This is one of director Jack Starrett's and actor William Smith's least known, least seen biker films, which is a shame because it's one of the most original. Smith plays a biker film star who wants to produce and direct his own film in Florida but cannot find financing through conventional means. As a last resort, he goes to the mob and they give him a deal that will fund his picture. But he has to put up his home as collateral. If the film isn't wrapped by the specified date, he will lose everything - the film, his home, basically everything he owns. From day one, unbeknownst to Smith, the mob hires a sadistic sociopath (Girardin, who is a good heavy) to gum up the works and slow things down so the picture will never be done in time. There's a great supporting cast including Mary Woronov as Smith's wife, assistant and best friend, Don Stroud and Jennifer Billingsley (unnervingly convincing as the lowlife-scaggy girlfriend of Girardin). Starrett keeps things moving at a fast clip and supplies two unexpected and stand out setpieces: a fascinatingly bizarre, surreal scene where Billingsley is partially clad in a wedding veil/dress and flees in slow motion along the shore as the fed-up Girardin fires at her with a rifle, finally killing her; and the climax where Smith and Woronov are waiting in a restaurant to resolve the situation with the mobsters when a hit-man suddenly bursts in and riddles them with bullets. I have also heard through the grapevine that there were some weird coincidental similarities in the film narrative to what actually happened real-life behind-the-scenes on the production, what with Starrett reportedly threatened by some of the shady money men behind the film. I don't know for sure, but this strange dynamic may have also affected why this film is so hard to see (receiving only a limited VHS release in the mid-80s on the now defunct Monterey Home Video label).
Review of Hollywood Man
