The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, May 11-17
America’s Deadliest Home Video (1993)
Directed by Jack Perez
Straight outta NYU, Perez never intended for his debut feature to be shot on videotape. But with only a $7,000 credit limit as his budget, he’d have to buck up and use the blotchy format, then a red flag for amateurism, to the fullest potential. He needn’t reach far for inspiration: consumer-grade camcorders were rapidly thinning the divide between what’s public and private. COPS, Bob Saget, shot-on-video horror, home-brewed porn, and passerby footage of brutality—police-inflicted or otherwise—all seem unrelated, but together represent a populist obsession with documentation and notoriety. Satirical premise in place, Perez created what many videovores deem the true beginning of contemporary found footage. However, only a hundred tapes were pressed, ironically leaving few to find America’s Deadliest Home Video at all.
Taking revenge on his cheating wife in the best way he knows how, Dougie (Danny Bonaduce, in a lull between The Partridge Family and steroids) and his trusty, ever-rolling camera take a road trip. Discovering early that only the truly obnoxious would record nonstop, Perez finds a worthy foil to Dougie’s dopey sincerity: death rocks a ponytail as Clint (Mick Wynhoff) and fellow crooks (Mollena Williams and babyfaced Melora Walters) abduct Dougie to fulfill the narcissistic demand of documenting their carnage. What begins as a simple exploitation exercise for Perez becomes an often disturbing black comedy that pointedly captures its era unlike subsequent entries in the genre. What are now clichés—the too-well-placed blocking, for one—seem fresher here, and everybody develops rather than act as generic fodder in between the action. They must, for the lure of fame attracts many a real-life criminal and do-gooder. As the old TV show theme goes, “America, America, this is you.” Max Kyburz (May 13, 14, midnight at the Nitehawk; DVD release party and signing May 12, 7pm at Forbidden Planet)