MAGNET contributing writer Jud Cost is sharing some of the wealth of classic films he’s been lucky enough to see over the past 40 years. Trolling the backwaters of cinema, he has worked up a list of more than 100 titles—from the ’20s through the ’80s—that you may have missed. A new selection, all currently available on DVD, appears every week.
Hardcore (1979, 109 minutes)
The last time I attended the Bing Crosby “clambake,” the pro-am celebrity golf tournament in Carmel that morphed into the less intimate AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am in 1986, I followed a foursome that included George C. Scott. I’d been a fan since he first appeared with Paul Newman in The Hustler. This was back in the day when you could joke with Arnold Palmer when his iron shot nailed a seagull at Pebble or chat with Glen Campbell after he drained a 15-foot birdie at Spyglass. Approaching Scott that day was out of the question. Unable to get his ball airborne, he hit nothing but worm-burners and looked perfectly miserable.
It’s that same scowl Scott frequently employs in Hardcore as Jake Van Dorn, a tightly wound Grand Rapids, Mich., furniture manufacturer. In the middle of Sunday dinner, he gets a phone call that his teenage daughter, Kristen, is missing from a bus-trip to Los Angeles for a church-sponsored convention. According to a girlfriend, she was last seen talking to an older boy at the White Knuckler ride at Knott’s Berry Farm.
Van Dorn flies to L.A. that same day. “Kristen isn’t the type of person to just up and leave,” he tells the police officer in charge of the case. “Let’s hope she’s a runaway. Then at least she knows where she is. That’s better than most of these other kids,” says the cop, pointing to a bulletin board full of photos of missing children. “A lot of them aren’t going to turn up at all.”
“Let me ask you a personal question,” says Andy Mast (Peter Boyle), a private detective Van Dorn has agreed to meet in a coffee shop. “Was your daughter the type to run around … uh, play practical jokes?” Mast tap-dances, noting the frown on his client’s face. “Let me visualize your daughter,” he continues. “She never had a rebellious or impure thought? She didn’t fuck around?” “If I was you, I’d watch my language, Mr. Mast!” says Van Dorn through clenched teeth. “Look, I’m good at this. I’ll find her,” says Mast. “It may take a week or two, a month at most. It’d be better if you go back home. Go through her stuff. See if she knew anybody out here.”
Weeks later, Mast arrives in Grand Rapids with something to show his client. “You know what a hardcore movie is?” asks Mast. “Yes, it’s like a stag film,” replies Van Dorn. “There’s a little theater up the street I’ve got the use of for an hour,” says the detective. As Van Dorn sits down, Mast flips on the projector to reveal Kristen (Ilah Davis), stripping down to her panties with two young men surrounding her. “Turn it off. Turn it off! Turn it off!!” screams Van Dorn in agony.
