In 1999 I remember standing in line at the Tampa Theatre waiting to see The Blair Witch Project; the line wrapped around the corner.  All of us were anxious to see this film that was cloaked in so much mystery with an internet marketing campaign that manipulated so many to believe that the film we were all about to watch was in fact all true and was all found footage being released onto the big screen.  The Blair Witch Project wasn’t just a success, it was a smash hit, and it changed the way we view cinema, where we all saw that all you needed was a camcorder and a clever hook, and any regular Joe could create a hit film.  Now the found-footage genre is in fact its own genre at this point, and many young up and coming filmmakers are plundering the genre for all it is worth.

It’s been 15 years since The Blair Witch Project was released, and keeping the genre alive, we get Black Water Vampire released onto DVD.  The film is set up nicely as an officer talks about a crime scene he is at and goes into great detail concerning the victim, found dead and naked in the snow, drained of all her blood.  She has a wound that leads the officer to believe she was bitten by some animal, but is it the cause of death?

Steven Bochco is no stranger to innovative television. Hill Street Blues is arguably the best cop show ever made. Even his failures are praised for their innovativeness and freshness. Remember Cop Rock? NYPD Blue didn’t just push the prime time envelope. It tore the envelope to pieces and blew it away with hurricane-force winds. George Carlin made a career out of his “Seven words you can’t say on television”. Along comes NYPD Blue and Carlin just might have needed a new act. Language and nudity made this the first R-rated prime-time program. The pilot arrived with a flutter of controversy. Morality groups were vocal, and sponsors were scarce. Twenty percent of ABC’s affiliates refused to show the pilot at all. When you watch these DVDs, it’s hard to understand what all the noise was about. Today this stuff is the tame and more like the norm, and once again Bochco changed TV forever.

When the fourth season of NYPD Blue arrived on DVD it was June of 2006. There had already been over a year since the previous season was released. Suddenly the releases stopped, and fans were left scratching their heads to figure out why. I would field question after question from fans asking what had happened. Answers were as scarce as the DVDs themselves. It wasn't just NYPD Blue. It appears that all of Steven Bochco's shows have been held up in home video limbo. Hill Street Blues stopped after two seasons, and LA Law never saw the light of day at all. You can likely forget about Cop Rock or Bay City Blues.

The first thing I should discuss is the title. Brutalization is not the original title of this 1973 forgotten film. The DVD cover puts it very succinctly. “From the most forgotten vaults of European exploitation rises once again this effective and very violent Dutch thriller that boasts a young Sylvia Kristel that later on achieved world fame thanks to her role in the Emmanuelle series.” The intention of the re-release is to capitalize on the late Kristel's fame. The title Brutalization is probably more marketable and to the point than the original title, Because of the Cats. The cover does make clear that she is not the star of this movie but a very young supporting player. Her part is still substantial, and she is used very effectively.

The real question for me, is this more than a simple exploitation film? The film has echoes of the Manson family and Clockwork Orange with the clear thematic ties of amoral youth causing mayhem and murder. The film is based on a series of popular detective books by Nicholas Freeling with the lead central character, hard-boiled and unconventional Inspector van der Valk. The director, Fons Rademaker, was nominated for a Best Foreign Film Oscar for his first film, Village by the River in 1958 and later won for The Assault in 1986. I mention this again to dispel the notion that this a cheap exploitation film.