Turn it off. Turn it off! Turn it ARRRGH!

The latest Netflix fix came in the form of Paul Schrader's Hardcore (1979), a curious mix of exploitation and self-loathing, with a priceless tagline: "Oh, my God, that's my daughter." The film follows the quest of a strictly religious Midwestern father, Jake Van Dorn (George C. Scott, RIP), to find his runaway daughter in the urban jungles of California and rescue her from a seedy funhouse milieu of porn, peep shows and prostitution. (Drugs, too, presumably, given the legions of young, slow-witted, dead-eyed skinflick performers and sex workers. Lots and lots of narcotizing drugs.) He is assisted in this endeavor by a sleazy private dick and guide (Peter Boyle), whose screening of a scratched, grainy reel featuring Van Dorn's daughter in a group sex scene prompts the "Turn if off" paroxysm and kicks off her father's search in earnest. In all candor, I didn't pay close attention to all the clues on the scummy, winding path to Van Dorn's daughter. Under the circumstances, some of the nuances of character and personality were probably lost on me; I couldn't really tell you the difference between a Ratan and a Jism Jim. I was absorbing the gritty atmosphere and relishing Scott's blustery bull in a sex shop. If you haven't already, see the movie, if only for Scott's, ahem, sartorial 70s splendor, including groovy 'stache and roadkill wig, as he goes undercover as a bottom-feeding porn producer; moments like the one where an apoplectic Van Dorn, triggered by an insult to his daughter's oral sex technique, beats a scrawny, pockmarked porn actor with a table lamp and tosses him into a shower stall, further threatening the (in the words of Boyle's detective) "faggot hustler" with the shower head; and, most importantly to Hardcore's value as a historical artifact, a listless stripper reenactment of a Star Wars light saber duel.
Hardcore. Quality: **. Entertainment Value: ***** (on a four-star scale).