Hello Youtube!
I am Torstein from Cinema Terror and today I have a piece of cinema to talk about regarding
a cautiousness tale of the mean, abusive streets of Hollywood in Los Angeles.
Well, sort of.
This is a Wings Hauser movie, both starring Wings Hauser and being directed by Wings Hauser
and if you are familiar with Wings Hauser then you kind of know what you can expect
in the 1991 PM Entertainment produced thriller The Art of Dying.
Wings Hauser stars in this film as detective Jack, a hard working, hard drinking cop who
believes in the old fashion work of investigations.
That means not relying on technology, profiling and stuff like that.
Instead, he always keeps his presence in the streets, beating up bad guys and trying to
save as many naive, underage girls from being exploited by seedy producers who promise them
fame and fortunes, only to be tricked into the adult industry and at times, even worse,
end up dead.
After an increase in extremely violent deaths in his city, Hauser, or I mean Jack, sets
out to find and put an end to the evil acts of a demented snuff filmmaker Roscoe, played
lovely over the top by Gary Werntz.
Roscoe takes great joy in re-creating scenes from famous films, only by altering the ending
to them by including real murder.
When Hauser, I mean Jack, comes closer to finding Roscoe, Roscoe sets his eye on Jack's
on and off girlfriend Holly.
Can Jack stop Roscoe in time, or will he have to witness Roscoe's final and most brutal
set piece, starring the love of his life.
The premise for The Art of Dying is not a bad one, although hardly original.
There are many other films out there, especially from the 80's where we see how dangerous it
can be for young, naive out of towners to pack up all of their stuff and head out to
Hollywood to make it big.
Some of them turn out very sleazy, while others might make an attempt at taking the awful
scenario more seriously.
The Art of Dying ends somewhere in the middle as while the stuff that goes on is quite gruesome,
the film manages to balance it out by having a sort of fun vibe going through it, most
likely due to Wings Hauser just being so fun to watch.
What's so great about him, except his talent, is that he always gives it his all and it
is no different on this film.
Regardless if he is in a good mood or is going through some stuff.
And what kind of Hauser do we get in this film you might ask?
Well, he is a good guy here with some personal problems, but it's not a drunken self-destructive
type of person that we often otherwise gets.
We do get one hilarious scene where he is sitting on the beach with a bottle of tequila
and randomly let's his pet bunny have a sip.
Totally random and I don't believe we see this little guy in any of other scene.
Another scene with golden Hauser moments is when he is having some sensual moments shared
with his love interest Holly, played by Kathleen Kinmont, who horror fans will remember from
Halloween 4 and Bride of Re-Animator.
Their love scene is happening in the kitchen and uh, I don't even want to try to explain
what is going on here.
Just enjoy the visuals.
In between all the good Wings Hauser scenes, and there are many more as he absolutely takes
over every scene he is in, we also get to spend some time with the weirdo villains.
I'm not sure if the two bad guys, the snuff filmmaker and his sassy sidekick, is supposed
to be a couple or not.
It sort of hints at it at times, but does not attempt to do anything with it or even
keep it tasteful.
They are larger than life and colorful though and definitely are fun bad guys for a low
budget vigilante movie, although the violent acts of these guys do go a bit further than
your average action b-movie in the shock department.
Speaking of the violence, they don't keep it consistent on that part as while the bad
guys starts out re-creating famous death scenes from movies such as Psycho, The Deer Hunter
and Scarface, others are killed off without at least me recognizing what movie they are
supposed to be referencing.
When the film first start, Wings, or Jack, has a partner.
A quick line delivering black female that sadly was killed off right away.
She seemed to be very fun and I wish they had kept her around for much longer.
If they had to kill her off, at least make it a bigger part of the story and let it be
an emotional scene for Wings, or Jack.
I don't know how to explain the tone of the film as it is all over the place and tries
to mix in a lot of different vibes.
There's humour, there's film noir stuff, there's pure exploitation, slasher elements are presence,
romance, just whatever you could possibly think of, this movie tries to include.
Some of that might be explained by this being one out of four films that Wings Hauser directed
himself between 1990 and 1994 and the screenplay being written by Joseph Merhi, one of the
co-owners of the fun production company PM Entertainment.
If you are familiar with their movies, usually low budget action films from the last half
of the 80's and first half of the 90's, then you can see how The Art of Dying ended up
being the way it is.
The Art of Dying is a fun Wings Hauser film and I say that specifically because I don't
think this will be enjoyable for anyone who is not a fan of Wings Hauser, if people like
that are actually out there.
If you haven't became a loyal follower of all things Wings Hauser yet or don't understand
his appeal, then I wouldn't say that this is the best film to start out with.
Go see Vice Squad or Gang Boys instead.
The Art of Dying was a fun time for me, even if I will not call it a good movie.
I'm giving The Art of Dying the score of 3 out of 5.
Has any of you viewers of mine seen The Art of Dying?
What do you think of it and how does it rank for you on the Wings Hauser-meter?
It's very likely that I will do more Wings Hauser movies in the future, so feel free
to recommend more to me.
I do have a review of up one of his other directorial efforts with Gang Boys, also starring
the lovely Linda Blair.
So check that review out as well.
As always, I appreciate you taking the time out of your day to watch my videos here on
Youtube and I hope you'll come back for more reviews of low budget b-movies here on Cinema
Terror.
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