DVD ROUNDUP
TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A.

I remember not liking William Friedkin's 1985 film To Live and Die in L.A. very much when I saw it in the theater. Of course, I was fifteen at the time and Back to the Future was more my speed. Lucky for me, the film has now arrived as a nice platter from MGM and I can fully regret the error of my youthful ways. For a film that boasts a soundtrack "composed and performed by Wang Chung," it holds up surprisingly well, looking quite a bit less dated than Michel Mann's Manhunter, which came out the following year and also stars William Petersen as a cop "on the edge."

Friedkin's film (based on the novel of the same name, but apparently tweaked so heavily that Friedkin gets a co-writing credit) follows Secret Service agent Richard Chance (Petersen) as he tails artist/counterfeiter Eric Masters (an early starring role for Willem Dafoe) and tries to put him away by any means necessary. Chance, as his name indicates, is a bit of a loose cannon who doesn't have much regard for playing by the rules. He thinks nothing of ripping off a suspect for $50,000, and his lover Ruth (Darlanne Fluegel) is essentially a kept woman from whom he extracts information under the threat of having her thrown back in prison. Thanks to his partner's untimely demise (wasn't it Ebert who noted that for movie cops, being less than a week away from retirement equals a death sentence?), Chance is saddled with rookie John Vukovich (John Pankow), who isn't comfortable with Chance's methods. Masters, on the other hand, is a bit of a cipher. He is a talented artist, but burns his best paintings. As a counterfeiter, he seems more concerned that his bogus money is properly appreciated than in getting it out on the market. He seems to fancy himself a patron of the arts, complete with a bisexual girlfriend (Debra Feuer) who works in a new-wave dance group that appears to be some kind of Cirque de Soleil progenitor. But he's also a cold-blooded killer. Ye gods, if only the art world were really filled with such interesting folks!

As much as the plot outline seems to be a rather typical cop story, it's where the movie diverges from the rubric that makes it interesting. Friedkin does little, if anything, to make Chance likable. Like Popeye Doyle before him, Chance is clearly not a good guy, and whatever sympathy we feel for him owes to Petersen's nicely nuanced performance and soulful gaze. In fact, Friedkin goes out of his way to make every character greedy, self-absorbed (but tell us, Billy, how do you really feel about L.A.?), untrustworthy, or incompetent. And then there's the ending. Without spoiling it, suffice to say there's a major shocker that no major studio would allow today. In fact, the disc's bonus features include an alternate ending Friedkin filmed at the studio's request that, if used, would have completely betrayed the audience-and resembled every buddy-cop movie made by Hollywood since the eighties. Whatever you think of Friedkin's purported penchant for megalomania (cf. Peter Biskind's Easy Riders Raging Bulls), you have to admire his obstinacy in refusing to use the bastardized ending.

Despite some eighties trappings, Friedkin remains rooted in the styles and techniques he developed in the seventies. Shots are longer, expository dialogue is kept to a minimum, and there is an improvised quality that adds to the sense of realism (this is highlighted nicely on the accompanying featurette, in which cast members recount stories of Friedkin telling the actors they were doing a rehearsal take and then keeping it). Robbie Muller's great cinematography highlights a seedy, run-down Los Angeles that had not been seen in movies before that point (Friedkin's The French Connection did the same for New York). There are a couple of fantastic sequences: the much-ballyhooed car chase through L.A. traffic (which is thrilling, but for my money not as much so as the one in French Connection), and a bravura segment in which we see all the stages of Masters' counterfeiting process, complete with minute details such as aging the newly printed money in a dryer with poker chips (we learn in the featurette that the film had a "consultant" who let them in on the intricacies). Despite a few plot holes (why does Masters agree to deal with the undercover Chance, even though he knows Chance isn't who he claims to be?), the story is absorbing and the action brutal. It's also great to see early performances from Dafoe, Petersen, Pankow, and John Tuturro (playing a sleazy associate of Masters), as well as a nice appearance by Dean Stockwell as Masters' completely unprincipled lawyer.

The picture and sound are as good as one would expect from a major studio release, though I thought the synthesizer-dominated music was mixed too loudly (although this is probably as originally intended). The extras are good, but a little slim: we get the aforementioned alternate ending; a deleted scene between Vukovich and his estranged wife (in the introduction to the scene, Friedkin can't remember why he cut the scene and says he'd put it back in if he could); a featurette that features footage from the shoot and new interviews with director, actors, and crew members; and a feature-length commentary by Friedkin (who's always fascinating even if you have to take certain things he says with a big grain of salt).

Film: 4/5
Look/Sound: 4/5
Extras: 4/5


PEEPING TOM

One of the great things about Netflix is that it affords the opportunity to acquaint yourself with works by great directors that aren't shown on television, and you'll never see in a theater unless you live in a city with a repertory house (the list is a short one). Thanks to Netflix and The Criterion Collection, I'm acquainting myself with the works of Michael Powell, whose Black Narcissus is about the only film of his you'll ever catch on TV. I thought it appropriate to start with the film that effectively ended his career, the controversial (in its time) serial killer flick Peeping Tom.

The film begins with a rather creepy sequence in which a prostitute is stalked, approached, and then murdered in her room by the unseen John. Adding to the overall creepiness is that the scene is depicted from the point of view of the killer, who is watching the events through the viewfinder of a film camera. We next meet the killer, watching the footage and obviously deriving sexual gratification from it. He's Mark Lewis, a quiet young man who works as a cameraman at a studio and earns extra money by taking naughty boudoir photos for a local tobacconist, who sells them under the counter at his store. Lewis takes his camera everywhere he goes, and is compelled to peep on others, including the people who live in his building. He's discovered peering in on a 21st birthday party for Helen Stephens [Anna Massey], who lives in the building with her blind mother. She strikes up a friendship, and finds herself attracted to the intelligent, shy fellow who lives upstairs and turns out to have inherited the building from his father, a noted psychologist. As she gets closer to him, she finds out that his father filmed the young boy constantly, to provide a record of his development; and that he conducted disturbing experiments on the child which were designed to explore the nature of fear. Meanwhile, the murders continue, and the killing of a young stand-in on the movie set where Lewis works prompts the police to investigate the film's crew. As the police noose draws tighter, Helen comes closer to discovering the truth about her new friend.

There are some things about the film that clearly don't work as well today as they did when it was released. The sexual content, of course, was much more shocking in 1960; and the psychological "explanation" of Lewis' compulsions seems laughably simplistic today. However, more works than does not-especially the shifts in tone from light to dark, as in a great scene in which the stand-in, thinking she's performing for an audition reel, does a nifty dance number which turns to terror as she realizes it's to be her last. As Lewis, Carl Boehm seems to be channeling Peter Lorre; no doubt Lorre's complex performance as a murderer of children in M is an inspiration. He shows a weird vulnerability that makes homely librarian Helen's attraction to him believable. Maxine Audley, as Helen's blind, heavy-drinking mother gets a great scene as she confronts Lewis in his darkened screening room.

Peeping Tom was greeted with such shock and revulsion by British audiences on its opening that it virtually destroyed Powell's moviemaking career. It's a shame, not just because it ruined a great director's reputation, but also because it's a good movie, and a prescient one in that it prefigured an entire genre that was to come.

Criterion's transfer is, as usual, excellent; preserving the muted colors of Arthur Lawson's London set designs cleanly and crisply. The mono sound is clean, and no doubt as clear as the source recordings allow. On board is the BBC documentary "A Very British Psycho," which details the making of the film and its reception by audiences; an audio essay by film theorist Laura Mulvey; the original trailer; a stills gallery; and the ever-handy Color Bars feature.

Film: 4/5
Look/Sound: 4/5
Extras: 3.5/5