Hardcore is Paul Schrader’s lurid odyssey into the seedy underbelly of pornography and prostitution in 1970’s California. George C. Scott stars a conservative midwestern businessman who scours every street corner and dirty back alley in search of his missing teenage daughter whose been spotted appearing in underground porno films.

Coming off the success of writing Martin Scorsese’s masterpiece Taxi Driver, this film is essentially a B movie companion piece. Hardcore is a well written slow burn that has become slightly dated, but still manages to retain its potent commentary on the dark side of the City of Angels.

George C. Scott gives a tour de force performance as the religious calvinist Jake Van Dorn, Scott gives an earnest performance as…

June Scavenger: 4/30
#24: A film starring George C. Scott
http://letterboxd.com/scumbalina/list/alone-out-of-my-comfort-zone-june-scavenger/.

Sure, the plot sounds great but does it live up to what it promises? HELL YES. Absolutely holds no punches. I was expecting most of footwork to be done by Peter Boyle's character. I was expecting to go no seedier than strip clubs and "regular" pornography. I wasn't expecting George C. Scott to single-handedly beat the living hell out of the snuff film industry like a one man judge, jury and executioner. There is no more satisfying proof of Scott's talent than seeing him boil over into an explosion of parental rage directed at villainous sex trade scumbags.

On a side note, it invoked a memory of when I…

From the opening moments of Hardcore you already have the world of Jake Van Dorn set up perfectly in front of your eyes, he is a single parent who loves his daughter very much. But in taking this seemingly ordinary image of an idealized American lifestyle, with the family’s own beliefs representing what already present themselves as so normalized by our own world, you have that world crumbling down rather quickly by the fact that another influence has entered the picture. Surely enough, you can already go ahead to point at Taxi Driver when thinking about another film that explores how the corrupted environment has slowly destroyed the world of Travis Bickle the way that we knew it, but what…

There is a joy I find in (re)discovering films that have fallen through the cracks of the mainstream, pop culture, and even cult status.
"Hardcore" doesn't really have a fanbase, though it clearly had at least one in whoever commissioned it to be one of Indicator/Powerhouse range of limited edition Blu Rays.

Paul Schrader (writer of, of course, "Taxi Driver" and "Raging Bull" and director of this year's "First Reformed" amongst others) digs up a very matter-of-fact showing of the 70s adult entertainment industry, much more so than a stylised showing of, say, "Boogie Nights". It's disgusting as well as being fascinating.

Much like "Taxi Driver", real locations are used, and the film is richer for it (though there are…

A western in the neon iluminated streets of LA. So far I've seen a fair bunch of Schrader's films and in all of them there is something, a quality, a search for style. He isn't an innate director, (as his generation pairs: Scorsese, Coppola, DePalma) he's an experimenter, his experiment is always the same one. A story of an alienated men, that lives in a morally decaying world. This is Taxi Driver, Hardcore, Light Sleeper, Dog Eat Dog or First Reformed. Same film with a different name. This one is quite special, it belongs to the noir tradition of his search. With beautiful compositions, monochrome lighting. There are some moments that are simply terrific, the fight sequence at the end,…