The El Duce Tapes

A troubling, hilarious, very wet and extremely squishy documentary about shock-rock pioneer Eldon "El" Duce and his sociopathic bandmates The Mentors. The movie packs plenty of surprises, from El's grotesque high-school vandalism to the group's musical genesis being electric 70s jazz. (El Duce describes their change to punk rock as "fusion to perversion").

The plentiful depravity within provides no greater iconic image than a wobbly, grinning El Duce squatting on a dirty carpet to watch porn on a TV set, cheap beer in hand. The movie's humor disappears almost entirely after 35 minutes--this marked by a sincere on-camera bottomburp from El--once his homelessness, alcoholism and contempt for life emerge amidst endless 40 oz. Bottles of Olde English. Everything becomes much sadder here than in anything found in the angry, blowhard rantings GG Allin spewed in "Hated".

And things get worse, as video gorno follows of El Duce suffering an atrocity straight out of "The Elephant Man." Watching this makes listening to some whiny-ass grunge rocker or pompous fallen star like Axl Rose self-pity himself impossible. Happier moments include tons of glitchy vintage 80s footage, especially of the band's music video for "Donkey Dick", and there's powerful live performances of hits like "Sandwich of Love." One concert takes place in an L. A. garage to an audience of cigarette-smoking 12-13 year-old boys.

El Duce also gives a performance of love-making in a sort of oral-tradition display likely to shock every lesbian performance artist from Italy to Seattle.

Testimonials from bandmates are mostly of the type expected from disappointed high-school guidance counselors or prison guards. There's even material onscreen to shock hardcore fans of the group and definitely believers in the kind of music-contest-fits-all pursuit of stardom. Responsible rock-star parents should consider this required viewing for their children. 5 potato sacks out of 5.

Compellingly edited from a multitude of VHS tapes, the unusually candid interviews with Mentors madman El Duce in various degrees of inebriation provides fascinating insight into his volatile, pointedly self-destructive life. The El Duce Tapes is an unfiltered, painfully frank, queasily visceral document, this deliciously Dementored dissection of a maniacal musical misfit probes balls deep into the sleazy underbelly of punk's most divisive bogeyman. When audibly cogent, El Duce comes across as an impish, melancholic, honest, vastly contradictory, strangely endearing poltroon, contrasting the altogether nihilistic interludes of depressive, boorishly incoherent drunkenness, culminating inevitably in alcoholic annihilation. As a fan of The Mentors, the archival material proved revelatory, featuring invaluable insight from band members, and their musical peers, especially edifying are the impactful contributions from his beloved sister. Pieced together from Standard VHS, The El Duce Tapes is not only a cohesive, and massively entertaining work, it is also a testament to the innate watchability of its subject, and a credit to all those talented individuals who made this exemplary Blu-ray possible. It isn't all that often that I'll know intuitively beforehand that I'll love a film, and in this even rarer instance, The El Duce Tapes proved far more righteous than I had imagined.

Sad story of El Duce dealing with obvious signs of depression and alcoholism. Sheds some light on a person many would consider a real POS. Would recommend for fans of underground punk and cool 90's documentaries shot on tape.

I think this will take a certain audience to appreciate this distillation of footage taken in 1990 and 1991 around lead singer for the Mentors, El Duce, but if you're a part of that audience you'll find it revealing, appalling, poignant, and most of all, sad.

The filmmakers do a good job weaving the various interviews (done in low-fi '90s home video quality) into a narrative, although I did find it a tad too long. You pretty much see where this is going if you didn't already know, but it was truly distressing to witness the disfunction behind the leader one of the most unique early era punk-ish bands. Nice use of vintage clips set some of the context of those wacky days of Tipper Gore and Jerry Springer. Yee haw!

Do be aware of what you're getting into before viewing, but worth viewing.

A brilliant documentary. It's incredibly well edited and put together. Not so much sad as other reviewers have pointed out, more fascinating. That people exist like El Duce is truly interesting, a complex, flawed, ultimately likeable and flawed man. This is one I'll rewatch as it's a lot to take in, in one go, but I'd like to spend more time with the people here. Nobody comes across bad, they come across real, with no filter which is refreshing nowadays. Do yourself a favour and watch this, I've already recommended it to all my friends, a true hidden gem!