Richard Kern - Hardcore Collection Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		3.0
Audio		2.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		2.0

Richard Kern - Hardcore Collection Blu-ray Movie Review

You'll know it when you see it.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 11, 2017

Perhaps only Supreme Court junkies will recognize the case name Jacobellis v. Ohio, a 1964 decision which kind of shockingly revolved around the Louis Malle film The Lovers, an outing which was deemed provocative enough back in the day to be labeled “obscene”, but which will probably strike today’s audiences as verging on the downright quaint. Though the film was originally released in 1958, it was an “art house” showing in Ohio in the sixties which led to a sizable fine for the theater owner Nico Jacobellis, who exhibited the film, a fine levied against him by Cuyahoga County based on its view that The Lovers was pornographic. Ohio’s state Supreme Court upheld the fine when Jacobellis appealed the decision to them, which in turn moved the case up the “food chain” to the United States Supreme Court. It’s here that the story gets really interesting, for while the United States Supreme Court voted 7 to 2 to overturn the conviction, the justices themselves (including the dissenting voices) could not agree on a rationale for their individual opinions. That led to an almost comical array of supposed reasons why Ohio’s initial umbrage wasn’t warranted, with some justices averring that the First Amendment itself was enough of an underlying foundational element, but with other justices attempting to come to a less generalist motivation for their decision. Perhaps the single most famous quote to come out of the whole fracas, though, belonged to Justice Potter Stewart, who voted with the majority but who came to that decision based on his own personal view of what was obscene and/or pornographic and what was not. Potter famously wrote:

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [note: i.e., hardcore pornography]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.

Which brings us in turn to the collected works of Richard Kern, a provocateur if ever there were one, and a man who was one of the founding members of what later became known as the Cinema of Transgression. That very description should be a telltale clue as some of the envelopes and/or buttons Kern pushes in his short films, many of which depict sex acts, including but not limited to masturbation, intercourse and what some would probably see as physically abusive (if seemingly consensual) activities. Is it pornography? Maybe you’ll know it when you see it.

Kern, both in an extended interview included on the Blu-ray as a supplement, as well as some online interviews that can be found by enterprising Googlers, talks about his early days in New York’s East Village, when experimental filmmaking brought a number of future luminaries like Lydia Lunch (who is in a lot of these films) together. Kern was sick of pretentious “auteurs” who seemed to think that length and languid pacing made for great Art, and with a coterie of devotees decided that short, to the point, (often 8mm) outings were the way to go. The results are often intentionally shocking, with seemingly “forbidden” subjects like what amounts to phone sex, rape, BDSM and other provocative topics trotted out in grainy color and black and white for viewers’ supposed delectation. There’s an undeniably smarmy, low rent quality to many of these films that make them instantly memorable (maybe even unforgettable), though it’s questionable just how “Arty” these offerings really are.

While it’s not as provocative as some of the other short films in this collection, one of Kern’s better known efforts, Goodbye 42nd Street, serves as a perhaps fitting symbol for Kern’s relatively short-lived “hardcore” career as well as changing cultures morés. (Kern has moved on to still photography, where his subjects are often naked women.) Goodbye 42nd Street captures the unseemly essence of midtown Manhattan at exactly the point when so-called “nudie palaces”, drug trafficking and piles of trash on the street gave way to the “kinder, gentler” (yeah, right) impulses of the Giuliani Era, when Times Square and its surrounding areas were deliberately “cleaned up”. Kern’s “tour” through this yet to be gentrified region somehow serves as an apt corollary for his own raw and unkempt approach toward film and, frankly, sexuality. But ironically, that very “goodbye” in the film’s title hints presciently at what Kern himself seemed to realize — that his youthful provocations could only carry him so far.

The films in this set include (see screenshots 22-24 for menu listings which include years of production):

Goodbye 42nd Street

The Right Side of My Brain

Manhattan Love Suicides

Submit to Me

You Killed Me First

Death Valley '69

Fingered

Pierce

Submit to Me Now

The King of Sex

The Evil Cameraman

Gun Shooting

X is Y

Scooter and Jinx (AKA Moneylove)

Tumble

Nazi

Catholic

Horoscope

The Bitches

The Sewing Circle

My Nightmare

Richard Kern - Hardcore Collection Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Richard Kern — Hardcore Collection is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of MVD Visual with AVC encoded 1080p transfers all hovering around 1.35:1 aspect ratios. As Kern himself discusses and as is readily evident by even a cursory glance at the screenshots, all of these films were shot under "guerrilla" conditions, usually with 8mm cameras, and it seems evident that many of the source elements utilized for these transfers were not especially well curated over the years. While these bear the descriptor "remastered", there appears to have been little to no actual restoration, and as a result there are recurrent issues with misaligned frames, emulsion damage, color stripping and the like. There's a rather wide variance in virtually all the elements we typically look at in our reviews, including sharpness, clarity, contrast, densities and especially grain structure, and so I encourage those interested in this release to carefully parse the screenshots included with this review. For my money, the black and white offerings tend to look at least marginally sharper and better detailed than many of the color offerings, though even here there are variances at play. In any case, detail levels are rarely if ever at excellent levels, even in some close-ups, and so expectations should be moderated appropriately.

Richard Kern - Hardcore Collection Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Some prospective customers for this release may actually be more put off by the fact that only a lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 track has been included here, than by any perceived deficits in the video department. Many of these films feature blistering, post punk-esque, "no wave" scores by the likes of Lydia Lunch and Sonic Youth, and the musical elements at least would have probably received a discernable boost with lossless audio. Dialogue is generally okay sounding, but suffers from some of the shallowness that also is evident in the music.

Richard Kern - Hardcore Collection Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Richard Kern Interview (1080i; 1:09:52) is a rather interesting set of sit downs with Kern from late 2011 and early 2012, where he discusses his history and his relationships with folks like Lydia Lunch.


• Fingered Outtakes (1080p; 11:10)


• Lung Leg Outtakes (480i; 2:53)


• Destruction Movie (480i; 2:50)

Richard Kern - Hardcore Collection Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There's another unavoidable irony when assessing these short films that kind of plays hand in hand with the gentrification of Times Square as alluded to in Goodbye 42nd Street: the advent of the internet made porn free for all, and (especially in recent years) all in the impeccable technical aspect of high definition (or so I've been told), something that makes these provocative and potentially (for some) repugnant offerings perhaps as quaint in their own way as The Lovers would seem to Art House denizens. These are simply not my cuppa in any way, shape or form, but I understand their historical import in terms of the indie filmmaking of a ragtag bunch in New York during this era, and so I've given this a somewhat higher score than I probably would have otherwise. Even those who don't care for any of the films may be interested by the long and generally compelling interview(s) with Kern included on the disc. Both video and audio have separate issues that may concern some prospective consumers.