By DR. BENNY GRAVES
Starring Wings Hauser, Kathleen Kinmont and Michael J. Pollard
Written by Joseph Merhi
Directed by Wings Hauser
MNTEX Entertainment
Wings Hauser in “THE ART OF DYING” (1991)
If you’re a cinema fan (I’m not talking about Leonard Maltin cinema; I’m talking John Waters cinema), you know the late Wings Hauser, who died of Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease on March 15, 2025, at the age of 77. Transitioning from high school football player (where he earned his nickname from playing wingback) to folk musician to soap star, Hauser was a man of many talents by the time he was cast on The Young and the Restless at 30. However, cult movie fans know him best for his later acting career in films such as Tough Guys Don’t Dance (a movie that feels like David Lynch on angel dust and features Hauser as the unhinged Captain Regency) or Champagne and Bullets (aka GetEven) in which he outacts a more-than-half-in-the-bag John DeHart. When you saw that shock of hair and wry grin pop up in a movie, you knew that something wild was incoming.
When my girlfriend and fellow schlock connoisseur, Sarah, and I heard of Hauser’s passing, we wondered how best to honor him for our movie night. Ordering a pizza, I pondered if we would decide on the horror flick Mutant or the grindhouse masterpiece Vice Squad. In our relationship, one thing I like is that we’ll come across a trailer for something and save it for a couple’s movie night. I’m not talking some Nicholas Sparks dementia romance! I’m talking Grade A trash like Premutos: Lord of the Dead or Demonoid. So, it was seconds into Sarah showing me the trailer for THE ART OF DYING that I knew we had our winner.
Hauser stars as Jack (no last name), a detective up against the dank alleys and crumbling slums of Hollywood, where innocence is extinguished by black promises and the damned walk the dirty streets in a daze. When a runaway turns up dead, Jack is on the case, desperate to discover the evil responsible. That evil is two men with a snuff film obsession. Their ruse involves luring in young actors and killing them – all in the service of cruelty on celluloid. Things become more complicated when Jack’s girlfriend, Holly (Kathleen Kinmont), crosses paths with one of the killers. Before it’s all over, you’ll learn it costs more than a pound of flesh to make it in Hollywood.
From this synopsis, THE ART OF DYING could be any number of noir-exploitation films. However, this movie has the fuel-injected energy of my boy Wings both behind and in front of the camera, and boy howdy, does that make a difference! This film feels like what would happen if Garth Merenghi directed an adaptation of Cruising crossed with Lethal Weapon. Nearly every scene features either wanton violence, raunchy sex or slum-dwelling scenery chewers who make a Rudy Ray Moore supporting cast seem like a Scorsese supporting cast. To be clear, I am not being hyperbolic. When the movie started with Hauser and his partner busting in on what ends up being a cackle-inducing domestic disturbance, I worried if there would be a drop off in the insanity. After all, we’ve all seen low-budget flicks that have strong starts, only to deliver a dry fart of a middle and end. That’s not the case with THE ART OF DYING, a movie that will have your jaw perpetually dropped at its audacity.
There’s even a strong throughline of admittedly less brutal exploitation-horror with the snuff filmmaker antagonists. Their black-and-white camera work brings to mind everything from a less grimy version of The Last House on Dead End Street to a community theatre take on Robert Blake’s camcorder-toting Mystery Man in Lost Highway. As insane as it sounds, there’s more than a little Lynchian DNA in this movie, from the perversity at the heart of the snuff makers’ passion to the bass-heavy jazz soundtrack. In the end, THE ART OF DYING most resembles a bonkers, rejected take on Ti West’s Maxxine. There’s a world where we never got to experience such a degree of diabolically wild cinema. Thank Wings Hauser for that privilege.
Death to False Horror,
Dr. Benny Graves
Get your Wings! THE ART OF DYING is available to watch for free on PLEX!
