Grindhouse Releasing
Blu-ray Release: November 26, 2024
Video: 1.85:1/1080p/Color
Audio: English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono
Subtitles: English SDH
Run Time: 87:28
Director: Christina Hornisher
Mark (Christopher Augustine) is a disturbed loner who toils in the sub-basement of the movie business as a cameraman shooting porno films for swinish boss Jobal (Dick Glass). In his off hours, Mark prowls the peep shows and strip clubs of Los Angeles to prey on random young women who he picks up and strangles to death. When Mark pursues a romantic interest in Michele (Jeannette Dilger), a model who he films in one of Jobal's sleazy movies, the grim reality behind the fantasy leads the frustrated cinematographer to shoot a different kind of Hollywood ending. (From Grindhouse’s official synopsis)
Completed in 1973 (edit: according to the commentary on this disc, it was actually completed in 1969 or ‘70), but not released outside of previews until 1976, writer/director Christina Hornisher’s Hollywood 90028 (aka: Insanity, Twisted Throats, and Hollywood Hillside Strangler in an attempt to cash-in on a real serial killer, later revealed to be two killers working together) is one of those surprise mini-masterpieces that we’d refer to as culturally clairvoyant, if only more people had seen it before now. Despite its release date, it somehow feels like a contemporary of Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976), Bill Lustig’s Maniac (1980), and modern revisionist psycho-thrillers. As if made by time-travelers, it is at once old-fashioned, of its era, and ahead of its time.
Whether in practice or by coincidence, Hornisher was tapping into serial killer angst before serial killer movies were an established genre. The lonely killer formula was set by Fritz Lang’s M (1931), Jacques Tourneur’s The Leopard Man (1943), John Brahm’s Hangover Square (1945), and Robert Siodmak’s The Spiral Staircase (1946). Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) was the film that really popularized the archetype, especially in low-budget exploitation cinema, where it was told and retold well into the slasher era. However, if Hollywood 90028 is referencing a previous lonely killer thriller, it’s Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom, which was released practically alongside Psycho in 1960, but rejected by audiences, eventually gaining respect after decades of critical revisionism.
Peeping Tom’s killer is named Mark Lewis and Hollywood 90028’s killer is also named Mark, but with no last name given. Both are cameramen with dirty movie day jobs, both are attempting to develop their own art on the side, and, like Norman Bates, their downfalls are tied to the unlikely, but meaningful connections they make with young women. Another association is found between Peeping Tom’s 8mm flashback sequences, which reveal the systematic abuse Mark Lewis suffered at the hands of his father, and Hollywood 90028’s opening credits, which play over a series of still family photographs that are, along with a single phone call between Mark and his mother, our only evidence of his life outside of the film.
There are key differences, too. Mark Lewis was sculpted into a sociopath and he struggles to function at all in a societal capacity, while the other Mark’s evil is mundane and borderline inexplicable. Hollywood 90028’s Mark is also a lot more frustrated by the fact that he has to shoot ‘marginal films’ to make ends meet. His backstory is left ambiguous, to boot. All we really know is that he might have ‘accidentally’ killed a younger sibling, that his mother’s overbearing presence in his life, and that her overbearance causes some kind of psychosis. I see this as a case of Hornisher updating Mark Lewis for the ‘70s and fitting him into the distinctly Hollywood-based story she wanted to tell, rather than distancing her film from Powell’s.
I think the most astonishing thing about Hollywood 90028 is that it isn’t really a horror film. It’s barely even a psycho-drama. Instead, it’s a malaise-soaked New Hollywood drama that takes a break for a couple of brutal murders. Mark’s murder spree amounts to two women and is essentially a subplot that could be deleted without dramatically affecting the final film. Minus the strangulation sequences, Hollywood 90028 is an impressionistic story about a lovesick man suffering from artistic ambition in an anti-artistic job market. With very few tweeks, it could be mistaken for the work of Hal Ashby, Robert Altman, or Peter Bogdonovich and, under different circumstances, Peter Fonda, Jeff Bridges, or John Cassavetes could’ve played Mark.
Women often occupy an important role in serial killer cinema, initially as victims and later as point-of-view figures, especially after Thomas Harris’ 1988 novel, The Silence of the Lambs, and Jonathan Demme’s even more popular 1991 film adaptation. But, historically, precious few serial killer movies are written and/or directed by women. Hornisher (arguably) brings a feminine perspective to the porno shoots, which are mechanical and sad, and murder set-pieces, which aren’t sensationalized, like the slashers that followed. More remarkably, though, she portrays Mark as a sympathetic figure – not an evil mastermind or grotesque loser, as serial killers are typically depicted.
Hollywood 90028’s politics are intriguingly ambiguous. Hornisher was tapping into the onset of pornochic, when movies like Jerry Gerard’s Deep Throat (1972) and Gerard Damiano’s The Devil in Miss Jones (1973) changed the public perception of pornography, turning it into a mainstream fad, but her opinions on the matter aren’t always clear. It depicts porn as a depressing business, but not in itself to blame for Mark’s violence. If anything, he seems kind of flabbergasted by pornography and annoyed by its artlessness, as evident in the fact that he resents his greasy, boorish boss and the scene where he watches a peepshow reel with his brow furrowed in apparent confusion.
I think Hornisher is mostly interested in the dramatic irony of pornochic, in the ways men can watch televangelists broadcasts while selling obscene magazines or how the city is so completely saturated in its influence that sexy advertising is as mundane as fast food signage. This idea of juxtaposition also comes into play during the film’s most haunting and poetic sequence, where Mark and his genuine love interest, Michele, have a heart-to-heart during a walking date through the city. In a long monologue, Michele describes the necessity of her adult acting career with remorse and reserved acceptance, as sepia-seared images of the old LA and miserable nude photos of herself flicker for a few frames. Sadly, Hornisher never directed another feature film.
Video
Grindhouse Releasing has always prided themselves on digging up lost exploitation classics and, if ever a movie desperately needed to be rescued from obscurity, it was Hollywood 90028. Around the time Grindhouse was premiering their restoration in the festival circuit, my friend Bill Ackerman suggested that we cover it for our second look at the Alternative American Horror Movies of the ‘70s (listen here!). Unfortunately, the only way I could do that was by watching a truly wretched VHS rip under the alternate title Insanity. John H. Pratt’s slick and artful cinematography pushes through the haze of digital and analogue noise, but it was clear that I was missing something.
According to legend, the original camera negatives were found in a literal trash can. Whether that’s true or not, Grindhouse was definitely working from the negative and they definitely scanned and remastered it in 4K, because Hollywood 90028 looks like a first-run theatrical release on this 1.85:1, 1080p disc. At the same time, it’s not over-cleaned or oversharpened and it maintains the necessary texture we would expect from a 50-plus-year-old ‘lost’ film. Some low-lit street scenes are still quite muddy, but any controlled lighting environment is delicate and crisp. Details are tight, patterns are busy, and film grain, though sometimes inconsistent due to lighting schemes, seems normal for type. Colors lean warm, but not in an unnatural way (there’s little to none of that sickly pink tinting seen from badly maintained footage) and the palette is quite bright when necessary.
Audio
Hollywood 90028 is presented in uncompressed DTS-HD Master Audio and its original mono sound. The film depends on silence to set much of its mood, so the low sound floor and lack of buzz is valuable, yet it isn’t set so low as to squeeze out low volume dialogue. The dialogue is clear in part because so much of it was added in post, by necessity. The haunting music was conducted by none other than Basil Poledouris. This was one of Poledouris’ earliest feature scores and his main theme sounds like a chamber quartet rendition of John Carpenter’s Halloween theme, except that it was written years before Carpenter’s film premiered. There’s also a rock version that sounds inspired by the Doobie Brothers’ “Long Train Runnin’” and The Animals’ version of “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.” All of the music, including the occasional diegetic rock and percussive breaks, is surprisingly rich and bassy, given the tracks’ age and mono source.
Extras
Disc 1 (Blu-ray)
Commentary with Marc Heuck and Heidi Honeycutt – Critic/filmmaker Heuck and Honeycutt, the author of I Spit On Your Celluloid: The History of Women Directing Horror Movies (Headpress, 2024), help fill in the blanks in Hollywood 90028’s mysterious production history while exploring the wider work of the cast & crew, connections to Jacques Demy’s Model Shop (1969) and Alan Arkin’s Little Murders (1971), Hornisher’s stylistic choices and themes, her UCLA education, women as genre filmmakers in general, early porn as a genre, and the film’s value as a Los Angeles area time capsule.
Commentary on the film's locations with Shawn Langrick – In this second, more scene-specific commentary, Langrick gives a hurried, yet full-bodied history of the areas of Los Angeles featured throughout the film.
Bonus feature: Twisted Throats (84:45, SD) – This reissued, slightly shorter and slightly different version of Hollywood 90028, presented in standard definition from a well-worn theatrical print.
Alternate X-rated cuts (including a play all option):
The Simple Story (2:53, SD) – A version of the heart-to-heart scene with more explicit inserts.
Darkroom 2 (1:54, SD) – Again, this is the same scene, but Mark is fiddling with more explicit negatives.
Love Montage (3:45, SD) – A slightly more graphic version of the sex scene towards the end of the film.
The Cameraman outtakes (3:12, HD) – A raw, full HD outtake reel set to the soundtrack.
Hollywood 90028 and Hollywood Hillside Strangler trailers
Hollywood Hillside Strangler radio spot
Still Galleries – Publicity, Drive-in Asylum newspaper ads, Christina Hornisher, cast photos, cover art by Jerry Martinez, the adult bookshop (this last one is stills from the film with the option to click on a number of magazines to see hi-res scans of their covers).
Grindhouse Releasing trailer reel – William Grefé’s Impulse (1974), Peter S. Traynor’s Death Game (1977), S. F. Brownrigg’s Scum of the Earth (1974), Richard Kaye & Timothy Galfas’ Bogard (aka: Black Fist, 1974), Palmer Rockey’s Love is Deep Inside (aka: It Happened One Weekend, 1974), Stuart E. McGowan’s The Ice House (aka: The Passion Pits, 1969), Ralph De Vito’s Family Enforcer (aka: The Death Collector, 1976), Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust (1980), Umberto Lenzi’s Cannibal Ferox (1981), Duke Mitchell’s Massacre Mafia Style (1974) and Gone with the Pope (2009), Juan Piquer Simón’s Pieces (1982), Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond (aka: Seven Doors of Death, 1981), Fulci’s Cat in the Brain (aka: Nightmare Concert, 1990), Amos Sefer’s An American Hippie in Israel (1972), Hartford-Davis’ Corruption (1968), Frank Perry’s The Swimmer (1968), Sergio Sollima’s The Big Gundown (1968), David E. Durston’s I Drink Your Blood (1970), Timothy Galfas’ Bogard (aka: Black Fist, 1975), and Lenzi’s The Tough Ones (aka: Rome Armed to the Teeth, 1976).
Easter eggs
2024 American Cinematheque screening Q&A with actors Christopher Augustine and Gayle Davis (47:03, HD)
Introduction by Combat Shock (1986) director Buddy Giovinazzo recorded for the same screening (3:38, HD)
A sketch of the film’s negatives in a trashcan (1:07, HD)
Disc 2 (Blu-ray)
Hollywood Dreams: The Making of Hollywood 90028 (68:31, HD) – A collection of interviews beginning with actors Christopher Augustine, Jeanette Sears, and Gayle Davis, and editor Leon Ortiz-Gil. Subject matter includes training/early careers, Augustine’s musical career, working with each other and Hornisher, Augustine and Davis dating at the time of filming, issues with ADR, Hornisher making everyone feel safe during the nude scenes, money-saving tactics, the long editing and post-production processes, a editing studio holding the film hostage, the degeneration of LA tying into the mistreatment of women, the various rerelease titles, and what everyone did after the movie.
Christopher Augustine Q&A at The New Beverly, September 13, 2022 (38:29, HD)
Tom & Tina: The Early Years (24:47, HD) – Gay porn pioneer and the director of Hell Night (1981) Tom DeSimone remembers attending the UCLA film school, meeting Hornisher via her older sister, Ana, bumming around LA and New York, seeing midnight and arthouse screenings, the struggles of a student filmmaker in the pre-Easy Rider era, his early career, bringing Hornisher along on his first lead directing gig, their lives diverging around the time she met future husband Jean Pierre Geuens, reconnecting later, after she married her second husband, director Robert Collins, and her untimely passing.
Christina Hornisher’s short films
4 x 8 = 16 (2:52, HD) – Abstract images recorded on a 2 x 2 grid using ‘unsplit’ 8mm and set to the Martha Reeves & the Vandellas version of “Heat Wave.”
The Sun is Long (6:00, HD) – A lone soldier happens upon another soldier, long dead, and offers him his coat, then begs a hooded figure to end the fighting.
And on the Sixth Day (5:11, HD) – A woman wanders through the street begging for help. A woman is told by an offscreen Catholic Church official that she cannot separate her conjoined twins, because one will die. A racist diatribe is blurted over footage of Black people around town.
Sister of the Bride (21:17, HD) – In this educational short, an awkward young zoo worker wrestles with her self esteem, her parents’ divorce, and a sick goat on the eve of her older sister’s upcoming nuptials (she’s marrying an unseen man named Mark).
Los Angeles: Here & Gone (4:14, HD) – A then & now location comparison
Production credits
Easter eggs
Gayle Davis on the Action Faction Dancers (6:00, HD)
A clip of Christopher Augustine hamming it up and promoting his band with Shock Theater host John Zacherle (7:21, SD)
Disc 3 (CD)
Original Soundtrack by Basil Poledouris (17 tracks)
The images on this page are taken from the BDs and sized for the page. Larger versions can be viewed by clicking the images. Note that there will be some JPG compression.