Finding the words to describe Hollywood 90028 is almost as much a challenge as the film’s own route to release. Filmed and certified by the MPAA in 1973, it didn’t officially release in US cinemas until three years after – and aside from a few sporadic screenings in the 1970s, it seemed all but lost.
Fortunately, Grindhouse Releasing remastered Hollywood 90028 to 4K in 2023, with further festival screenings and a physical release in the years since. The decades of effort that went into tracking down and restoring the film were worth it, because it’s an important and insightful piece of work – even if, on a filmic level, it’s not the most engaging.
Incredibly quiet and slow in its pacing, Hollywood 90028 follows Mark (Christopher Augustine), a porno cameraman living in Los Angeles. He leads an insular and cold life – most of his interactions are within a professional context, and much of the first act revolves around him living in solitude. In fact, he’s the sole figure in many scenes, made to look tiny by the sweeping LA landscapes he’s within. This changes when he becomes infatuated with Michelle (Jeannette Dilger), one of the models he shoots – and takes him to extreme lengths to be with her.
What’s most interesting about Hollywood 90028 is how incredibly prescient it is. In her only feature-length effort, director Christina Hornisher uses Mark to reflect many of the arguments made by the modern incel movement over 50 years before it took root in male social circles. It results in a film whose gender politics are staggeringly ahead of their time.
The film’s critique of gender roles and the exploitation of women in Hollywood is one of the many virtues it gains from being directed by a woman. It’s so obvious that Mark’s entire mindset is rooted in misogyny, but that isn’t communicated explicitly or in contrived ways. Instead, it takes shape in the way he interacts with women – almost exclusively with a veneer of sexuality aside from a brief and clearly begrudging telephone call with his estranged sister.
Mark sees women as vessels for his own sexual pleasure – but Hollywood 90028 is clever enough to acknowledge how he tries to mask this. It’s rather frightening to see how adept, and sometimes even witty, he is in conversation. He’s often outgoing, asks questions, and cracks the occasional joke – but we as viewers already know his true intentions and what he’s capable of. It’s entirely in keeping with the covert “nice guy” ideology, where men eschew blasé misogyny to instead take root more subtly.
While the performance from Christopher Augustine is obviously important in conveying this, it’s Hornisher’s direction that absolutely stands out throughout the film. It’s so refreshing to watch a 70s exploitation film where the director gives her female characters so much time and space to express themselves. There are lengthy monologues where women describe their feelings and motivations for getting into LA’s seedy underbelly. They’re given the room to express their grievances with how women are only valued for their bodies, decades before #MeToo put these topics on full display.
In many ways, Hollywood 90028 feels like the total opposite of The House That Jack Built, Lars Von Trier’s repugnant 2018 serial killer film. While that revelled in its violence against women, this is far more sensitive – in fact, its most violent and shocking scene doesn’t even include a woman. Importantly, it gives a voice to the women Mark preys upon, and conversely makes no effort to draw us towards its main character or feel anything other than indifference for him.
Not everything works, though, and the way Hollywood 90028 effectively glosses over its lead is one of these double-edged swords. While its refusal to humanise Mark’s actions and attitude towards women is laudable and significant in giving its female characters a voice, we barely engage with him on a human level.
Aside from a few glimpses at his upbringing and romantic history, a lot of the time we’re saddled with a lead who we barely know enough about to bother watching. It’s a very slow film even at a brisk 90 minutes, and a lot of the time it lacks the intentional pacing or thrust to establish where the narrative is going in any meaningful way.
As such, Hollywood 90028 is one of those interesting films that’s more fun to dissect and analyse than it is to watch. You gain more out of it from its prescience regarding Hollywood’s gender politics and the way it foretells so many contemporary issues than you do from its surface-level storytelling. But maybe that’s why it has been recovered and restored five decades later – to show that these issues have always been here, and we’ve just done nothing about it.
★★★
Hollywood 90028 screens at 19:00 on March 7, 2025 at Final Girls Berlin Film Festival. You can buy tickets here.
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