter's performance is something to behold. Lung doesn't act so much as drift into her "character" like some incredibly strange ghost. By any normal standards she's awful, but as you may guess these aren't exactly normal films. Some, like "Death Valley '69," are music videos that MTV wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole and a hazmat suit. "The Right Side of My Brain" is a psychosexual monologue/rant starring Lydia Lunch during which we get to see way too much of Thirlwell and Black Flag's Henry Rollins. The teeny-tiny "Nazi" is just a striptease by a woman who starts out dressed as a you-know-what. It's contrived and brilliant at the same time. "You Killed Me First," starring Lung Leg as the rebellious teen from hell, with Finley and Wojnarowicz as equally hellish parents, doesn't hold up so well, despite Ms. Leg's weirdly atavistic "performance." Here, contrivance overtakes brilliance by a mile; it's practically unwatchable.
Of course, 90% of human beings will find this entire package unwatchable. These are extreme visions for extreme sensibilities; only hardened shock-hounds need sniff this out (and what a smell! Did something die in here or something?). I assume if you've read this far, you're one of those freaks. So what are you waiting for? Amazon is a store, y'know.
Side note: because of these films, Kern was hired by Marilyn Manson to direct his "Lunchbox" video, and Kern made it to MTV at last. More recently, a friend tells me he spotted Kern's name in the photo credits of an issue of "Barely Legal." (That's right, a FRIEND. I swear I don't read that rag. I mean it. Stop Laughing!) It doesn't seem likely that Kern will ever conquer Hollywood, although that would be a wonderfully sick and twisted idea worthy of one of Kern's films.
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35 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Depraved, December 8, 2004
Remember the scenes in movies like "Less Than Zero" when the characters go to one of those avant-garde bars where all the "cool" people hang out, bars where they always have those severely warped art films playing on giant television screens? I'm willing to bet those films came from the mind of someone like Richard Kern, if not Richard Kern himself. "Hardcore" is a collection of Kern atrocities packaged together for discerning viewers who care not a whit for such banalities as plot, acting, pacing, or editing. When I came across this DVD on yet another one of my infamous rental excursions, I figured I would give it a shot. Oops. While a few of the "films" on the disc inspire some interest, most of the material included in this collection went way over my head. Maybe it's because I don't live in New York City, usually can't stomach obscure, offensive art house cinema (I do love obscure, offensive cinema however--just not art house), and generally appreciate it when the director at least acknowledges the centrality of plot, acting, and pacing. Since many of the films on the disc clock in at just a few minutes, including a couple of music videos, I'm going to try something different with this review. I'm going to reproduce the notes I took when I watched the disc; I wish I could do so word for word but I can't because of the subject matter. Here goes:
Death Valley 69: gory Sonic Youth music video with murdered family and cruise missile imagery. The first of many pieces featuring Lydia Lunch.
The Right Side of My Brain: Love/hate relationship with pornographic sex and atonal sound effects. Female lead engages in internal monologue (nihilistic, of course). Again, with Lydia Lunch and also starring Henry Rollins.
You Killed Me First: Typical story of anarchist kid (Elizabeth) rebelling against family's consumerist and religious values. Ends when the disturbed kid guns her family down.
The B******: I'm censoring this one. Too far over the top to explain what it is. I'm not even going to risk spelling out the title!
The Sewing Circle: Again, I can't say what happens, but this is one intense piece. Nauseating, but interesting if you can stand body mutilation. The girl on the sewing end of the circle is wearing a "Young Republicans" T-shirt, too! They all flash identification at the end of the film, probably in an effort to head off an obscenity prosecution.
X is Y: People playing with firearms with telephone sound effects in the background. Music by Cop Shoot Cop.
Fingered: Lydia Lunch mans the phones in this obscene, profanity-laced ode to murder and misogyny.
Horoscope: Woman dreams of dancing with men after reading horoscope and watching "Studs."
Submit to Me Now: Oddballs dancing, leering at camera--lots of nonsense--guy shaving a nontraditional part of his body (!) and man ripping his own throat out, woman stabbing herself to death.
My Nightmare: Decidedly unsavory dream sequence.
The Manhattan Love Suicides: First film, Stray Dogs, about artist and persistent fan. Second film, Woman at the Wheel, about woman fighting with men in order to drive her own car (An aside here: I liked this film more than any other in the collection. It is actually quite amusing!) Third film, Thrust in Me, about necrophilia, suicide, and bathtubs. Fourth film, I Hate You Now, about deformed guy and his girlfriend.
Submit to Me: Rehash of Submit to Me Now.
The Evil Cameraman: Another misogynistic piece involving women of all races caught up in rather violent situations. The members of NOW would have a collective heart attack watching this stuff.
Get the idea? That's the best I can do considering the limitations of a public forum. All of these films together run for nearly three hours. Several of them are quite short, at four or five minutes, but The Manhattan Love Suicides consists of four films that run for nearly an hour. Kern's music videos, I must say, aren't that bad. He's obviously not directing videos for Yanni or Kenny G, though. Kern shot most of the films in black and white, probably because of the lower cost of the film stock. The stuff he did in color only serves to bring home in a more forceful way the abject depravity of the subject matter. "Hardcore" is definitely not for the kiddies. In fact, if you pop this one in the DVD player when the youngsters are in the room, you might hear social services knocking at your door.
It's difficult to imagine these films have a loyal following. I could see film students studying them since learning how to shoot in any cinematic format is a definite plus when gaining knowledge about the ins and outs of the profession, but just watching this to watch it? Get outta here. Only art house snobs would consider watching "Hardcore" a second time, probably in order to identify some deep philosophical meaning that makes them feel superior to the mindless, television watching rabble. I'll buy the notion that much of Kern's work is experimental in nature, and as such does have a certain daring in some of the pieces, but to call it high art is an insult to high art.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Richard Kern: ___kin' underground artist !, May 22, 2001
This is what some of us have been waiting for. Richard has been an inspiration to me since I was in high school. His crazy experimental shorts are so raw, z-grade, super 8 & analog video, microbudget/nobudget gems of punk rock rebellion, nihilism, thinking, romance, and sexy degredation. Plus where else are you gonna see this, and watch people like the lovely (and brilliantly talented) Lydia Lunch doher thing. eXCELLeNTe!
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