Sex, Death & the Hollywood Mystique

This special limited edition slipcover (designed by Rebekah Porter) is limited to 1,000 units and is only available on our website and at select indie retailers. Absolutely no major retailers will be stocking them.

Saturn's Core Audio & Video is a New Jersey based home video label devoted to releasing underground oddities and shot on video cinema on VHS, and now, blu-ray discs! In partnership with OCN Distribution, Saturn's Core will exhume forgotten or under-seen genre cinema from the 80s and 90s, with an emphasis on SOV horror features. Vinegar Syndrome’s sister company, OCN Distribution, is thrilled to be representing this diverse and unique home video line!

Like an analog Frederick Wiseman, legendary cinéma vérité documentarian Larry Wessel (Ultramegalopolis, Taurobolium, Eric & Shaye) has tackled a wide array of eccentric subjects and captured some of underground cinema’s most striking and unforgettable visuals, equipped solely with his camcorder and a nearly non-existent budget. An aesthetic terrorist of the highest order, Wessel’s simplistic, fly on the wall approach to documentary filmmaking has allowed his subjects to reveal their stories and actions in the most candid and uninhibited means conceivable.

In Sex, Death & the Hollywood Mystique, Wessel turns his camcorder lens on the seedy and salacious underbelly of '90s Hollywood by profiling the lives and confessions of several enthralling Tinseltown luminaries. Notorious L.A. novelist and true crime scribe John Gilmore (author of Severed, The Garbage People) shares intimate and lurid details about the Manson Family murders, the “Black Dahlia” Elizabeth Short, the “Pied Piper of Tucson” killer Charles Schmid, and his early friendship with a young James Dean. Legendary filmmaker Curtis Harrington (Night Tide, Whoever Slew Auntie Roo, Queen of Blood) recalls his personal interactions with classic silver screen legends Gloria Swanson and Marlene Dietrich. Famous Monsters of Filmland publisher Forrest J. Ackerman gives a memorabilia tour of his jaw-dropping “Ackermansion” and recounts setting Metropolis director Fritz Lang up on a blind date. Most poignantly, Wessel cross cuts all these anecdotes with a day in the life of sex worker Kelly Monroe, who candidly preps and plans for an evening of clients from a single, seedy hotel room locale. Featuring additional appearances by Karine Elkins (Superstarlet A.D.) and disabled trans icon Sandie Crisp aka The Goddess Bunny, Wessel’s Sex, Death & the Hollywood Mystique combines the true crime, biographical, and travelogue asesthetics of documentary filmmaking into one sprawling and unforgettable 2.5 hour SOV epic.

directed by: Larry Wessel
starring: John Gilmore, Curtis Harrington, Forrest J. Ackerman, Kelly Monroe, Karine Elkins, Eva Ford, The Goddess Bunny
1999 / 158 min / 1.33:1 / English DTS-HD MA 2.0

Additional info:

• Region Free Blu-ray
• Audio commentary with director Larry Wessel
• Audio commentary with film writer & publisher David Flint
• “All That Glitters is Sold” - a visual essay by film journalist and author Heather Drain
• BONUS MOVIE: CARNY TALK (1995 / 71 min.) - Larry Wessel’s conversational and revealing profile of legendary artist Robert Williams (Juxtapoz, Zap Comix, Appetite for Destruction)
• “King of the Underground” - director Larry Wessel reads an excerpt from his upcoming memoir
• Larry Wessel trailer vault
• Reversible sleeve featuring newly commissioned artwork by Rebekah Porter
• English SDH subtitles