"Vyv! Eat the telly!"

A surrealistic, irreverent, and often violent exploration of four college students sharing a seedy house, “The Young Ones,” the first BBC series to debut on MTV, became a cult sensation that has kept its popularity for decades, gave audiences their first look at British comedians later to become worldwide stars, and predicted some of the shows that MTV made famous.

Much as stand-up comedy in America saw a sea change in style and attitude during the ’70s counterculture boom, England in the ‘80s was also in the midst of a shake-up in who would be creating comedy and how it would be done.

Oddly enough, both groups were getting noticed at clubs called The Comedy Store, though England’s had no connection to the famous Mitzi Shore-operated landmark aside from inspiration.

This new breed of British comedians were determined to stand out in direct, punkish contrast to both old traditionalist comedians, white males making cheap and often derogatory jokes about women and minorities, and newer comedians that had more progressive ideas, but were still from affluent backgrounds and thus having a certain detachment from the working class. These were educated but not posh individuals who wanted to shake up the audience, either through confrontational jokes or unconventional behavior.

Among the performers who earned a following from The Comedy Store were Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson, who performed unpredictable improv-style sketches under the name 20th Century Coyote, Nigel Planer and Peter Richardson, who did genre lampoons often featuring escalating comic violence as The Outer Limits, and the club’s house M.C., Alexei Sayle, who mixed physical gags with directly left-leaning political material.

Peter Richardson, Jennifer Saunders, Nigel Planer, Arnold Brown, Alexei Sayle, Rik Mayall, Dawn French, Ade Edmondson

These five performers, along with some other promising talents, ultimately decamped and created their own club in Soho, The Comic Strip. Their reputations grew even larger to the point where two TV networks eagerly sought them out to put them on the air.

Channel 4, not yet broadcasting, signed them to a series of six half-hour programs under the umbrella title “The Comic Strip Presents.” As this show was being assembled, the BBC, with producer Paul Jackson, also offered them a series, which would be ostensibly a conventional sitcom, peppered with all the comedians’ strengths, which became “The Young Ones.”

“The Comic Strip Presents” debuted on the night of Channel 4’s first broadcast, November 2, 1982, with “The Young Ones” launching on BBC2 a week later on November 9.

The concept of the show came from Rik Mayall, Lise Mayer — who was dating Mayall during production — and Ben Elton, a college friend later to embark on his own stand-up career. They figured that for a sitcom setting, the actors needed to be in the same room for long stretches of time to play off each other, and while they initially considered making the characters unemployed, thought that notion would be too political.

Instead, Mayall decided to flip the script, and make them college students, saying, “I wanted them to be privileged, and for people to hate them.”

Much of the show’s characters emerged out of existing material the actors had previously worked out on stage. Mayall had created a vain, pompous, and easily angered poet character in his act which evolved into Rick, the posturing political agitator with an incongruous love of Cliff Richard.

Similarly, Planer had been playing a dim, earnest hippie character in his act which became the base for Neil, the glum and easily dominated pacifist. Edmonson had frequently used over-the-top violence in his sketches with Mayall, which was channeled into punk rocker Vyvyan, whose solution to most issues with people and things was to batter them with heavy blunt objects. Sayle effectively served as a human non-sequitur, showing up in an episode, doing something odd, and then leaving the scene.

Mike, the smooth semi-straight man and official “Cool Person” of the house, was the only character that didn’t have an antecedent from the Comic Strip days. It was also the only character not portrayed by a Comic Strip alumnus. While intended for Planer’s partner Peter Richardson, Richardson clashed fiercely with BBC producer Paul Jackson and exited the series before filming, to be replaced by actor Christopher Ryan.

The Young Ones on location in Bristol, UK, August 1982, left to right: Chris Ryan (“Mike”), Rik Mayall (“Rick”), Nigel Planer (“Neil”) and Ade Edmondson (“Vyvyan”)

Together, this character group allowed Mayall and the writers to tweak the template of the traditional family sitcom. “If you look at ‘The Young Ones’, it was a nuclear family. Mike was the dad, Neil was the mum, Vyv was the little boy and Rick was the little girl, complete with pigtails.”

In order to obtain the extra budget they anticipated to include special effects, location shoots, and the other wild items that added to the show’s individuality, the creators decided each episode would feature a musical performance from a band, because this automatically changed the network’s classification of the program from “comedy” to “variety,” and thus allocated them more funds. The bands tended to be left alone to perform their songs, though occasionally they were integrated for humorous effect, as in the episode “Sick”, when Madness prematurely stopped singing “Our House” and fought amongst themselves.

The series quickly became a destination for other comedians, some friends of the show creators, others established elsewhere. Perhaps the most retroactively star-stuffed episode of the series was “Bambi”, which featured appearances by Mel Smith, Griff-Rhys Jones, Robbie Coltrane, Tony Robinson, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, and Emma Thompson.

Since many of these performers had come from more affluent circumstances than the show regulars, the casting was fraught with some class tension, as Alexei Sayle recounted for The Guardian in 2013:

“I turned up for the recording to find several generations of Cambridge Footlights were in the show. ‘I thought these people were the enemy!’ I railed at the writers. ‘The whole point of what we were doing was surely to challenge the smug hegemony of the Oxford, Cambridge, [privileged]-schoolboy comedy network, as well as destroying the old-school working men’s club racists!’ ‘No, that was just you,’ the writers replied. ‘We never subscribed to your demented class-war ravings. We think all these people are lovely…Mel Smith’s going to take us for a ride in his gold Rolls-Royce, and Griff Rhys Jones has been screaming abuse at minions to make us laugh.'”

 The series ended for good after its second season in 1984.

Creator Mayall had observed, “If there were only twelve [episodes of] ‘Fawlty Towers’, why would I presume to do more?”

The cast had already moved on to other projects when MTV picked up the U.S. rights to the show and began airing it Sunday nights in June 1985.

Plenty of other British TV comedies had received exposure in America around that time, but most were relegated to selected PBS stations, and, aside from “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” appealed to an older demographic.

Shows like “Are You Being Served,” and “The Good Life,” with their middle-aged casts and cutesy innuendos and general distance from everyday realities had little appeal to the rock ’n’ roll crowd.

“The Good Life” was directly slagged by Vyvyan in the “Sick” episode as he ranted, “I hate it! It’s so bloody nice! [Those characters are] nothing but a couple of reactionary stereotypes confirming the myth that everyone in Britain is a lovable middle-class eccentric!”

“The Young Ones” quickly became a U.S. hit. John Sykes, then-VP of programming for MTV, told Billboard magazine in November 1985, “Even though there are only fourteen episodes, we find viewers getting more and more excited about the show,” and also suggested the network would commission new episodes.

While that idea did not pan out, MTV later acquired U.S. rights to “The Comic Strip Presents” from Channel 4, and ran those episodes after “The Young Ones” for fans eager to see more of the cast’s work.

Planer’s put-upon hippie Neil became the favorite of U.K. and U.S. viewers alike. A tie-in book, Neil’s Book of the Dead, presenting his musings and poetry, was published in England in 1984.

A companion record followed, Neil’s Heavy Concept Album, featuring prog rock covers and sketches produced by Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart. Its first single, a cover of Traffic’s “Hole in My Shoe,” went to #2 on the UK Singles chart in July 1984.

In late 1985, based on the success of the MTV run, Book of the Dead received a U.S. release, and though the album did not, Planer appeared on MTV as Neil to do a Guest V.J. segment where “Hole in My Shoe” was aired; the video received repeat airings for a short time after.

Though a few years later “The Young Ones” would be gone from MTV, its impact upon the channel was large. Seeing that the music video crowd also craved comedy, MTV would add reruns of shows influential to “The Young Ones”: “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” and “The Monkees.”

Moreover, many of the original shows that MTV launched, as they began their move away from music video programming, can trace their roots to recurrent themes of “The Young Ones.” A house full of diverse individuals with caustic personalities that don’t get along? Here’s “The Real World”! Dim youth watching the telly and making rude observations? Hello “Beavis & Butthead”! Reckless guys subjecting each other to escalating pranks and grievous bodily harm? Welcome to “Jackass”! Self-centered narcissist with bad poetry demanding attention from people who don’t like them? Come to “My Super Sweet Sixteen.”

While allusions to other MTV hit shows may be stretching a point, it’s clear that “The Young Ones” tapped into many primal interests and instincts of a generation, and MTV noticed what those were and exploited them ingeniously.

It’s also notable that afterward, the next British sitcom to take America by storm would be “Absolutely Fabulous,” created by and starring Jennifer Saunders, who was also a member of The Comic Strip collective, a two-time guest star on “The Young Ones,” and since married to star Ade Edmondson. Saunders’ protagonist, Edina Monsoon, got her name by reworking his last name.

Though her husband had only minor impact on the series — singing its theme song, Bob Dylan’s “This Wheel’s On Fire,” and appearing in two episodes — much like his earlier show, “AbFab” also dispensed with the politesse of the stereotypical British comedy and ventured to outrageous, vulgar possibilities that appealed to younger viewers.  It too bypassed the traditional PBS route and debuted in the states on MTV’s sister channel Comedy Central.

“AbFab” also featured “Young Ones” alumnus Christopher Ryan in a recurring role as Edina’s first husband, Marshall.

All of the stars of “The Young Ones” continued to create more TV series and other works that fans should definitely seek out. And chances are still very good if you are at a party and happen to reply to someone by saying, “Don’t be all heavy and uncool man,” or snapping, “Well LA-DI-DAH, Neil!” there’s an excellent chance you’ll have a bonding opportunity with a fellow ‘80’s malcontent.

It’s clear that “The Young Ones” mayhem will be enjoyed by young ones for years to come.

(This essay was originally written for Night Flight Plus. It has been recreated in the style it was presented in at the site, and matched to its original date of publication. Tremendous thanks to Stuart Shapiro and Bryan Thomas for the platform.)

Beth B & the Sleepy D

Our new contributor, Marc Edward Heuck, takes a look back at Dominatrix’s “The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight” — now streaming on Night Flight’s “Video Vault 7,” one of a collection of daring clips that spurred artistic ripples — which was the first music video for filmmaker Beth B., whose recent documentary on her artist mother Ida Applebroog has drawn rave reviews. The patchwork band Dominatrix would later see their cult song achieve unexpected longevity. Watch it now on our Night Flight Plus channel.

Photo courtesy of Robert Carrithers

Beth B. was a teenager in San Diego when her mother Ida had emerged from a hospital stay for depression in 1970 determined to go on her own and become an artist.

Rechristening herself Ida Applebroog, she moved to New York and became a lauded sculptress and painter. Beth soon followed her mother to NYC, enrolling in Manhattan’s School of Visual Arts, where she focused her efforts towards film.

By the early 80’s, Beth B., with her then-husband Scott B., built a following as part of the “No Wave” movement that launched directors Jim Jarmusch and Susan Seidelman. Their Super 8 films like G-Man and Black Box combined startling scenes of torture and fetish play with stolen TV footage, and were screened in punk rock clubs to rowdy audiences open to having their sensibilities challenged.

Stuart Argabright

Concurrently, one of the prime musicians of the No Wave scene was Stuart Argabright, who first received notice with a punk band called The Rudements, then achieved notoriety with his electronic outfit Ike Yard, one of the few American bands to sign with UK upstart label Factory Records, home of Joy Division.

During this period, Argabright had struck up an unusual friendship with a local domina. As recounted by music historian Dave Tompkins, their favorite activity was not bondage play, but listening to her extensive record collection, though he did express fascination with the intrigue that came with her profession.

After the initial dissolution of Ike Yard, Argabright created Dominatrix, with participation from singer Claudia Summers, John Lydon collaborator Ken Lockie, Tangerine Dream alumnus Peter Baumann, and rising remix DJ Ivan Ivan, who co-produced.

While they recorded a few tracks, their sole release was “The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight,” a cheeky reverie to those hang-outs with his domina friend. As he once opined on Facebook, “[There are] a whole bunch of people who [made] this hit happen. Most of all the hard beating ladies that inspired me in the first place.”

The song was picked up by dance producer Arthur Baker’s Streetwise Records, and released as a 12-inch single with multiple remixes.

Beth B. was working solo when she directed “The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight” video in 1984. The content is tame compared to what she was known for in her previous work, which may well be her subversive point.

The viewer is set up to anticipate a tawdry encounter between a blonde-wigged temptress and the buff garage worker she approaches, only to have a few other leather-clad ladies shove him in a closet, never to be seen again as they go on to dance and loaf about unencumbered.

Tonight, the ladies’ hot gear and sexy moves are not in the service of men’s pleasure, but of their own.

Dominique Davalos

Despite having no explicit content, MTV refused to play the video.

As Beth described it to Flavorwire writer Alison Nastasi, “[Males] were controlling the airspace [and] they are still today, [so their] executives saw women taking over the male domain of a garage, and that they kicked the guys, threw them out, and took over. I have no idea, maybe it was too sexual for [them], but at the last minute they pulled it, and it was not shown. But it became hugely popular, anyway. That year, Madonna said it was her favorite music video, and it was playing at all the clubs. I love it. It was really fun to make.”

After the video’s release, its participants split off to further diverse pursuits. Dominique Davalos, who played the title role, replaced Claudia Summers in Dominatrix for a series of live shows (the group toured as an opening act for Grace Jones) before Argabright disbanded the outfit in favor of a more hip-hop oriented group with graffiti artist Rammellzee called Death Comet Crew.

Beth B. directed Davalos alongside Viggo Mortensen and X lead singer Exene Cervenka in her 1987 satire of televangelism Salvation!, with footage from the Dominatrix video reused in the film. Beth eventually shifted from narrative films to making documentaries for HBO and Court TV.

“The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight” video is now part of the Permanent Collection at MoMA, and has grown in influence. The song was featured in Grosse Point Blank with John Cusack and in Tamra Davis’ documentary Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child.

The beat is sampled in the 1999 Mase/Puff Daddy song “Do It Again.”

Joseph Kahn’s 2009 video for Lady Gaga’s “LoveGame” features a sequence where the singer, in a platinum low-bangs wig and leather gear reminiscent of Davalos’ look in Dominatrix, dances in a garage, albeit with boys allowed to join her this time.

Knowing Gaga’s love of ‘80’s NYC underground culture, the coincidence is probably intentional, as Argabright has suggested.

Argabright relaunched Dominatrix in 2008 with new material, and the original single received a bonus-laden vinyl reissue for Record Store Day in 2015.

While occasionally collaborating with her mother on projects like the 1989 short film Belladonna, it wasn’t until 2009 that, after they discovered lost drawings of Ida’s from the ’70s, Beth was inspired to make a film about her.

Shot over fifteen years and with often contentious disagreements over what would be filmed and revealed, Beth’s film Call Her Applebroog opened this spring in NY to glowing reviews. Retrospectives of Beth’s films, including her early collaborations with Scott B., have screened in multiple cities, with preservation efforts taking place simultaneously.

Look for Call Her Applebroog when it opens in more American cities this fall, and right now, you can watch the video that first brought Beth B. to wide attention on “Video Vault 7,” on our Night Flight Plus channel. You’ll also see rarely broadcast works from Jean-Baptiste Mondino, Toni Basil, Paul Simon, and Laurie Anderson in this episode.

(This essay was originally written for Night Flight Plus. It has been recreated in the style it was presented in at the site, and matched to its original date of publication. Tremendous thanks to Stuart Shapiro and Bryan Thomas for the platform.)

One Five and Alive

2015 kicked my ass. More precisely, to borrow from Tim Allen, 2015 pounded my balls flat with a wooden hammer. The requests for my services from organizations offering payment dropped to an all-time low, while the requests for my money from organizations demanding payment rose to an all-time high. I sold possessions, renounced restaurants, and most severely, almost completely abandoned first-run filmgoing. Were it not for the gentlemanly sway I enjoyed with select venues based on decades-long friendship and respect, and the help of other connected individuals during awards season, I would not have been able to see any movies at all. I was seriously concerned that I could not even write a properly informed Top 13 this year. But the fates took mercy on me, and I have seen enough of what the year had to offer to allow my tradition to continue.

Nonetheless, the changes that took place this year have meant some changes to this list. The "Ten Films Nobody Saw But Me" sublist has been benched for now, since, well, those types of films were the biggest casualties of The New Cruelty. And the few I did see, I decided to give a full upgrade to the main list - really, they're the ones that need my boost more than some of the better-known titles that you're probably hearing about from everyone else. Also, I don't have any sort of entertaining wacko entry as I offered in years past. Contenders like DANCIN' IT'S ON! and TURBO KID will just have to wait for a revival show or a friend willing to commit to owning them *and* having me over to watch them.

I am doling out a Jury Prize this year, though it's really more of a "Jury Nullification" Prize. Long ago, I was allowed an early look at Asia Argento's INCOMPRESA (MISUNDERSTOOD), and found it to be a moving story that told many hard truths about childhood and finding oneself striving for love and acceptance when it should be asserted as a birthright. I was eagerly anticipating its American release so that I could rally people to see it. But for months, it seemed it would not get any stateside exposure. Finally, IFC Films acquired the film, only to give it the most miniscule of contractual obligation releases - one week in NYC coupled with VOD availability, with only Argento herself and a small coterie of friends and fans like myself to stump for it. The lady and her movie deserved a better opportunity to find an audience, and you as the audience deserved a better opportunity to find it. So I'm reminding you one last time that it exists, and that you should seek it, watch it, and embrace it. These are some of the sites that have it available right now.

And so, from the year that tried to bring me to heel, here are the hours where I still found elevation: The Top 13 of 2015:

13. STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON

12. TANGERINE

11. GIRLHOOD

10. THE HATEFUL EIGHT

9. MUSTANG

8. MISSISSIPPI GRIND

7. ROOM

6. CAROL

5. MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

4. SON OF SAUL

3. CREED

2. INSIDE OUT

1. PHOENIX

I apologize for the comparably solemn and subdued tone of this year's posting. I suppose this year, the only gift I can give you is the truth. May we all have a seriously Happier New Year.

Christina Hornisher: Alone with that Obscene Image of Yourself

Image courtesy of thefeministwire.com

While it seems every year, watchful figures in the entertainment industry work to draw attention to the disparity between steady and well-paying opportunities for female creatives vs. their male equivalents, 2015 has been a year in which the commentary reached a volume impossible to ignore. Beginning with blogger Marya E. Gates' ambitious "A Year With Women" project, continuing with Destri Martino's creation of The Director List website and database, reaching unprecedented exposure with the "Trailblazing Women" programming series hosted by Illeana Douglas on Turner Classic Movies (the first of a promised multi-year collaboration with Women in Film Los Angeles), and all the while peppered with hard-hitting stories by Manohla Dargis, Rebecca Keegan, Jessica P..Ogilvie and Maureen Dowd, battlefield dispatches from proud defiant directors like Lexi Alexander and Ava DuVernay, and constant energetic debate from "Film Twitter", if you proclaim yourself a movie lover yet have not had a dialogue, polite or vehement, with anyone about some aspect of this issue, you're doing it wrong.

Besides its primary purpose of advocacy and changing the dominant paradigm, all of this coverage has had the welcome effect of drawing attention to women directors of the past, who had even harder circumstances to navigate in order to get their work made and released, and too often found themselves with only one feature film in their resume. During the TCM broadcasts this past October, viewers were treated to the striking solitary outings of Barbara Loden, Leslie Harris, and Kathleen Collins, and while Harris was able to enjoy this second wind of exposure, and perhaps use it towards new opportunities, new fans of the long-passed Loden and Collins could only wistfully consider what other films could have emerged from them had they not also succumbed to cancer in their late '40's.

Unfortunately, there has been a name absent from practically every discussion of women in film this year; certainly not intentional on anyone's behalf - if anything, to be expected with resignation, since not only did she receive little to no recognition for her work during her life, but her sole feature film has been effectively unavailable for close to three decades. That is why, in these waning days of this ersatz Year of the Female Director, I would like to draw your attention to Christina Hornisher, and her film, HOLLYWOOD 90028.

"People lust for fame. 

Like athletes in a game, 

we break our collarbones and come up swinging

Some of us are downed 

Some of us are crowned

and some are lost and never found

But most have seen it all

They live their lives in sad cafes and music halls

They always have a story"

Telling the story of Christina Hornisher at this time is a difficult task akin to a reverend enlisted to preside over a funeral mass for someone they've never met: we are both left with an extremely thin public record by which to garner their milestones. Thus, for now I can only present a sort of stone soup of her life. Hornisher was born on October 1, 1942 in Watertown, New York, daughter of a military officer. She attended UCLA's film school, where she made three student films in 1966; her classmates included The Doors members Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek, filmmaker-turned-technological pioneer Stanton Kaye, LEMORA director Richard Blackburn, THE ROSE screenwriter Bill Kerby, CISCO PIKE writer/director Bill W.L. Norton, cinematographer/documentarian Joan Churchill, CAA agent and Arsenal consulting firm founder John Ptak, and AMERICAN GRAFFITI co-screeenwriter Gloria Katz. Her sole feature, HOLLYWOOD 90028, was initially released in 1974, and later reissued to drive-ins in 1978 retitled as THE HOLLYWOOD HILLSIDE STRANGLER. During her college years, she married her UCLA classmate and 90028 cameraman Jean-Pierre Geuens, with whom she had a son, Sebastian. She later married theatre and television writer/director Robert Lee Collins in 1989; his credits included writing the "POLICE STORY" episode "The Gamble," which spawned the series "POLICE WOMAN" with Angie Dickinson (giving him series creator credit), and TV movies based on real-life events, such as THE LIFE AND ASSASSINATION OF THE KINGFISH with Ed Asner and GIDEON'S TRUMPET with Henry Fonda. While Hornisher did collaborate with husband Collins as associate producer on his 1987 Showtime biopic J. EDGAR HOOVER, she ultimately would not direct another project again. According to this Los Angeles Times obituary below, she died at age 60 on April 29, 2003.

The Times misspelled her son's last name.

Hornisher's 1966 student films are excellent examples of the spirit of experimentation and new ways of storytelling that were permeating the art form, and the techniques she employed are often now commonplace in all media. Her first short, 4x8=16, took advantage of the manufacturing quirks of 8mm and 16mm to create one of the earliest multi-image presentations, creating four frames of action in a single screen, then subsequently layering full-size footage of a cavorting film crew over the four frames, creating a wall of visuals that overwhelm the viewer much like the song that accompanies the images, "Heatwave" by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, uses a Spector-like "Wall of Sound" production style to overwhelm the listener. While this layout, often referred to as the "BRADY BUNCH" effect, is generally said to have been perfected by recently deceased Canadian filmmaker Christopher Chapman, Hornisher deserves credit for playing with the formula before him. 4x8=16 was enthusiastically championed by L.A. Times critic Kevin Thomas, who described it as "equally rich in textural values and color," and "a whole hymn to the simple pleasures of life." It was also praised by film scholar and LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF creator Thom Anderson, who described it in a letter to his colleague Jonas Mekas, and compared it favorably to shorts by professional avant-garde artists he had been surveying for Mekas' Filmmakers' Cooperative.

Bunny Cohen in AND ON THE SIXTH DAY
image courtesy of Los Angeles Filmforum

Her second UCLA film, AND ON THE SIXTH DAY, makes damning assessments of the humanity which was created on that date in Genesis, through three vignettes blending visuals that on their own would seem uneventful, but become striking with the voiceover attached to them. In the first vignette, running one minute, a jumpy camera P.O.V. moves down and looks about a city street as a woman's voice shrieks for help: while citizens occasionally look into the camera, nobody interacts. In the second vignette, running two minutes, the camera slowly pans around a living room full of religious memorabilia - crosses, candles - stopping on a forlorn woman on a sofa (Bunny Cohen), who is being patronizingly addressed by an unseen priest, cautioning her not to get an abortion which he acknowledges her husband has told her may be necessary to protect her life. As the priest continues to press her, saying "Only God, through the Catholic Church, can be your salvation. And the Church will not allow you to do this," the camera zooms into her pained face. In the final vignette, running three minutes, ordinary random snippets of black people going about work and play are played against the voice of a white man ranting horrible racist calumnies about them. Soon, the voice reverbs into multiple voices, repeating, looping, as the subjects ultimately begin to acknowledge the camera, with the last image a male child looking directly at us with a severe but ambiguous expression as the racist ends his sentence with that most horrifying of epithets.

Her third class project, THE SUN IS LONG, is her most narratively conventional, but still uses a few innovations, and offers a glimpse of the shot style she would later employ in her feature. Opening with stock footage of tanks firing followed by deserted land, a lone soldier (Wayne Sutherlin, who previously provided the male voices in SIXTH DAY), walking in a wide open field to a stark harpischord score, comes across a fallen comrade, and lays his coat over him. Hearing shots, he takes a position, attaches his bayonet to his rifle, and takes aim, only to see the figure in front of him is not an enemy soldier, but something much vaguer in a robe. Putting his gun aside, the soldier rises, and rants to the stranger (Jesus of Nazareth? the Angel of Death?), and in effect, to the audience, about the horror taking place around him. "That could have been a friend of mine...Doesn't it make a difference to you?...Somebody has to care...Can't you stop that? Can't you?", again using echo and staggering the repeated lines as in her previous film to jarring effect. The film climaxes with freeze frames of the anguished soldier and the hooded stranger, cutting between them increasingly faster as war noises get louder and the harpsichord grows more discordant, then plays staccato single notes, like the tolling of a bell. These three films show that Hornisher already had a keen handle on how to use contrasting elements to convey story in unconventional ways.

Hornisher's first feature screenplay, HOME FREE!, submitted as her MFA thesis in 1970, reads as a logical extension of the charged political themes explored in her shorts. The premise concerns the mission of Jeffrey Campbell, a black CIA agent in his 30's, who is groomed to defect to Russia in order to gather data on the KGB, a deep cover operation known only to two other superiors at the agency. The first third of the story depicts the process of Campbell "leaving" Langley and taking an office job where he can convincingly be treated so badly that Russian agents will believe his desire to renounce America. Sure enough, while he never suffers overt racism, he is subject to cavalier treatment and overwork by his boss, often having to pick up the slack for a lazy white colleague, and gets nasty stares when a white female co-worker cozies to him; the latter situation also causing inner conflict between his desire for connection versus his need to be ready to disconnect in seconds when the chance to defect arrives. On his arrival in Russia, he is assigned to an older female handler, Lydia Kotova, with whom there is mutual attraction despite their contrasting agendas of his need to sell his story and her need to probe his sincerity. Their exchanges often feel as if they could be taking place today: when they compare notes about their mutual experience with discrimination in America, Campbell articulates the tension between black power and white feminism - "We're too busy trying to get ourselves equal. It's really of no importance what a a bunch of women want." Just as Campbell seems poised to complete his mission, he learns his CIA handlers have been killed, and realizes he must flee lest he never be able to return to America. The climax features an intriguing sequence that as scripted suggests elements from the previous THE IPCRESS FILE torture scene and the not-yet-written THE PARALLAX VIEW "exam", again demonstrating Hornisher's innovative ideas for presenting visual information. The script is fully annotated with camera and shot directions, indicating she was primed to shoot it, and while there are requisite exotic exteriors and foot chases, most of the film takes place in ordinary interiors, so it likely could have been done for less money than the average spy drama. However, it was determined early that it was still too large a project to undertake herself, and so her debut would ultimately take place in an entirely different milleu.

On November 22, 2005, at the New Beverly Cinema, the ongoing Grindhouse Film Festival presented a double feature of THE HOLLYWOOD HILLSIDE STRANGLER and DON'T GO IN THE HOUSE. At the time, almost nothing was known about STRANGLER - the IMDb page that revealed it as HOLLYWOOD 90028 was review-less, there was no readily available VHS or DVD to refer to, and only a select few people in attendance, including DEADBEAT AT DAWN director Jim Van Bebber, had ever seen or heard of it before. Naturally, the crowd, including myself, were excited at the prospect of rediscovering a mystery film. Three of the four reviews that now populate its IMDb listing were written in the wake of that screening, including my own somewhat harsh assessment of the time, but to summarize, the mostly male crowd, who were intrigued by the pre-credits murder sequence but were then subjected to a more thoughtful and artistic drama about spiritual disconnection with a strong feminist bent, grew increasingly impatient and loudly made it known, until its shocking finale, after which many began to reassess what they saw and muster grudging respect. As for me, even without the benefit of recently rewatching it in preparation for this article (thanks to a friend with a reference-quality source), my appreciation of its strengths only increased over the last decade, and the continued void of information on its making and its creator made me more determined to learn the truth.

"Some women have a body men will want to see 

so they put it on display

Some people play a fine guitar 

I could listen to them play all day

Some ladies really move across a stage

and gee, they sure can dance

I guess I could learn how, if I gave it half a chance

But I always feel so funny when my body tries to soar

And I always seem to worry about missing the next chord

I guess there isn't anything to put out on display

except the tunes, and whatever else I say

And anyway, that isn't really what I meant to say...

I meant to tell a story I live from day to day"

Serving as a spiritual bridge between Michael Powell's PEEPING TOM and Steven Soderbergh's sex lies and videotape, HOLLYWOOD 90028 focuses on Mark (Christopher Augustine), a would-be photographer/cameraman who has only been able to make a living by shooting peep show film loops, and Michelle (Jeanette Dilger), a sweet-natured model he meets during one of the shoots. Mark's history is marred by a childhood spent with domineering older sisters and the death of his younger brother, his culpability in that tragedy left open-ended, while Michelle, a small-town girl already bereft of illusions about the promise of showbiz, works in adult modeling to earn her own income while subsisting as a girlfriend of convenience to an affluent and often-absent musician. (In an unrelated but serendipitous turn, Dilger herself later wed musician Pete Sears of Jefferson Starship) The screenplay, written by Hornisher under the pseudonym Craig Hansen, may take a dim view of pornography, but does not completely blame it for the downward spiral of its protagonists: references to the classic homes of Bunker Hill being razed for unaffordable new luxury housing, and the illusion of hundreds of industry jobs being available but only after proving someone else already gave you one, send the message that the dirty pictures racket is only a specific instance of a larger climate of devaluation the modern city commits against fragile beings on a regular basis. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, the movie opens with a murder, and every ad campaign created to sell the film promised mayhem, so the revelation that Mark ultimately snaps and becomes a killer is bereft of surprise; it is a testament to the story and the acting, however, that for a little while, we entertain the idea that maybe Mark has a chance to escape, despite a tradition that encompasses SUNSET BLVD., CARLITO'S WAY, and MAY, that reminds us we should have known this character was doomed from frame one.

HOLLYWOOD 90028, a movie that Hornisher and Geuens conceived for the purpose of getting mainstream distribution, had the unique distinction of getting two chances in theatres, but also the misfortune of being handled by parties with less-than-hearty support. American Films Ltd., a Beverly Hills-based distributor whose other film releases included ersatz-Yeti-horror SHRIEK OF THE MUTILATED and the counterculture drama NO PLACE TO HIDE featuring a young Sylvester Stallone, first acquired the film and started playing it in theatres in March 1974. However, preliminary research shows it was never submitted to any trade magazines (Variety, Boxoffice) for review, nor was it covered by any critics in the few cities it played in. In fact, it did not play in Los Angeles until August 26, 1976, when it ran for four days at the Cameo Theatre on Broadway Ave. downtown, when it was still a thriving street of battered but operating cinemas. In 1978, a smaller firm called Parker National based in Boston, picked up the rights. Parker National was a sub-imprint of Judson Parker's better known Hallmark Releasing company, responsible for exploitation successes like MARK OF THE DEVIL (and its infamous barf bag and "Rated 'V' for Violence campaign) and LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT. Hallmark, along with yet another imprint, Newport, frequently picked up older films and retitled them for packaging on the grindhouse and drive-in circuit: Jerzy Skolimowski's DEEP END with Jane Asher was sublicensed from Paramount and reissued as STEAM ROOM GIRLS, Sam Fuller's SHARK with Burt Reynolds was retitled MAN-EATER to cash in on JAWS and shark mania, and plenty of Italian-made giallos often got multiple titles as they were shoved into dusk-to-dawn marathons. Parker first retitled the movie THE HOLLYWOOD HILLSIDE STRANGLER, and even took out a front-cover ad in Boxoffice in May 1978 to promote it, then made one more attempt under the title TWISTED THROATS (which was on the print screened at New Beverly) before giving up. Aside from a UK VHS release from Go Video under yet another title, INSANITY, it has never received any home video or television exposure. 

Film editor Bob Murawski obtained a battered print of TWISTED THROATS from Detroit-based subdistributor Mason Releasing Corp., whom he had worked for in the mid-80s before moving to LA. Murawski in turn showed the film to his Grindhouse Releasing partner Sage Stallone, and David Szulkin, who set up the screening with Caidin and New Beverly programmer Brian Quinn to expose it to a fresh audience. Bob, Sage, and David long sought to do a full-bodied release on physical media, talking to as many surviving participants as possible, but sadly, unaware to them all, its director had quietly passed away two years before that screening, and the otherwise determined friends were unable to make that revival happen before the untimely death of Sage in 2012.

For all purposes, Hornisher's film has been relegated to a status much like the product integral to its plot - to quote from another film about sex images, Paul Schrader's HARDCORE: "Nobody makes it. Nobody shows it. Nobody sees it. It's like it doesn't even exist."

The unproduced HOME FREE! and the finished HOLLYWOOD 90028, while taking place in two different worlds, share a fair amount of common ground. Both stories involve a protagonist who from childhood has never had a feeling of belonging anywhere (and each features a flashback to help illustrate that isolation), and as an adult being thrust into an environment where they are seen as a useful idiot at best. HOME's Campbell, raised in racism and hazed for his pacifist nature, has only been able to prove his worth as some sort of liason to the establishment, usually by spying on other black people, and even as he's sent on his big mission, his doomed handlers already anticipate he won't survive. 90028's Mark, spending his formative years being bullied by older women, only achieves equality with them in porn because by the producers' calculus, he is every bit as expendable and replaceable as the actresses he films. Both males are also denied a chance at companionship due to class and economic differences, contributing to their marginalization. And each of them, while pleading for understanding, are ultimately culpable for violent deaths, though Campbell still emerges as a more sympathetic protagonist than Mark, and meets with a more positive, if not completely happy, finish to his odyssey.

The confidence and invention that Hornisher brought to her college shorts drive her direction of HOLLYWOOD 90028, aided by a small but tight crew of artists. The shot compositions created by cameraman Jean-Pierre Geuens with cinematographer John H. Pratt tell stories without need for dialogue: the porn studio boss situated above Mark and the model he films, observing them through binoculars, showing his sense of superiority over them both, and his contrast of wanting the closeness of nudity but at a safe distance; Mark's face being framed by peep show viewing slots and reel-to-reel tape speaker grilles, putting him in the same box as he views naked women in his movie camera - the abyss gazing back at him; a walk among giant painted murals that heighten the disconnect between the aspiration of art and the reality of the street. The standout sequence of the film is a monologue by Michelle detailing the emotional toll of her time in the flesh trade, told through intercutting of otherwise romantic looking shots of her with Mark against flash clips of small town streets, L.A. skyscrapers, banks, adult business marquees, and nude bodies, skillfully assembled by "24" and "LAW AND ORDER: SVU" editor Leoncio Ortiz-Gil. A terrific early score by world-acclaimed composer Basil Poledouris (CONAN THE BARBARIAN, ROBOCOP) adds to the emotional build. The talent on display in 90028 is bold, and as such, everyone on board deserved to look forward to greater opportunities onward. Indeed, as already indicated, Poledouris and Ortiz-Gil went on to long entertainment careers; Geuens, though leaving the creative end of movies, became a respected film professor and critical theorist; and while not continuing acting careers, Christopher Augustine became a sought-after media technician, and Jeanette Dilger became a published author, songwriter, and environmental activist; all of these people and their credits easily discovered through elementary internet searching.

Why then is Christina Hornisher, the woman who brought them all together to realize her vision, a virtual enigma?

"Some make it when they're young, 

before the world has done its dirty job

And later on, someone will say - 

'You've had your day. You must make way'

But they'll never know the pain 

in living with a name you never owned, 

or the many years forgetting 

what you know too well

That the ones who gave the crown 

have been let down"

I picked the title of this essay from the remarkable Jeanette Dilger monologue in 90028, as it seems to be the strongest takeaway from the collected works of Hornisher available to view. In the dramatic presentations she made on film (and one intended thus), there are always people who are shown what little regard the outside possesses for them. The unaided runner, the objects of irrational hatred, the woman seen as potential murderer instead of potential casualty in AND ON THE SIXTH DAY; the soldier confronting the world's indifference to death, and maybe his own role in it, in THE SUN IS LONG; the black professional who is eternally someone else's snoop or exotic infatuation in HOME FREE!; the model as furniture and the photographer as machine in HOLLYWOOD 90028. In her short but potent creative period, Christina Hornisher made her characters, and ourselves, see what we sensed all along but really did not want to have confirmed. And to zoom out from her story into the multiple stories of creative women in Hollywood, we are constantly having our most upsetting sensations confirmed: in an industry even more than ever dominated by, as comedian Dana Gould once wrote, "Men in their 60's telling men in their 50's to hire men in their 40's to get men in their 30's to entertain men in their 20's," the image that far too many of these men carry of women in general, and women artists in particular, may not be obscene, but is often unrealistic, or worse, non-existent. Hornisher's statement in effect becomes prophecy, and soothsayers are rarely heeded in their own time.

Christina Hornisher, married to a respected working director whose three sons from a previous marriage all went into some aspect of film production as well, was certainly still able to immerse herself in an movie-centric environment and provide her wisdom to a receptive if smaller audience. Perhaps, on rare occasion, she still engaged in some aspect of the art form that she and so many other talented members of that 1966 UCLA class aspired to in their youth. Everyone whom I have had contact with about her, on and off the record, have spoken in grounded but glowing terms about her presence in their lives. Most likely, she was perfectly content in pursuits beyond show business. However, like the aforementioned Barbara Loden or Kathleen Collins, it is difficult to view this turn of events as being not so much a choice than a resignation. There is no reason why she could not have enjoyed all the comforts of family and other pursuits, and still been a valued artistic contributor, especially since almost all male directors and the luckier female ones are able to have both.

And in the years since that fateful New Beverly screening, attention is finally being paid to HOLLYWOOD 90028. Fresh appraisals from Alamo Drafthouse Yonkers programmer Chris Poggiali and fellow film historian Samuel B. Prime have been at the forefront. Thus I am here, adding to the advocacy, hoping this article helps put momentum into retrieving her film from the limbo it has sat in too long, or spurs UCLA and other organizations to showcase her work in the same manner by which they have honored other singular artists. Yet even on this small scale, it is sad that she could not be present to see fortune begin turning in her favor.

"Stars, they come and go

They come fast or slow

They go like the last light of the sun, 

all in a blaze, 

and all you see is glory

But those who've seen it all

live out their lives in sad cafes and music halls

We always have a story

So if you don't lose patience

with my fumbling around

I'll come up singing for you

even when I'm down"

-- Janis Ian

Photo from Find-a-Grave taken by James R. Mason of West Hollywood

Deep appreciation and thanks to the Collins family, Jean-Pierre and Sebastian Geuens, Christopher Augustine, Bob Murawski, David Szulkin, and Samuel B. Prime, for their ongoing assistance and support.