Yeah, it's me again, kids... like Corleone, just when I think I'm out, some weird-ass flick pulls me back in. Still, it's usually something worth a few paragraphs, and it never hurts if it's got tits, cool cars/bikes, guns, monsters, and maybe robots. Well, three out of five is still a high score, and THE LOVELESS has everything but the last two... unless you count horrifying sideburns as monsters. And you would if you saw mine.

This 1982 freshman effort from director Kathryn Bigelow, who would later give rabid vampire-movie buffs (not at all unlike someone mostly resembling myself) the magnum opus NEAR DARK. Also making his feature debut is an extremely young Willem Dafoe (one year prior to his big-budget break in STREETS OF FIRE) as Vance, the ultra-cool leader of an impossibly stylish, fashionably greasy biker gang cruising through the Deep South in the late '50s, ostensibly bound for Daytona for some vaguely referenced vehicular hootenanny. Briefly separated after one of their hogs snaps a chain, the band reunites at a lonely diner in some unnamed backwater cracker-hole while Vance tries to negotiate with a shiftless garage owner for the use of his shop. Dirty looks and sideways glances abound as the sweat-oozing locals gradually congregate to take a gander at the leather-clad aliens in their midst, either out of thinly-veiled fascination (particularly from a lonely widowed waitress who takes a shine to Vance), or good old redneck contempt: "They're animals," says one, after which his cousin adds, "But I wouldn't mind tradin' places with 'em for a couple of weeks." The most passionate reaction to the visitors comes from the outrageously sleazy Tarver (J. Don Ferguson) - local businessman, wife-beater and child-molester, whose spunky runaway daughter Telena (Marin Kanter) catches Vance's eye, persuading him to abandon the adage "Sixteen will get you twenty."

After a lazy '50s kind of day spent drinking, smoking, standing around listening to rockabilly tunes on the jukebox, playing mumbledy-peg, drinking, drag racing, smoking, drinking, smoking, and the occasional hotel and parking-lot grope-em-up, one begins to wonder when the inevitable violent confrontation will finally arrive. There's certainly tension enough - what with all the sweaty close-ups and people glaring at each other with either menace, desire or just your basic apathetic coolness. But if you're waiting for a standard Hollywood climax... well, let's just say you're not gonna get one. Although Bigelow does give a leather-capped nod to Brando's definitive performance in THE WILD ONE (particularly in the be-bop-style dialogue), she seems to have found more inspiration from existential, Euro-flavored road flicks in the mode of EASY RIDER and Monte Hellmann's TWO LANE BLACKTOP (not to mention the homoerotic stylings of Kenneth Anger's SCORPIO RISING). In other words, THE LOVELESS is not so much a movie where things happen, as it is a movie about how cool certain things (and people) look and sound. And that's definitely where its strengths lie.

Those familiar with the latter-day works of David Lynch will know them by their particular textural fetishes, and they may come to appreciate how much co-director Monty Montgomery may have lent his own visual stamp to Lynch's oeuvre as producer of films like WILD AT HEART. You can see the fixation here, as the camera practically salivates over the marriage of chrome and enamel on a softail's fuel tank, in the close-up of a biker's grease-coated thumb hooked behind his steel belt buckle, or the way a woman's freckled shoulders glow green during a beer-light striptease. It all seems so... naughty, and I'm not sure why. Maybe it's all the studded leather. Not that I'm into that sort of thing. Well, not usually. Oh, fuck it - I'm writing this while wearing nothing but chaps and WWI pilot's goggles.

Anyway... If you're willing to shift into a lower emotional gear for 82 minutes (note my clever use of vehicular metaphor), there's plenty of audio-visual fun to be had here, especially if you think of the film as a raunchy variant on an old-style comic book, complete with fantastic colors, overblown dialogue and lots of cool posing and posturing. And there's a cool score to boot, with kick-ass tunes from Robert Gordon (who also plays Vance's scowling buddy Davis) and incidental jazz from John Lurie, who also lent his musical and acting skills to Jim Jarmusch's masterpiece DOWN BY LAW (and the genius behind FISHING WITH JOHN, the finest fishing series ever made by a non-fisherman). In summary, rockabilly fans, biker-movie junkies and people who wear silver rings with skulls on them (me again) will have plenty of love for THE LOVELESS.

Of course, it's all wrapped up in a nice, shiny package by Blue Underground, who give this seldom-seen flick its finest presentation ever - starting with a top-notch transfer (anamorphic, natch) that captures all the neon and black contrasts, warm summer sunsets and gleaming chrome trim. There's also not one, not two, but three sound mixes: the original mono, good resonant stereo and a rich, music-friendly 5.1 track that gives a resonant kick to those thundering hogs.

The extras are substantial: along with an appropriately lurid trailer that borrows its sound and fury from old-school drive-in ads, we also get a stills gallery that contains far more than the usual run-of-the-mill production shots and posters. There's costume tests, scribbly storyboards, behind-the-scenes candids, and scans of the promotional materials bearing the film's working title, BREAKDOWN, to name a few. Last but not least, there's an informative (though a bit dry) commentary edited together from sessions with Dafoe, Bigelow and Montgomery that details the film's tricky beginnings and reveals their mutual love of filmmaking, as well as the importance of the music in crafting the finished product.

So grab yourself a bottle of Thunderbird and a pack of coffin nails, put on a soiled wife-beater and sidle up to this slick little roadster for a drag down memory lane. Okay, I've used up all my sleazy biker metaphors for one day. Ain't you lucky.