By: Joseph Perry (Twitter/X)

Writer: When It Was Cool

Also Featured At: Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel, B&S About Movies, The Good, the Bad, and the Verdict, and Diabolique Magazine, and film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum.

Film Reviews: Cockfighter and Hollywood 90028 (Fantasia 2024)

Along with an amazing array of premiere features, Canada’s Fantasia Festival also serves up some rare works from the past in its Fantasia Retro section. Here are reviews of two of the more controversial offerings this year, the drama Cockfighter (1974) and the horror film Hollywood 90028 (1973), both boasting beautiful 4K restorations. 

Cockfighter

In the “They don’t make ‘em like this anymore, because they simply can’t” department, fair warning to those disturbed by animal violence in movies: Producer Roger Corman’s Cockfighter (AKA Born to Kill) features several scenes of roosters actually fighting to the death. Viewers who can handle that will be treated to a riveting drama that features Warren Oates in a terrific, almost wordless performance as antihero Frank Mansfield, who has taken a vow of silence — after mouthing off and having to watch his prize rooster lose a cockfight in a motel room the night before a big tournament that he might have won — until he wins the Cockfighter of the Year award. The cast is incredible, featuring, to name but a few, Harry Dean Stanton as Mansfield’s top rival, Richard B. Shull as Mansfield’s partner, Patricia Pearcy as Mansfield’s level-headed girlfriend, along with Robert Earl Jones, Laurie Bird, Ed Begley Jr., and Charles Willeford, who also wrote the screenplay and the source novel of the same name. Director Monte Hellman, whose more than two dozen credits at the helm include the previous year’s Two-Lane Blacktop, marvelously captures the seediness of the proceedings, the drive and determination of a man so obsessed with being the best at what he does that he foregoes true love, and visions of the American south lost to time. 

Hollywood 90028

What starts out as a lurid exploitation horror movie turns out to be a devastating character study of two people whose dashed dreams working in the underbelly of Hollywood send them in different, terrifying directions in writer/director Christina Hornisher’s sole turn at the helm in a feature film, Hollywood 90028 (AKA Twisted Throats and The Hollywood Hillside Strangler). Cameraman Mark (Christopher Augustine) longs to work in legitimate Hollywood productions but can’t break out of filming porno loops for boss Jobal (musician Dick Glass, who is remarkable in his role of a leering sleazeball). It’s on one such shoot that he meets actress Michelle (Jeanette Dillinger), who also aspires toward bigger things in La-La Land. Has Mark found someone who will cause him to leave behind his murderous ways? You see, viewers learn before the opening credits that Mark is a serial killer, and those opening credits show still photographs depicting his first kill as a child — his baby brother. Hornisher pulls off an admirable balancing act, combining sensationalized depictions of sex and violence with philosophical contemplations on the Hollywood machine and life itself. The film is a time capsule as well, showing early 1970s Los Angeles, warts and all. The truly shocking and amazing final shot is jaw-dropping, and alone worth checking out this rare film — though there are many other reasons to do so, too. 

Cockfighter and Hollywood 90028 screened as part of Fantasia 2024, which ran July 18–August 4 in Montreal. For more information, visit https://fantasiafestival.com/en/.

Joseph Perry also writes for the websites Gruesome Magazine (gruesomemagazine.com), The Scariest Things (scariesthings.com), Horror Fuel (horrorfuel.com), B&S About Movies (bandsaboutmovies.com), The Good, the Bad, and the Verdict (gbvreviews.com), and Diabolique Magazine (diaboliquemagazine.com), and film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope (videoscopemag.com) and Drive-In Asylum (etsy.com/shop/GroovyDoom). 

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