{"id":9056,"date":"2014-06-11T16:18:48","date_gmt":"2014-06-11T20:18:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=9056"},"modified":"2014-06-11T16:48:19","modified_gmt":"2014-06-11T20:48:19","slug":"dvd-perdita-durango-dance-with-the-devil-1997","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=9056","title":{"rendered":"DVD: Perdita Durango \/ Dance with the Devil (1997)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\"PerditaDurango_aka_DanceWithDevil\"<\/a>Film<\/strong>: Weak<\/p>\n

Transfer<\/strong>: \u00a0Weak<\/p>\n

Extras<\/strong>: Standard<\/p>\n

Label:\u00a0<\/strong>Unapix<\/p>\n

Region:<\/strong>\u00a01 (NTSC)<\/p>\n

Released:<\/strong>\u00a0 December 28, 1999<\/p>\n

Genre:<\/strong>\u00a0 Crime \/ Action<\/p>\n

Synopsis:<\/strong>\u00a0An American detective tracks down a murderous couple who’ve kidnapped two teens and are attempting to deliver a shipment of human embryos to Las Vegas.<\/p>\n

Special Features:<\/strong>\u00a0 Trailers \/ Filmographies<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

Review:<\/strong><\/p>\n

The second installment of Barry Gifford\u2019s Sailor and Lula saga (after Wild at Heart<\/strong><\/a>) was given a similarly idiosyncratic treatment by director Alex de la Iglesia (The Day of the Beast<\/strong>) who crafted a stylized film which went even further in sex and violence than David Lynch\u2019s own eccentric translation of Gifford\u2019s material.<\/p>\n

Although the character of Perdita did appear in Wild at Heart <\/strong>(1990), Lynch had actress Isabella Rossellini play her as a sultry, yellow-bleached blonde with a meaty monkey brow who said very little; besides driving a getaway car, Perdita was essentially a bit part for Rossellini (who\u2019d previously appeared in Lynch\u2019s prior idiosyncratic shocker Blue Velvet<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

The dark humor of Gifford\u2019s prose is evident in Perdita Durango<\/strong>\u00a0(the film\u2019s original title when it toured the film festival circuit), but Iglesia applied his own uneven mix of humor, satire, absurdism, visual cartoon gags, and sexual violence which didn\u2019t make it easy to like the film\u2019s anti-heroine, especially when she falls for Romeo, a Santeria priest \/ serial killer \/ thug \/ rapist and joins him in his crazy scheme to snatch a pair of na\u00efve American youths on vacation and offer them up as sacrifices.<\/p>\n

The basic story has Perdita (Rosie Perez) hooking up with Romeo (Javier Bardem, sporting the worst mullet ever<\/em>) after a drink at a U.S.-Mexico border crossing. He\u2019s smuggling a cadaver for one of his religious shows where the body will be hacked up and boiled into a bloody goo before being offered to fascinated onlookers, whereas Perdita needs a thrill-kill and easily convinces Romeo to go for a real blood offering.<\/p>\n

Not unlike the real Matamoros cult killings<\/a>, a pair of whitebread teens are taken to a remote shack where they\u2019re held prior to their sacrificial killings, but the night before the event Perdita rapes the boy, after which the two watch Romeo rape the girl through a peephole. The next evening, just as the tarred & feathered kids are about to be sacrificed, the show house goes up in flames, and the two abductors and their feathered victims begin a lengthy flight from the police led by American Det. Dumas (James Gandolfini).<\/p>\n

Their final destination is Las Vegas, where Romeo intends to deliver a shipment of human embryos he was obligated to hijack for Mexican kingpin Santos (Don Stroud, reprising the role played by J.E. Freeman in Wild at Heart<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

The bulk of the film\u2019s last hour is comprised of long, meandering chases in an already long and meandering film in which Det. Dumas follows and eventually catches up with the pair in Vegas, just as Romeo is about to handover the shipment to contact and cousin Reggie San Pedro (played by Javier\u2019s real-life brother Carlos Bardem) only to have things turn out rather bloody.<\/p>\n

The Spanish version runs 126 mins. and contains some additional risqu\u00e9 material plus CGI footage that blends Romeo with characters from his favourite childhood film, Vera Cruz<\/strong> (1954), from which a clip is seen in a brief childhood flashback sequence. Unapix’ Region 1 DVD runs shorter and lacks the CGI segments, but it contains more sexually graphic material than the North American theatrical release.<\/p>\n

Not unlike Jan Kouen\u2019s Dobermann<\/strong> (1997), there\u2019s crackhead energy to the film\u2019s main male character, and when Romeo goes into a spiritual trance, Iglesias opts for a boosted frame rate \u2013 a stylistic effect used by Stephen Norrington in the stellar ‘blood shower’ rave at the beginning of Blade<\/strong> (1998). Romeo\u2019s hacking up a cadaver at the beginning is especially chilling, and the murder spree and escape from a wrestling hall is an amazingly crafted sequence \u2013 but these are rare exceptions within a messy film.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also an absurd, cartoonish motif where Det. Dumas is repeatedly struck by cars which comes off as oblique rather than amusing, and the bickering between captors and hostages is a little tough to enjoy after that nasty rape scene which is supposed to be taken as darkly absurd. The action scenes are well-choreographed and don\u2019t suffer from ADD editing, but the gore is a little garish, as when Romeo hacks up a cadaver, and a man is ground to a mulch after Romeo steals the truck of frozen embryos.<\/p>\n

Perdita Durango<\/strong>\u2019s kind of an intriguing mess, but it\u2019s far more uneven than Lynch\u2019s own peculiar take on Gifford\u2019s prose.\u00a0Unapix’ DVD features a single layer non-anamorphic transfer, but given the film\u2019s poor critical reception and almost direct dump to DVD, it\u2019s unlikely this misfire will get a director\u2019s cut.\u00a0The print source is coarse, grainy, and ugly, and although Simon Boswell\u2019s noirish score comes through strong, its impact would benefit from a cleaner (and uncompressed) 5.1 mix.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a9 2014 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

External References:<\/strong>
\nEditor’s Blog<\/a>\u00a0—\u00a0IMDB \u00a0<\/a>— \u00a0Soundtrack Album<\/a> —\u00a0Composer Filmography<\/a>
\n\u00a0<\/span>
\nVendor Search Links:<\/strong>
\nAmazon.ca<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.com<\/a>\"\" \"\" —\u00a0<\/span> Amazon.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The second installment of Barry Gifford\u2019s Sailor and Lula saga (after Wild at Heart) was given a similarly idiosyncratic treatment by director Alex de la Iglesia (The Day of the Beast) who crafted a stylized film which went even further in sex and violence than David Lynch\u2019s own eccentric translation …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[2839,2761,2831,2835,2830,2834,2832],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-2m4","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9056"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9056"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9080,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9056\/revisions\/9080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}