My Duck Is Dead

A conservative Midwest businessman ventures into the sordid underworld of pornography in California to look for his runaway teenage daughter who is making porno films in the porno pits of Los Angeles.

If you thought "Taxi Driver" was hard to watch due to its mercilessly dark portrayal of the seedy underbelly of New York City, wait till you see Schrader's return to familiar locations in 1979's "Hardcore", an unrelentingly horrific and intense portrait of a conservative Midwest businessman's search for his daughter, who left on a seemingly safe Christian trip only to become involved in some of the worst imaginable areas of pornography.

One thing that is remarkable about "Hardcore" whether you like the film or not is its realism, at least up to the final twenty or so minutes, when a more outlandish plot point is introduced to (successfully) heighten the drama as the film nears its conclusion.

Schrader had adult film star Bill Margold provide him with actual locations to shoot, and Margold also checked the script for accuracy. The result is that "Hardcore" is truly absorbing and intense rather than being the preachy, exploitative nonsense it could have been.