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Date: 12/6/2021
Streaming on Hulu: “The Curse of Von Dutch: a Brand to Die For”
As a guy whose fashion sense is dominated by outfits from Peter Harris Clothes, The Community Survival Center and Bass Pro Shop, I imagine the new documentary by director Andrew Renzi would be of little interest.
I don’t wear anything cool, hip or youthful, so fashion is pretty much a waste to me, but I do love a good story and that is what this three-part documentary presents.
Do you remember the Von Dutch clothing line from the early 2000s? I remembered it vaguely. The line was started when designer Ed Boswell secured the rights to the name and logo of the late pin-striping artist known as Von Dutch from his daughters. Originally the intent was to sell embroidered Von Dutch logos, which could be sewn onto existing denim and work clothing.
Enter Mike Cassell and Bobby Vaughn, who meet with Boswell and eventually buy him out. Cassell wanted to create a line of garage-themed clothing keeping with Von Dutch’s legacy. He needed capital and approached Danish Olympic medal winner Tonny Sorensen, who he had met.
Sorsensen bought 51 percent of the company, brought in a management team and thanks to several people managed to get a small army of celebrities to embrace the brand, which included a “trucker” baseball hat with the Von Dutch logo.
The company grew very fast and by 2003 peaked with sales of $33 million, but then things started falling apart.
This is not just a story about a business. It’s a story of people and their dreams and how those dreams can turn into nightmares. Cassell was a convicted felon seeking a way to turn his life around. Vaughn was like his adopted son who saw how the surfer culture and the car culture merged with the Von Dutch brand. When Sorensen, who saw them as unstable liabilities, forced both men out of the company, their lives fell apart.
This is the kind of very human story in which the good guys and the bad guys are not always easily identified. Cassell comes across as a guy trying to do the right thing, while Sorensen is seen as a person trying to protect and grow his investment. Both have their positive and negative moments.
Renzi takes his time with the story, making sure the backstory that motivated all of the main characters is presented, to give a very rounded depiction of them.
It’s a very American story and one that is fascinating.
On Blu Ray: “New York Ninja”
I’ve written about releases from Vinegar Syndrome before – the Bridgeport, CT-based company that lovingly restores exploitation films from the 1970s through 1990s – and now they have come out with their own first movie – kind of.
In an acquisition of a company that produced low-budget films, they had boxes of film for something called “New York Ninja.” It turned out this film was shot by star and director John Liu in 1984 but was never completed. While the footage existed, there was no shooting script and no soundtrack.
Kurtis Spieler of Vinegar Syndrome was allowed to try to assemble the film and he did so by painstakingly going through the footage, assembling and editing it so it told a story. He also wrote dialogue – sometimes based on lip-reading the actors – and then had a cast of actors who made films during 1980s including Don “The Dragon” Wilson, Cynthia Rothrock and Leon Isaac Kennedy record the dialogue.
The result is an often hilarious – Spieler’s dialogue plays its straight and does not attempt to be campy – film that provides a fascinating look at how the Taiwanese martial artist viewed America. Shot in New York, Liu’s character battles street gangs who wear clown-like makeup and have their jockstraps on the outside of their jeans.
Liu forgoes both sex and blood in the film, making it a pretty tame entry into the genre.
Nineteen eighty-four was a prime time in Hong Kong filmmaking and Liu, who had some success, clearly wanted to make a film that would be competitive in the Asian market and, because of being shot in NYC, have a chance in the American market.
Although we don’t know just why the film was abandoned, one can easily see that Liu’s budget was very small. It didn’t allow him to have the kind of stunt crew he needed to make convincing fight scenes, an essential for this kind of movie.
So is the film good? I found it very entertaining in a “Mystery Science Theater 3000” kind of way. The documentary that was produced for the Blu-ray was equally appealing as Spieler described the challenges of such a project.
It is a compelling example of film preservation, as well as a wild ride into the footnotes of film history from the 1980s.