Hollywood 90028
The continuing joy in being a film nerd is new discoveries, especially those that aren't constantly in the central conversation. Christina Hornisher's 1973 picture "Hollywood 90028" is one of those. Not exactly out of the blue - it was rediscovered and restored by Grindhouse Releasing last year, and subsequently released on Blu-ray, along with the soundtrack on CD which, for film score fans, was the first score by the great Basil Poledouris.
"Hollywood 90028" follows Mark (Christopher Augustine), a handsome Tom Selleck-type who is a budding photographer in the Los Angeles area. Of course, Mark wants to do serious photography and make movies about serious subjects, but due to the lack of cash around for that kind of thing instead shoots pornography for your stereotypical gluttoneous sleazebag. We also find out straight away that Mark is a murderer, with the opening showing him taking a girl home from a bar and subsequently fucking then strangling her.
This seems to be the life for Mark; cruising, drinking, and apparently meeting women and murdering them. We learn through small pieces of information that his younger brother died at a young age, and he feels responsible for this, as well as struggling to grow up in a house of mainly women. As far as both Mark and the audience can see, this desolation is his future, much the same for Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver."
At least until he meets Michele (Jeannette Dilger), an actress starring in one of the movies he shoots. Mark is immediately smitten, and they seem to have a common bond that they are both fairly intelligent and both come from Midwest cities - him Indiana, her Nebraska. She wants to go slow, while Mark is eager to get in there, but they agree to take it steady, especially as she has a mysterious maybe-partner. That said, Mark clearly isn't a monogamous serial killer, as during this he picks up a girl on the way to the beach and takes her sailing, only to strangle and throw her overboard after saying she talked too much.
"Hollywood 90028" is a fantastic picture that is clearly the offspring of Hitchcock's "Psycho" and Michael Powell's "Peeping Tom." It was impressively written, directed, and produced by Hornisher, and it's a film about Hollywood at a time where the new wave of directors were crossing over while the sex and sleaze was still as thick as the LA smog. It's not subtle - there's a brilliant scene where both Mark and Michele chat about their hopes while scaling the Hollywood sign, and the film is a tribute to all those actresses who venture out from boring American towns to search out their dreams of being a star on the streets of Hollywood, only to find themselves starring in nudie booths. Speaking of "Psycho," there's a shot of Mark watching one of the booth films that is a straight homage to Norman Bates staring through the peephole in the wall.
The two actors are both compelling in their own ways, Augustine with a kind of likeable awkwardness and Dilger with a playfulness and intelligence that perhaps belies her age. The score by Poledouris ("Conan the Barbarian") is both hippyish and haunting, but the real stars are Hornisher and her editor and cinematographer, Leon Ortiz-Gil and John H. Pratt respectively. Strangely, Ortiz-Gil is maybe the only person with more than one credit, with a career editing TV shows such as the original "Battlestar Galactica" and "Magnum, P.I."
Both execute their roles with distinction, with Ortiz-Gil's spirited cutting effecting both short and long sequences, with sepia blips of Michele's home town appearing while she explains where she came from, and a wonderful sequence where the pair make a spaghetti dinner. Pratt's shooting has the pseudo-verite feel a lot of these kind of movies have, with these scenes of Mark walking through sections of LA with huge street murals that gives the city a sense of transition while illustrating Mark's loneliness.
Grindhouse's disc comes from their 4K restoration, and it looks and sounds fantastic. It also comes with some hefty features, including sequences that were originally much more X-rated, although not to the extent of something like "Thriller: A Cruel Picture." Then there's the bonus CD of Poledouris' score, which I'll cover separately.
"Hollywood 90028" deserves to be much more well-known than it is, and hopefully this disc will make that happen. It's a stark and haunting picture with interesting character studies, and cast and crew are at the top of their game, as are Grindhouse and their Blu-ray and soundtrack. Highly recommended.
