After just one film as a Director, "Blue Collar" and a couple years after writing "Taxi Driver", Paul Schrader unleashed the controversial film HARDCORE to theatres in 1979.
We meet a very conservative businessman with strict Calvinist religious beliefs. Jake Van Dorn (George C. Scott in a powerful, all-in dramatic performance) is raising his teenage daughter Kristen alone, surrounded by church friends and family.
When his daughter heads to Los Angeles with a church youth group and disappears, Van Dorn hires a seedy private detective named Mast (Peter Boyle, very good) to track her down.
Mast sends Van Dorn back to the Midwest, but soon meets him to share some very bad news with Van Dorn, that his daughter is featured in a low budget adult film.
The scene in which Jake sits in a seedy adult theatre that Mast has rented out for the morning and sees the film is excruciating to watch and graphic enough to make any viewer share Jake's horror.
As Van Dorn decides to head to LA to track down his daughter, the film is never less than intriguing but is repulsive in equal measure.
Van Dorn sinks deeper and deeper into porn shops, strip clubs and the world of adult films, eventually posing as an investor in films himself.
Schraders screenplay dances on the edge of staying believable at times.
Scott is very good and the deeper he digs into this dark world, the more it fundamentally changes him and his world.
The challenge is whether you want to take this nasty voyage with him, where everyone sells a part of themselves to very little gain.
There are several dialogue sequences between Jake and a film star/stripper/prostitute named Niki that are perfectly written.
Schrader is the man that wrote "Raging Bull", "American Gigolo" and "The Last Temptation of Christ" and his dialogue can be incredibly powerful.
As Jake and Niki's worlds meet and they realize that they share many of the same needs and fears, Scott and Season Hubley as Niki take the film to the next level.
Sadly, the ending seems very contrived and far too easy for the journey, putting too mainstream a spin on the story that precedes it.
This certainly isn't for everyone.
It's a dark and un-redeeming tale through an unrelentingly seedy and depressing subculture, but Schrader proves himself a worthy tour guide with plenty to say in every dark and filthy corner along the way.
HARDCORE gets a B-.
TV buffs will scratch their heads seeing Dick Sargent, TV's second Darren on "Bewitched" as Jake's brother-in-law. Where's Samantha when you need her? Thank heavens he's not looking for Tabitha in LA.....
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