Hardcore (1979) L.A. Skin Trade Noir

"Turn It Off!"

Written and directed by Paul Schrader.

Schrader was one of Hollywood's top screenwriters. He had a good run in the seventies and early eighties. He wrote The Yakuza, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and directed American Gigolo, and the recently reviewed here Neo Noir Auto Focus (2002). Cinematography in Hardcore was by Michael Chapman (The Last Detail, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and The Fugitive). Music was by Jack Nitzsche (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Moulin Rouge!).

The film stars, George C. Scott (Anatomy of a Murder, The Hustler, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb) as Jake Van Dorn, Peter Boyle (The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Taxi Driver, Hammett) as P.I. Andy Mast, Season Hubley (Vice Squad) as Niki, Dick Sargent as Wes DeJong, Leonard Gaines as porn producer Bill Ramada, Dave Nichols as  Kurt, Gary Graham as Tod, Larry Block as Detective Burrows, Marc Alaimo as Ratan, Leslie Ackerman as Felice, Charlotte McGinnis as Beatrice, Ilah Davis as Kristen Van Dorn, Paul Marin as Joe Van Dorn, Will Walker as Jism Jim, and Hal Williams as Big Dick Blaque.

Jake VanDorn (George C. Scott)

Grand Rapids, Michigan

Square john Jake Van Dorn is a single parent, a Calvinist. A Calvinist believes that God causes everything down to the minutest detail. There is no free will under Calvinism. This critique is according nut job believers of other equally suspect religious sects. But it really doesn't matter to the tale anyway, his strict religious beliefs are just a counterpoint to any big city's open culture of freedom. Jake owns a company that manufactures wood furniture in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Jake is
wound so tight that even what he considers loud colors are a tad too much for him.

Kristen lt. (Ilah Davis)

Jake's teenage daughter Kristen goes on an church sponsored field trip to Bellflower, California and disappears. She splits for the bright lights of the big time. When Jake gets the call from the chaperones, he flies to California. Nobody from the group has a clue. The local police suggest he head down to L.A. cause that's the magnet for runaways, they tell him to check with the L.A.P.D. The missing persons bureau hits him with statistics on how many runaways are reported each year.

Andy Mast (Peter Boyle)

In L.A. Jake hires a private detective Andy Mast. Andy armed with photos starts to snoop around and eventually turns up an 8mm stag loop "Slave of Love" starring his daughter and two guys. Jake asks who made it.

Andy Mast: Nobody makes it. Nobody shows it. Nobody sees it. It's like it doesn't even exist.

Andy rents a small adult theater for a private viewing. Jake views the loop with much angst, practically rending his garments, no, just kidding.

Jake VanDorn: Turn it off! Turn if off! TURN IT OFF!

"A lot of strange things happen in this world."

Andy Mast: A lot of strange things happen in this world. Things you don't know about in Grand Rapids. Things you don't want to know about. Doors that shouldn't be opened.

That Kristen would prefer to make a living doing porno films rather than live with the strict Jake is a testament to the degree of his repression, and of the confines of the strict religious society in which she resided. Jake can't handle the truth.

He directs Andy to continue on the case and he flies back to Grand Rapids. After no word from Andy for a few months, Jake heads back to L.A.

In The City Of Angels, Jake pays a surprise call on Andy where he finds him doing "research" with a stag film actress. Jake goes ballistic and fires Andy. Jake begins to "investigate" himself. His Odyssey takes him into the sleazy porn underworld of adult bookshops, massage parlors, peep shows, sex shops and theaters. His uptight look and bull in a china shop approach pretty much translates as "cop." Forgedaboudit, he gets nowheresville.

Jake eventually gets the idea to pass himself off as a wanna be porno investor as his ticket into the biz. He makes an appointment a porn producer named Ramada (Leonard Gaines). Ramada is all decked out in the latest hipster outfit. He has a standard issue gofer/yes man, following him around like a puppy dog. Ramada invites Jake to a shoot. When Jake remarks on the abilities of the cameraman Ramada exclaims "The kids a good director, U.C.L.A! baby." It's an inside joke, director Paul Schrader was a graduate of U.C.L.A.

Ramada

"U.C.L.A. Baby!"

Jake picks up the lingo and gets a handle on how to act and poses as Jake de Vries a porn producer, getting himself decked out in a loud shirt a wig, a fake porn-star mustache, sunglasses, love beads and gold chains. He looks a bit over the top ridiculous.

Jake VanDorn as Jake de Vries

 Take a look at Hustler porno king Larry Flynt, below he doesn't exactly look hip.

Larry Flynt

Big Dick Blaque (Hal Williams)

Anyway Jake runs an audition add in the Los Angeles Free Press. He stars to interview male actors looking for the dudes in the film with his daughter. The sequence is amusing.

Finally an actor who goes by the moniker Jism Jim who was on of the actors in the film with his daughter Kristen shows up and Jakes lays into him. From Jism, Jake gets a lead to a hooker/porn actress named Niki (Season Hubley) who may know where Kristen is. Jake hires Niki to help him search for Kristen.

Auditioning male studs

Jism Jim (Will Walker)

Niki (Season Hubley)

On the search for Kristen

They hear a rumor that Kristen is making porn films in Mexico so they head down to San Diego and check into a motel. During this symbiotic relationship Jake gets a more nuanced inside scoop of the porn rackets while Niki feels like she's got the kind of protection she'd get from having a pimp without the attached strings. Jake confides in Niki, and tells her about his wife leaving him. They talk about sex.

Niki: Look, how important do you think sex is?
Jake VanDorn: Not very.
Niki: Well then we're just alike. I mean, you think it's so unimportant that you don't even do it. I think it's so unimportant that I don't care who I do it with.

Jake also explains to Niki his TULIP Calvinist beliefs. WTF? you ask.

OK here they are, the five points in a nutshell (apologies if they are not quite spot on), Total Depravity (people are born basically bad), Unconditional Election ( God saves whomever He is pleased to save.), Limited Atonement (redemption of specific sinners was an eternal plan of God), Irresistible Grace (divine operation called rebirth or regeneration is the work of God alone), Perseverance of the Saints (If you have it—that is, if you have genuine faith and are in a state of saving grace—you will never lose it. If you lose it, you never had it.).

Niki: And I thought I was fucked up.... So I guess we're both fucked, huh? Least you get to go to heaven. I don't get shit.

The trek takes Niki and Jake to San Francisco. There they get a lead that Kristen may be with an S&M and "snuff film" maker named Ratan.

Meanwhile Mast is back on the job hired by Jake's best friend Wes DeJong (Dick Sargent) to act as a bodyguard.

Now that they are close to their goal Niki thinks sugar-daddy Jake'll cut her loose. She wont tell Jake the address of the connection to Ratan. Jake gets angry and smacks her around until she spills the address of Tod. Tod is forced by Jake and Mast to tell them where Ratan hangs out. They go to a live sex show it all goes Noirsville when Jake finds Ratan and Kristen.

Noirsville

Scott's performance as Jake VanDorn is effective up until he begins posing as a porn producer, his transformation is a bit too good, he's too resourceful. Like a duck takes to water. I find it the one discordant note. He should have been played a bit more fumblingly inept and clumsy at it. Peter Boyle is believable as the crummy bottom of the barrel P.I.

Hal Williams playing a porn actor known as "Big Dick Blaque, has an amusing sequence at Jake's porn audition describing his sexual prowess, when Jake tells him he's looking for another "type" Big Dick accuses him of being a racist.

Season Hubley was excellent as Niki, the hooker/porn actress who was banking on a way out with the help of Jake, but her hopes are dashed when Jake finds Kristen. She's discarded like yesterdays trash. The ending seems a bit too pat.

Kristen at first tells Jake that she wants to stay and be with the people who love her. But then she abruptly changes her mind and leaves with him. But, I'd doubt that Jake would change all that much especially back in his cloistered religious community, or that Kristen will be allowed to be independent enough to strike a balance between the two totally different lifestyles. Will she really be content, as they used to say "back on the farm now that she's seen Paris."

The seedy sides of L.A. and other California locations are well depicted as is the adult entertainment industry with its adult bookstores, peep shows, massage parlors, trippy drug using actors and prostitutes.

Some interesting trivia (from IMDb) 

• Paul Schrader originally had Scott's character discover that his daughter has been killed in a totally unrelated car crash, at which point he simply goes back home. He changed it to Scott finding her against his better judgment.
• Real adult actress Marilyn Chambers was considered for the role of "Niki" but was turned down because producers felt she didn't look enough like a porn star.
• The movie was based on a real true life story. As a high school student, writer-director Paul Schrader had heard about a local teenage girl in Grand Rapids, Michigan who went missing and who eventually was found to have appeared in an adult movie. This local mini scandal organically evolved into the screenplay for this picture.

Screen caps are from an online screener. 7-8/10