If you’ve never picked up a copy of the “Vice guide to….” in the sleaze section of your local bookstore you are denying yourself a very great pleasure. Established in Montreal in 1994, Vice is both a free magazine and a media conglomerate with offices currently in New York City. Focused on indie and youth culture initially, the Vice folks have branched out into strange and controversial topics. They take an ironic approach to culture with no concerns about morality or ethics. Hence their stuff is often hit or miss, but never dull, never uninteresting.
Being a connoisseur of sleaze myself, I was overjoyed to discover that Vice has their own internet TV/Film site VBS.TV. One of their first releases was a very cool documentary called “Heavy Metal in Bagdad” which follows the members of a metal band there. Very, very cool. Now, from an article on Twitch.com, I see Vice has to released their very own “Vice Guide to Film” series and are featuring a 3 part series on Mexican Narco Cinema. This engaging documentary is full of strange, dirty fun. I’ve always loved Mexican Cinema (especially the horror films of the 50′s and 60′s), but I don’t know much about Narco Cinema. That is until now. Check out the first episode in the series. Thank you, Vice!
Tags: narco cinema, sleaze, vice
I love the look of these types of films, but I expect their depth is pretty much on par with blaxploitation movies. There is probably more put into stylizing the action than character depth. How can you make a thousand movies about drug trafficking without constantly giving in to Chandler’s fallback of “two guys with guns come through the door”?
I think Narco Cinema would be one of those groups of movies where I’d get a lot of pleasure, but little satisfaction. Whenever I get the craving for raw film and raw emotion, I have to go back to something like The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, or Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia to completely fill the void.
Ricky, if you find yourself in a position to recommend a particular Narco Cinema film in the future, please post about it.
I think you are probably right, although there are some Blaxploitation films (Coffey, Superfly) that are well scripted and interesting beyond the exploitation part. Frankly, I don’t know a lot about Narco Cinema, but it’s on the front burner for the rest of the year. I know what you mean about the “satisfaction” part. Chinese Bookie is a perfect example. Still, I get a lot out of exploitation films of any country as you get to see the sleaze and raw instincts of actors/filmmakers without all of the phoney sentimentality.
As far as good Narco Cinema, I’m just going to have to dive it and see what I can find. Fry’s has a bunch at $3.99. There’s a guy on youtube who seems to have a bunch of Narco Cinema archived. Titles like “Dinastia de la Muerte” look pretty interesting.
http://www.youtube.com/user/daniel09king#p/u/0/0LgpGl4tecI