Crazy Love (1987) [Mondo Macabro - OUT OF PRINT]

Director: Dominique Deruddere
Writers: Charles Bukowski (novels), Dominique Deruddere
Stars: Josse De Pauw, Geert Hunaerts, Michael Pas

When it exploded onto screens in the mid 1980's, Oscar nominated director Dominique Deruddere's film CRAZY LOVE divided critics and audiences as few films before or since.

Championed by Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola, the film was picked up for US distribution. Stars like Madonna and Sean Penn attended the LA premiere. But the films shocking subject matter and startling imagery were too rich a combination for audiences at the time. The film vanished from sight, becoming an instant cult classic - much written about but seldom seen.

Now reappraised as one of the most underrated films of the 1980's, CRAZY LOVE makes its US DVD debut in a stunning new anamorphic HD transfer from the original negative.

Taking his cue from stories by cult American author Charles Bukowski, Deruddere's film tells the story of a man's life via three nights, spread over 20 years. We see his hero, Harry Voss, first as a romantic young boy of 12, then as an acne ridden teenager, lost in unrequited love, and finally as a drink sodden drop out, for whom no act is too dreadful to contemplate…with terrible and yet deeply moving consequences.

It's a film that, once seen, is never likely to be forgotten. A film with a unique, bitter sweet and poetic mood that manages to be funny and tragic at the same time. A minor masterpiece, ripe for rediscovery on DVD.

Leave it to the Dutch to transform infamous, Skid Row provocateur, Charles Bukowski's seminal works into a hazy, dreamlike tale of unconditional love, lost and found. Belgian director, Dominique Deruddere's first feature, Crazy Love (1987), has been as much maligned and championed throughout its existence as Bukowski himself. Yet, seeing the hard-boiled, gritty and utterly American world Bukowski writes, tempered with quaint, personal, European sentiment gives the work a sense of otherworldliness that lends the film the semblance of a fable and makes the poison within easier to swallow.

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Crazy Love (1987) [Mondo Macabro - OUT OF PRINT]

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Make no mistake, for as stunning as this film looks, aiming for artifice over reality, it still deals with those unsavory elements of society that are everywhere, from Brussels to Burbank. If not for the smooth, almost omniscient camera work and delicate direction from Deruddere, Crazy Love would surely be an unlikable, unwatchable mess. Instead we are introduced to our main character, Harry Voss, as a precocious child and watch him grow into a teenager, and finally an adult. As we watch Harry on his life's journey, we learn that no matter how much things change, some always remain the same.

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Crazy Love (1987) [Mondo Macabro - OUT OF PRINT]

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In the first segment, young Harry (Geert Hunaerts) is enamored by a "princess" (Florence Beliard) he's seen at the local cinema and steals the lobby card. This woman comes to represent the boy's idealized vision of love in the world. Trying to correlate his feelings to his mother, he asks if she was ever a princess that his father had to rescue. Eying the drunk, prostrate from of her husband, Harry's father, his mother says yes, she was a princess once and that her husband rescued her and took her away from all that. The meaning is clear to us, but Harry still hasn't caught on how the real world works.

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Crazy Love (1987) [Mondo Macabro - OUT OF PRINT]

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Thankfully Harry's older friend, Stan (Michael Pas), is around to show him what the world is really like. He teaches Harry about his feelings (puberty) and tries to hook him up with an all-too-willing girl on a carnival ride. Blowing his chance with the girl, but spying on an older, more experienced woman, Stan and Harry make a plan to seduce her. Visiting her house the next day and finding her sleeping off last night's revelry, Stan convinces Harry to mount the comatose woman only to have her spring awake from his innocent groping. Disturbed, but not dismayed by this setback, Stan shows Harry how to relieve his "itch" whenever he feels it. Later, lying in bed with the picture of his fairytale princess, masturbating, Harry understands that the world can be an ugly place.

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Crazy Love (1987) [Mondo Macabro - OUT OF PRINT]

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Harry (Josse De Pauw), an Acne-scarred teen poet, is graduating from High School and has just one dream, which is to read a poem specially written for the most beautiful girl in school. However, his grotesque skin disorder prevents him from keeping close relationships with any of his classmates, except for Jeff (Gene Bervoets) who is able to see beyond Harry's condition to the poetic soul within. Harry refuses to attend the Graduation Ball, but after Jeff's constant insistence and half a case of Johnny Walker, Harry heads to the dance in order to proclaim his love for Liza (Anne Van Esche).

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Crazy Love (1987) [Mondo Macabro - OUT OF PRINT]

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Facing the disgusted looks and mocking laughter of his fellow students, Harry chickens out, at which point Jeff offers him up some sloppy seconds from his "date." Even with the offer of free, guaranteed, meaningless sex, Harry is unable to go through with it and decides to try again, this time wrapping his scarred visage with toilet paper a la The Invisible Man, in one of the film's most striking images (also shown on the DVD cover). He dances with Liza and reads his poem to her, but there is a sense of tragedy intermingled with the triumph of this moment, for inside Harry is viewing this as an out of body experience, and not his reality.

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Crazy Love (1987) [Mondo Macabro - OUT OF PRINT]

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Now an adult, the only lesson Harry seems to have learned is that alcohol deadens the pain. A thirty-something barfly, Harry runs into Bill (Amid Chakir), a friend and fellow drunkard who is passing through town. After causing a minor fracas at the local watering hole, from which Harry walks away with a familiar bottle of Johnny Walker with which they can lose themselves. Along the way to Harry's hovel, they see an unusual sight, an unattended morgue truck idling outside a hospital. Deciding to play a morbid but hilarious prank, the two sots each grab an end of the body bag and run off into the night.

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Crazy Love (1987) [Mondo Macabro - OUT OF PRINT]

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Once at Harry's, the two men decide to get a look at the cadaver they've absconded. Unzipping the bag reveals a beautiful woman (also played by Florence Beliard, Harry's childhood "princess") who's "still warm" according to Harry. Bill seems to realize the implications of their actions and wants no further part of them. Still, he hangs around as Harry, feeling that same sense of love and longing he did as a child mounts the dead woman. Ok, right now I'm sure some of you stopped reading this review based on that last sentence, but let me assure you that while Harry's actions are the outward signs of a sickness, they make sense within the context of the character. The scene is not graphic or exploitative in any way, and echoes the beginning of the film (the "princess", lying on top of an unmoving woman, etc.). Harry has found the love he's been looking for all his life and asks Bill to help him take his new bride to the beach.

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Crazy Love (1987) [Mondo Macabro - OUT OF PRINT]

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I don't want to give anything away, but let me just say Tom Petty's "Last Dance with Mary Jane" video is highly derivative of this final segment of Crazy Love. The video, which implies, but doesn't show any sexual contact between Tom Petty and Kim Basinger (the "corpse") and then goes a step further by adding a gotcha ending that shows she was alive all along, is a much more marketable version of the themes presented here. I'm sure that the record label added that gotcha ending, but where that was able to soften it for MTV and its ilk, Crazy Love has no such fail-safe. There's no gotcha ending, or "it was all just a dream." The best word I could use to describe this movie would be "Lynchian." While it lacks some of the sophistication of Lynch's later movies, I could easily see this in the same vein as Blue Velvet, unearthing the evil and ugly truths of the world through the eyes of an innocent.

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Crazy Love (1987) [Mondo Macabro - OUT OF PRINT]

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While I wasn't as taken as some of the film's more vocal supporters (Sean Penn, Madonna, etc.), I did find it to be equally entertaining and thought provoking. One has to go into the proceedings with that sense of grim, black humor that is often found in the work of Bukowski, but for as dark as his prose was, his verse would often reveal the few gorgeous moments in each of our lives. Deruddere is showing us the material through a new set of eyes, the dirt and diamonds are all still there, but a new innocence is also present, and while it is eventually corrupted much like everything in this world, at least we get to see it live again. Recommended.

DVDtalk

Special Features:
- Brand new HD anamorphic transfer from the original vault elements
- Making of Documentary featuring cast & crew and exclusive footage of Charles Bukowski
- Filmed interview with director
- Text Essay
- New English subtitles
- Mondo Macabro preview trailer