When the titles sequence is the star of the show, you know you're in trouble!
Flash! Click! Whoosh! A ring-a-ding-ding open worthy of a rat packer, complete with 1950s starburst and boomerang wallpaper patterns as atmosphere behind the totally nonsensical music. Already we're in trouble here.
The film opens with our hero, a very ordinary husband/actor with a successful radio career, already fully grown; habits established, traumas duly recorded in his psyche. We are then shown how he lives out his neuroses, acting and re-enacting scenarios obviously very counter to his outward demeanor and verbalized values.
OK, the guy likes to watch. Likes to take dirty pictures and was a pioneer home user of videorecording. SO WHAT??? From this a feature film does not make!!!
Unfortunately, Schrader basically eviscerated that which is probably the most crucial and critical to forming the personality who would later engage in all this prurient activity: HIS BACKGROUND.
Seeing as few of us are born with our perversions and actually acquire them, a la R. Crumb, in childhood from mixed and confused psychological messages; then how could Schrader leave out the missing link which would have given motivation to the Bob Crane character?
Don't even get me started about the "accents" of the ersatz Hogan's cohorts--it's hard to believe that in all of Hollywood, actors couldn't be found resembling Werner Klemperer or John Banner who could do a respectable German accent.
Yeesh. When the best thing about the film is the fourth or fifth lead (in this case, Ron Leibman), then something's wrong.
The film opens with our hero, a very ordinary husband/actor with a successful radio career, already fully grown; habits established, traumas duly recorded in his psyche. We are then shown how he lives out his neuroses, acting and re-enacting scenarios obviously very counter to his outward demeanor and verbalized values.
OK, the guy likes to watch. Likes to take dirty pictures and was a pioneer home user of videorecording. SO WHAT??? From this a feature film does not make!!!
Unfortunately, Schrader basically eviscerated that which is probably the most crucial and critical to forming the personality who would later engage in all this prurient activity: HIS BACKGROUND.
Seeing as few of us are born with our perversions and actually acquire them, a la R. Crumb, in childhood from mixed and confused psychological messages; then how could Schrader leave out the missing link which would have given motivation to the Bob Crane character?
Don't even get me started about the "accents" of the ersatz Hogan's cohorts--it's hard to believe that in all of Hollywood, actors couldn't be found resembling Werner Klemperer or John Banner who could do a respectable German accent.
Yeesh. When the best thing about the film is the fourth or fifth lead (in this case, Ron Leibman), then something's wrong.
- babypix
- May 9, 2003