The Woman Chaser

Details

This special limited edition J-card MediaBook slipcase (designed by Jacob Phillips) is limited to 3,000 units and is only available on our website and at select indie retailers. Absolutely no major retailers will be stocking them.

Note: this release is available to be purchased on its own, or bundled with the paperback book The Woman Chaser by Charles Willeford (book details can be seen below). This Limited Edition Slipcase + Book bundle is limited to 100 units. (Sold Out)

Taking its name from the Lumière Brothers invention of the same name, Cinématographe is a new sub-label from Vinegar Syndrome that seeks to fill gaps in the canon of American cinema. Offering a mix of auteur driven studio films produced during the New Hollywood era of the late 1960s and 70s all the way through the indie boom of the 1980s and 90s, Cinématographe will explore the wide breadth of American moviemaking, spanning numerous genres and scales of production. Curated and produced by Vinegar Syndrome's Justin LaLiberty, each limited edition release will be housed in a specially designed, cloth-bound, media book with embossed foil titles and custom molded disc trays accompanied by a slipcase featuring newly commissioned art and an individually numbered J-card.

Richard Hudson (Patrick Warburton, Seinfeld), a shady used car salesman and aspiring filmmaker living in 1950s Los Angeles, writes the script for his first film: a tawdry drama about a truck driver who kills a young girl, titled The Man Who Got Away. Hudson’s path to becoming Tinseltown’s newest auteur is fraught with challenges; his film is deemed uncommercial, his sexual trysts keep piling up and his relationships with various family members manage to get worse by the day. Hudson will stop at nothing to see his vision through, even if it means destroying everything and everyone in his path, including Hollywood itself. 

The feature directing debut of Robinson Devor (Zoo) and based on noted crime novelist Charles Willeford’s (Cockfighter) novel of the same name, THE WOMAN CHASER is a dark show business comedy in the vein of Robert Altman’s The Player and The Coen Brothers’ Barton Fink that isn’t afraid to showcase the more insidious aspects of the industry. Anchored by a wry, very funny, lead performance from stand-up comic and TV star Patrick Warburton along with striking 35mm photography (shot in color, but lit and graded for black and white) by six time Emmy nominee Kramer Morgenthau (Game of Thrones, Creed II & III), THE WOMAN CHASER is an often overlooked entry in the tail end of the American indie boom. Never before released on disc, and not seen uncut since its New York Film Festival premiere in 1999, Cinématographe is proud to present the world blu-ray debut of Robinson Devor’s uncompromising, hilarious, ode to 50s film noir completely uncensored, restored in 2K, and accompanied with hours of extras including the rarely seen color version of the film, The Art of Insanity.

directed by: Robinson Devor
starring: Patrick Warburton, Eugene Roche, Ron Morgan, Emily Newman, Paul Malevich, Lynette Bennett
1999 / 90 min / 1.85:1 / English DTS-HD MA 2.0

Additional info:

• Region A Blu-ray
• The Art of Insanity - a full length alternate version of the film, presented in color
• New audio commentary with writer/director Robinson Devor, moderated by Cinématographe's Justin LaLiberty
• New audio commentary with film noir historians Alain Silver and Christopher Coppola
• Deadly Serious - a new video interview with actor Patrick Warburton
• Biggest Little Movie - a new video interview with producer Joe McSpadden
• Theatrical trailer
• New text essays by film critic Glenn Kenny, writer and podcaster Chris Cabin and crime author Jesse Sublett
• English SDH subtitles

The Woman Chaser - Paperback Book

Written by Charles Willeford

Richard Hudson, an inveterate woman-chaser and gifted used car salesman, possesses a pimp’s understanding of the ways in which women (and men) are most vulnerable — and justifies his seductions with a highly perverse logic. By day, he works his crooked car lot with much success. By night, he returns home to a family of misfits: an adoring, ageless mother; her washed-up husband, an ex-film director who is twenty years her junior; and a curious teenage stepsister ripe for corruption.

One day Richard is seized by a feeling of terror and revulsion; he realizes he’s wasting his life in the meaningless pursuit of money. His only hope, he decides, is to abandon the used-car game and try his hand at something creative–an ambitious and risk-laden film project that will “tie up in a single package his reason for existing.”

Richard completes his cherished project. But forces beyond his control swiftly reject and destroy it. As a result, the enraged and humiliated used-car salesman goes on a bender for the ages, drinking his way through the underbelly of Los Angeles and exacting a monstrous revenge on all who have crossed him.

8" x 5"
192 pages