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| Images courtesy of Grindhouse Releasing |
Writer-director Christina Hornisher’s career as a filmmaker
was sadly short lived, having only directed two short films 179B or 4x3=16 and
And On the Sixth Day before inching her way up towards her sole feature
film effort: the 1973 Hollywood smackdown Hollywood 90028. Long thought to be lost and forgotten before
Grindhouse Releasing unearthed and restored the film in 4K resolution followed
by theatrical screenings and today’s home video release edition replete with
the CD soundtrack by none other than Robocop composer Basil Poledouris,
retrospective interviews and an ornate slipcase package with an amaray case
including reversible sleeve art. A
scuzzier precursor to Maps to the Stars and more recently MaXXXine,
it serves as a snapshot of Hollywood at a time when you could confuse Tinseltown
with that of a grimy murderous demon-ridden Hell itself. If you ever wanted to see a vision of
Hollyweird at its absolute worst, look no further than Hollywood 90028.
Demented murderous loner Mark (Christopher Augustine) is a
pornographer surviving on the fringes of the film business working in a
sub-basement generating smut movies featuring naked submissive women for a
piggish boss named Jobal (Dick Glass).
Lurking the streets of Los Angeles during the day and night seeking out
fresh blood in the form of female victims thinking they’re getting a film
audition only to be strangled to death by his hands, the serial murdering
cameraman with his own editing and developing darkroom suite catches the eye of
model Michelle (Jeanette Dilger) who stars in one of his shoots. From here the film becomes a woozy drugged
experimental promenade through a decaying snapshot of Los Angeles that’s never
been seen before or, frankly, since. To
see the film’s lead characters climbing atop the mountain behind the metallic
letters making up the Hollywood logo replete with graffiti and other measures
of vandalism paints a picture of Tinseltown in ruin.
Lensed by Jean-Pierre Geuens who went on to shoot Lemora:
A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural, Hollywood 90028 isn’t a
narrative piece of filmmaking so much as it is a glimpse into another period of
Tinseltown where its more than just a boulevard of broken dreams. Rather, in this film it comes off as a
Hellhole where insect-like miscreants creeping out of alleyways, nooks and crannies
are just struggling to get through onto the next day. Performances aren’t anything amazing,
bordering on amateurish porn, but again that kind of enhances the overall low
rent vibe the film emanates and they feel less like characters than real
people. For Hollywood being the city of
dreams and magic, in Hollywood 90028 it comes across rather
unflatteringly. The score by Basil
Poledouris isn’t anything special but it does, again, feel appropriately low
key ominous like somewhere in this back alleyway behind a studio lot is the end
of your life.
While not necessarily a grand revelation like Grindhouse
Releasing and others are making it out to be, Hollywood 90028 from a
purely historical point of view does offer a vision of Los Angeles at its
absolute scuzziest and most dangerous.
The lead performance by Christopher Augustine feels like the kind of
denizen you’d come across trying to audition for a film only to find out the
hard way you’re stuck in some sort of snuff-porn shoot. Mostly a time capsule of a bygone era where
between all the palm trees and studio backlots are maggots and vermin, the
Grindhouse Releasing set looks great and predates what has become a genre unto
itself of Tinseltown critiques. The
Day of the Locust, Mulholland Drive and ivansxtc might be the
penultimate examples of Hollywood takedowns but for what its worth Hollywood
90028 succeeds in leaving a bad taste in your mouth about the boulevard of
broken dreams.
--Andrew Kotwicki
