Fun City Editions: Deep in the Heart - Handgun (1983) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Fun City Editions

Vinegar Syndrome partner boutique label Fun City Editions have made it their mission to unearth and publish forgotten American classics that exist “outside of their time” on blu-ray disc whether the materials available are completely intact or not.  Such was the cast of their publication of the indelible crime drama Natural Enemies with Hal Holbrook which was transferred from the only surviving deposit print left.  Their release of Cutter’s Way however and their forthcoming disc release of the 1983 British-produced-and-directed rape-revenge drama Deep in the Heart or Handgun depending on the territory represents the boutique label working at their apex.  Digitally restored in 4K from the original 35mm camera negative in its worldwide blu-ray premiere, the film is less Abel Ferrara’s Ms. 45 than it is a blistering critique of American gun culture in general and how intrinsic the firearm is to our still evolving national landscape. 
 
Young well-dressed schoolteacher Kathleen Sullivan (Karen Young in her screen debut) recently left Boston having gotten out of a relationship in the hopes of starting a new life with friends in the area of Dallas, Texas, catching the eye of beloved local gun enthusiast and practitioner Larry Keeler (Clayton Day) who quickly befriends her.  Eager to be just pals, Kathleen fends off his advances until the sexually frustrated predator proceeds to brutally rape her twice at gunpoint, leaving the woman traumatized and broken while he shrugs it off as another conquest.  Quickly her demeanor changes, ritualistically trimming her long hair, donning a headband, plaid shirt and jeans and growing increasingly negative toward her students.  Not long after she joins a local gun club attended by none other than her rapist and purchases her own firearms to begin training on a secret mission of vengeance and reclaiming her own agency.

 
Borne out of British director Tony Garnett’s own fascination with American gun culture including but not limited to the almost scopophilic adulation of the firearm, the English filmmaker traveled to Texas to make probably the most incendiary critique of a country other than his own since Ted Kotcheff raided Australia with Wake in Fright.  A movie deliberately designed to leave a poor taste in your mouth when it is over, uncertain of the gulf between the transformative power of trauma followed by vengeance and the distinctly American fixation on the handgun, it is somehow ahead of its year of inception.  Garnett himself, fresh off of his 1980 drama Prostitute, was no stranger to dramatizing the ordeal of female exploitation and the desire to fight back against the double standard and here he made arguably his most incendiary work to date.

 
Visually the film looks fine enough lensed by Charles Stewart with frequent regard for the Texan landscape from its schoolground interiors to Kathleen’s apartment donning a peacenik album cover for John & Yoko’s Double Fantasy, later played for irony when Kathleen now armed to the teeth cocks and fires her empty pistol in front of the cover.  The score by Mike Post activates into dread and terror when it needs to, notably when Kathleen tries to pry herself away from the rapist’s bed to the safety of her home.  Karen Young in her debut though having to do nude scenes out of the gate for the thankfully brief lead-ins to the rape (never shown onscreen) quickly displays her transformative range when she evolves into a gunslinging warrioress.  Scenes of her practicing in her apartment almost have a Robert De Niro/Travis Bickle feel to them, particularly when she’s practicing shooting at a swinging light fixture.  Clayton Day is an appropriately slimy dirtbag who speaks elegantly of why Kathleen shouldn’t be ‘so sexually repressed’ as well as to a quasi-phallic connection to his gun and his eventual serving of just desserts is more than well earned.

 
A movie that was both ahead of its time and a sad reflection on the nature of sleazy film producers wanting their own private exploitation out of someone else’s work, Deep in the Heart released in the UK as Handgun produced by The Ladd Company and EMI Films who raised $3 million for the picture changed hands before becoming a critical/commercial failure and career ender for its director.  Incredibly, Garnett remarked producers at EMI complained that the film’s rape scenes weren’t “sexy” enough and “a turn off” and were hoping for something far more exploitative for their private fantasies.  Casting couch creeps.  Anyway, the film was sold to Warner Brothers who were at the time banking on a Clint Eastwood film before dumping Garnett’s film in theaters to die a quiet death.

 
Seen now decades later outside of the icky financial backing and botched theatrical release it engendered, it is both a powerful feminist drama about a woman whose life is stolen away from her and her unblinking determination to get it back at all costs.  Sneakily the film also works in sly social commentary criticizing the Americana celebratory obsession with guns and how guns have arguably shaped and/or always controlled civilization at its core.  Fun City Editions’ blu-ray disc is great and comes with both a newly recorded audio commentary by Erica Shultz and Chris O’Neill and an archival interview with Tony Garnett as well as a collectible booklet and reversible sleeve art including a slipcover.  Fans of the subgenre will be surprised by Deep in the Heart aka Handgun’s twofold approach to the power to corner and manipulate someone else with a firearm in a spin on female vengeance few have thought of before.  After years of being buried and forgotten, cult moviegoers now have a chance to reassess and place this taut little gem in the place of honor it so deserves.

--Andrew Kotwicki