Look, you don't watch Hooker with a Heart of Gold to get something that will change the form of cinema or even push exploitation cinema into another stratosphere. It's a dude who spends 10 grand (not on the song rights for sure, but hey, why carp, soundtrack kicks ass) on bringing what he loves - feisty and smart hookers, sleazy pimps, uh, nice-guy hapless "mad" doctors - and pushes it with a lot of attitude.
It certainly helps to already be a fan of the Cinema Snob website, not just the videos he does in character (it's all mostly exploitation films and porn), but the midnight screenings where you get to see the various actors (Sarah, Brian, Ryan, Jerrid, etc) as themselves. Seeing this movie after years of watching those videos is like watching your friends make a movie: what it lacks in technical polish (and yeah, it lacks a lot) is made up for with a tight script and some decent editing from Brad Jones (also writer/director).
Oh, and speaking of Jones, he's having the time of his life as Zalman the pimp. He comes with a big greasy black wig, and his voice is tuned to be like Jack Nicholson in full-on villain mode (or just, you know, Nicholson mode), and he's clearly having the time of his life in this part. The story isn't all on him - it's a genre blend of Frankenstein sci-fi and a sleaze fest drenched in 70s and 80s disco and rock ("Couldn't See the Light" is what plays as the 'gold heart' is implanted) - and Sarah Lewis is fun to watch as the lead. Everyone is an amateur here, but mostly everyone delivers the dialog with some level of conviction and it's certainly a BIG step above the kinds of movies its giving homage to!
So if you dig seeing this kind of lo-fi ultra-low-budget filmmaking, with a soundtrack that makes it impossible to ever be an official release, and a cast that works well together and have a lot of charm to how they play off each other. It's certainly never boring, and occasionally it's funny and genuinely clever.
