Top films, like Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction, are being released straight to video. ANDREW WORSDALE finds out why
TO see some really great movies these days it seems you have to go to a one-off film festival or visit the video shop. “Marginal” films often go straight to video. This is the case with clunky action movies as well.
A critic once remarked that Dolph Lundgren (a Swedish action star) had a serious case of STV (“Straight to Video”). But sometimes you can find theatrically unreleased gems on tape. One example is Abel Ferrara’s stunning movie The Addiction, available on Nu Metro video.
The plot concerns Kathleen, a New York graduate philosophy student – perfectly played by Lili Taylor – whose neck is munched by mysterious vampire Annabella Sciora. At first horrified by the caress, she gradually starts using hypodermic needles to mainline the vital fluid of life into her system as she feels the pangs of bloodlust. She ends up meandering between lectures and the library and at night picks up people on the streets to satisfy her new craving. She even drags her lecturer home for a one-night-stand and gives him the neck-suck.
Kathleen’s nemesis is an older vampire, played with the usual menace by Christopher Walken, who rants on about how he’s used willpower to avoid feeding for decades, while he slurps hungrily at her jugular. The climax of the film is an orgy of comic- violence where she and her vampire friends feast on college tutors and students at a graduation party.
Ferrara is a past master at films that push at the edges of genres, always dealing with sin and redemption and exploring the extremes of human behaviour. Bad Lieutenant, with Harvey Keitel as a drug- addicted corrupt cop, and King of New York, with Christopher Walken as a charitable gangster, are just two examples.
As a director he’s noted for being unassailable and manic, and there are rumours that he shoots up heroin on set. In The Addiction, beautifully shot in grungy black and white, he explores the connection between drug addiction and the vampire’s bloodlust. This is not the stylised adulation of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire or the campy chills of Christopher Lee’s Dracula. Ferrara has delivered a stunning cautionary tale – much like an anti-drug movie – with a devastating central performance by Taylor, all strung- out and dirtily drenched in blood.
The final scene, where she lies exhausted by her condition in a hospital bed and asks a nurse to open the blinds so the life can drain out of her, is achingly beautiful.
Why the film didn’t get a theatrical release is a mystery. Nu Metro video marketing director Donna Cooper says: “There are too many movies and not enough cinemas. The film is black and white, and that’s also a big no-no.” John Ferreira, head of distribution at Nu Metro, agrees: “To screen a film it costs about R200 000, and that includes prints, posters and advertising. There’s a bottleneck of art movies waiting to be released and no cinemas.”
With the so-called art circuit accounting for only 0,2 % of the movie-going market and the demographics of distribution changing to lowbrow action movies (Nu Metro’s uninspiring actioner Drive gets a release of over 30 prints this week) things look dire for the movie buff.
But don’t despair. Your local video store might carry a gem like The Addiction, and you might also get hold of the low-budget Foxfire, a cross between Thelma and Louise and Kids that has young girls taking revenge against a male chauvinist; Tom De Cillo’s Living in Oblivion, an off-the-wall look at film-making starring Steve Buscemi; The Star Maker, Guiseppe (Cinema Paradiso) Tornatore’s beguiling tale of a bogus casting director in pre-war Sicily; The Young Poisoner’s Handbook, a critically acclaimed independent British film, and Clive Barker’s all-time classic horror movie Hellraiser, originally produced in 1986 and released, strictly on video, only a month ago.
For those without VCRs, Nu Metro is hosting a mini-festival of independent films starting in Johannesburg on July 14, in Cape Town on July 28 and in Durban on August 15.
The line-up includes Abel Ferrara’s latest The Funeral, a Cannes festival contender that’s a stylish gangster pic set in the 1930s; actor Steve Buscemi’s directorial debut Trees Lounge, which is an ode to drinking and misinformation; Michael Corrente’s adaptation of David Mamet’s Tony-award winning play American Buffalo, starring Dustin Hoffman; and Ismael Merchant’s highly praised romantic drama The Proprietor. All these movies have been screened in theatres abroad, but locally they have been relegated to the small screen.