7.1 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Between appearing in supporting roles in General Hospital and local TV commercials, Ryan Sexton spent the early 90s documenting the life and art of El Duce, lead singer of the notorious shock rock band The Mentors. Famous for taking the stage in black executioner hoods, the band spent a few moments in the national spotlight after some of their most offensive lyrics were denounced on the floor of the US Senate. 25 years later, David Lawrence and Rodney Ascher dive into the long unseen VHS footage searching for clues about who El Duce really was, how much of his disturbing persona was for real, and what an act built around a cartoonish sense of violent misogyny can tell us about our own time and place.
Director: Rodney AscherDocumentary | 100% |
Biography | Insignificant |
Music | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080i
Aspect ratio: 1.50:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.33:1
English: LPCM 2.0
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 2.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
While it’s probable that “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” from Hustle & Flow still holds the prize for one of the most unlikely winners of the Best Song category at the Academy Awards, at least in terms of its rather provocative lyric, another Oscar winning song, and a rather iconic and even history making one at that, Isaac Hayes’ classic “Theme from Shaft”, certainly had its own unusual lyric. When the song was an enormous hit, the wonderfully wacky comedienne and singer Kaye Ballard did a guest appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson where, dressed in an evening gown and lots of jewels, she stood at a lectern and delivered a “dramatic reading” of the lyric, offering an "interpretation" of such immortal lines in the song as “Who's the black private dick / That's a sex machine to all the chicks?” That was of course played for its inherent comedy, but there’s a somewhat similar laugh out loud moment in the often quite disturbing documentary The El Duce Tapes where government official types who were part of the then au courant The Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) expressed their outrage at the state of "modern music" by reading undeniably objectionable lyrics by a band many have probably never even heard of, The Mentors.
The El Duce Tapes is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Video with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer in 1.50:1. This is one of the few Arrow releases I've reviewed which doesn't have any real information about the transfer in the insert booklet, other than some passing comments by both the directors and the producer in separate "statements". Rodney Ascher and David Lawrence mention the film was "shot on location in some of the filthiest apartments and scummiest clubs in Los Angeles on a VHS camcorder by Ryan Sexton", and producer Tim Kirk mentioned how "Ryan Sexton and I dragged Ryan's giant VHS camcorder from our seedy Hollywood digs to an even seedier part of Hollywood. . .to interview El Duce and The Mentors." The source elements here are obviously very shoddy looking a lot of the time, to the point that it can actually be hard to make out what's in the frame on at least passing occasions (see screenshots 11 and 12 for just two examples). Some of the interview segments actually look relatively good, all things considered, but the entire presentation has "old school" anomalies like tracking problems and an often substantially noisy, even pixellated, appearance.
The El Duce Tapes features LPCM 2.0 and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1. It may be debatable just how much you'd really want to hear a surround iteration of The Mentors' frequently bombastic and vitriolic "music", but the 5.1 mix here does open up the musical interstitials while definitely providing more "oomph" to the low end in particular. Otherwise, though, both tracks are similar if not identical in a lot of the talking head material, which sounds fine for the most part (there are occasional amplitude variances and the like, obviously due to the "fly on the wall" filming techniques). Optional English subtitles are available.
It's hard to really come out and recommend something like The El Duce Tapes to a "generalist" audience, but if you're a fan of so-called "shock rock" you will no doubt want to check this out. This is another release of a cult item where there are some inherent technical deficiencies that simply can't be overcome, but where a well done supplementary package may help to balance those scales.
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