IMDb is overdue for a serious review of John Leslie's magnum opus "Dog Walker" so here goes.
This downbeat tale fits well into Leslie's world of mean streets, tough characters and wildly sexual women. Steven St. Croix makes the most of the central role of Tito, a big-time hood introduced presenting the diamonds boodle of his latest crime to unsympathetic middle-management Organization man Jon Dough. Dough tries to stiff him with a "monthly payment plan" more suitable for corporate America than the Underworld, and highly independent St. Croix, balks, tells him where to shove his plan and instantly becomes persona non grata with the mob.
That sounds like the beginning of many a '40s film noir or B-movie gangster saga, but writer-director Leslie (who also has a key small role titled "Fortune Teller" who is really St. Croix's nemesis) turns out to be a philosopher at heart.
SPOILERS BEGIN:
As a devotee of this type of cinema I immediately figured out what Leslie's Grand Scheme for the film (shot on 35mm film stock for a departure in the '90s) was: he presents Tito's story as his Dying Flash. That technique was most vividly used in literature and Robert Enrico's classic film of Ambrose Bierce's short story "Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge". Ken Russell made it his calling card as his favorite story telling device in most of the Composer biographies he filmed in the '60s and '70s. Without spoon-feeding, it translates into a rapid series of images representing one's life passing before one's eyes just before dying.
So we see scenes unfold for Tito that are dreamlike or fantasies, sometimes quite realistic and vivid (as when the XXX content begins) but often repeating motifs and characters in contrasting settings. One such artifice has Leslie via editing moving the action within a scene to an outdoor pampas (replete with Tito in gaucho styled outfit) location that for me created an instant surrealism not often seen in the cinema since the fever dreams of Arrabal and Alexandro Jodorowsky 4 or 5 decades back (and actually inspired by Glauber Rocha's classic Brazilian movies).
But it is the allegorical elements which set "Dog Walker" apart from various other experimental Adult films of its era, the sort of psychedelic and flashy (but usually empty) exercises like "Thundercrack!" or "Cafe Flesh", to name the most famous. Tito keeps seeing an ethereally beautiful woman as an apparition, either as the Dog Walker back-lit in an alley dressed to the nines with her Doberman pooch in tow, or as an elegant horsewoman or even as an ultra-sexy peep show girl masturbating to beat the band behind glass.
This title figure is portrayed by Christina Angel in a performance which overshadows the rest of her career, and reminded me (seeing "Dog Walker" over two decades after its release) of the similarly iconic heroine of the recent hit "Gone Girl". Rosamund Pike in that title role made as big an impression, and is likely (though one would hope not) to be always remembered for it and not what follows. The fact that Pike and Angel have an uncanny resemblance is what prompted my making this odd connection.
Leslie's sex scenes are stylized and potent, the mark of a great director in this field. But of course "Dog Walker" transcends its sex content -that's why it's a true classic the way Gerard Damiano's best ("Devil in Miss Jones", "Story of Joanna" for starters) are. I also enjoy his unsung, more minor features, "The Tease" and "Bad Habits" for example, but give Leslie credit for unbridled creativity and admirable craftsmanship in this, his film for the ages.
This downbeat tale fits well into Leslie's world of mean streets, tough characters and wildly sexual women. Steven St. Croix makes the most of the central role of Tito, a big-time hood introduced presenting the diamonds boodle of his latest crime to unsympathetic middle-management Organization man Jon Dough. Dough tries to stiff him with a "monthly payment plan" more suitable for corporate America than the Underworld, and highly independent St. Croix, balks, tells him where to shove his plan and instantly becomes persona non grata with the mob.
That sounds like the beginning of many a '40s film noir or B-movie gangster saga, but writer-director Leslie (who also has a key small role titled "Fortune Teller" who is really St. Croix's nemesis) turns out to be a philosopher at heart.
SPOILERS BEGIN:
As a devotee of this type of cinema I immediately figured out what Leslie's Grand Scheme for the film (shot on 35mm film stock for a departure in the '90s) was: he presents Tito's story as his Dying Flash. That technique was most vividly used in literature and Robert Enrico's classic film of Ambrose Bierce's short story "Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge". Ken Russell made it his calling card as his favorite story telling device in most of the Composer biographies he filmed in the '60s and '70s. Without spoon-feeding, it translates into a rapid series of images representing one's life passing before one's eyes just before dying.
So we see scenes unfold for Tito that are dreamlike or fantasies, sometimes quite realistic and vivid (as when the XXX content begins) but often repeating motifs and characters in contrasting settings. One such artifice has Leslie via editing moving the action within a scene to an outdoor pampas (replete with Tito in gaucho styled outfit) location that for me created an instant surrealism not often seen in the cinema since the fever dreams of Arrabal and Alexandro Jodorowsky 4 or 5 decades back (and actually inspired by Glauber Rocha's classic Brazilian movies).
But it is the allegorical elements which set "Dog Walker" apart from various other experimental Adult films of its era, the sort of psychedelic and flashy (but usually empty) exercises like "Thundercrack!" or "Cafe Flesh", to name the most famous. Tito keeps seeing an ethereally beautiful woman as an apparition, either as the Dog Walker back-lit in an alley dressed to the nines with her Doberman pooch in tow, or as an elegant horsewoman or even as an ultra-sexy peep show girl masturbating to beat the band behind glass.
This title figure is portrayed by Christina Angel in a performance which overshadows the rest of her career, and reminded me (seeing "Dog Walker" over two decades after its release) of the similarly iconic heroine of the recent hit "Gone Girl". Rosamund Pike in that title role made as big an impression, and is likely (though one would hope not) to be always remembered for it and not what follows. The fact that Pike and Angel have an uncanny resemblance is what prompted my making this odd connection.
Leslie's sex scenes are stylized and potent, the mark of a great director in this field. But of course "Dog Walker" transcends its sex content -that's why it's a true classic the way Gerard Damiano's best ("Devil in Miss Jones", "Story of Joanna" for starters) are. I also enjoy his unsung, more minor features, "The Tease" and "Bad Habits" for example, but give Leslie credit for unbridled creativity and admirable craftsmanship in this, his film for the ages.