headhunter46 I have not been able to find this movie at any of the local stores. I would sort of like to see what Hollywood is showing regarding the star of Hogan. I have always gotten lots of laughs from the show but sometimes got the feeling Hogan was overdoing it.I go to youtube to get my Hogans fix every once in awhile.When I saw that Maria Bello was playing Hilda (Sigrid Valdis) I was skeptical. I have liked her in everything I have seen of her but to put her in the role of Hilda? Oh boy that is a stretch. Hilda was a healthy, curvy hunk of woman, while Bello is considerably thinner.I found the movie on netflix, so I just have to wait for it to arrive, then I'll come back and edit this review.

Wuchak "Auto Focus" (2002) covers the last fifteen years of Bob Crane's bizarre life. Crane (Greg Kinnear) was best known for the role of Hogan in Hogan's Heroes, which ran from 1965-1971. The story details how he meets and befriends a video expert named John Carpenter (Willem Dafoe) around the time he gets the gig for Hogan's Heroes. Bob is soon seduced by the temptations of being a big star; "free sex" is the sin du jour of the era and Crane can't resist the scores of beautiful women who want him. Unlike Crane, Carpenter isn't a star and isn't very good-looking, but he's able to continually pick up women simply due to his friendship with Bob. During and, especially, after his popular TV show, Crane experiences a downward spiral as he becomes entangled in the web of loose sex. By June, 1978, he was dead at 49.The movie's based on Robert Graysmith's book "The Murder of Bob Crane: Who Killed the Star of Hogan's Heroes?," which – believe it or not – depicts Crane's plunge into sexual immorality even worse than seen in the movie.Director Paul Schrader is a writer and/or director of quite a few critically acclaimed films, like "Taxi Driver" (writer), "The Mosquito Coast" (writer) and "Hardcore" (writer & director). Speaking of "Hardcore," that film also addresses the subject of sexual hedonism and, in my opinion, is the superior film, mainly because of the fascinating father/daughter relationship that develops between a staunch Calvinist conservative (George C. Scott) and a young lost prostitute (Season Hubley). This isn't to say, however, that "Auto Focus" isn't good, just that it's not as good in my opinion as "Hardcore." If you can handle the sleazy aspects, "Auto Focus" maintains your attention and the actors do a quality job.If you have the DVD, be sure to watch the corresponding documentary on Crane's death and the most obvious culprit, John Carpenter (although there's still the slight possibility that someone else did it).Rita Wilson and Maria Bello are also on hand as Crane's wife and mistress/new-wife respectively. Michael E. Rodgers plays Bob's somewhat nemesis, Richard Dawson.PS: I know someone who worked as a waitress at an A&W in my area during the mid-70s when Crane was forced to do traveling theater work to earn a living, as shown in the movie. She waited on him and another guy and Bob was his typically amiable self, but with a decidedly smart-alecky edge. He didn't leave her a tip! The film runs 105 minutes and was shot in California and Arizona.GRADE: B

CitizenCaine After several television appearances, actor Bob Crane landed the starring role of Hogan's Heroes, a television series which ran from 1965 to 1971. The majority of baby boomers will remember it well. After the series ended, Crane made several unsuccessful attempts at continuing his television career, including his own television series: The Bob Crane Show was canceled after just 15 episodes in 1975. He was reduced to the dinner theater circuit in the mid to late 1970's when he eventually was murdered in cold-blooded fashion on June 29, 1978. How did he go from television star to obscurity in a matter of seven years? Paul Schrader's film Auto Focus suggests it was Crane's debauched lifestyle that did him in. After Crane's bloodied and bludgeoned body was discovered, police found a large number of home made sex videos with Crane and his friend John Carpenter.Greg Kinnear stars as Bob Crane, the penultimate likable guy and radio DJ, circa 1964. Kinnear has Crane down perfectly, except you have to wonder if Crane was really that superficial or was the script just that superficial? Schrader suggests that Crane really was that shallow, and Crane's pornographic fervor fueled his career decline. Crane never realized it as witnessed by the script's closing narration given by Kinnear as Crane after his death. Despite the support Crane received after death from his second wife about changing his life around, it seems like Crane became a pariah in the industry, increasingly shunned for his inappropriate behavior as an out-of-control womanizer disconnected from reality. The film's "Celebrity Cooks" appearance, which Crane filmed 6 days before he was killed, makes this apparent.Willem Dafoe stars as John "Carpy" Carpenter, the electronic technician working on the cutting edge of the dawning video age. Crane's association with Carpenter drew him deeper into a world of hedonistic sex and pornographic home movies. The film seems to be ambiguous to a certain extent regarding the catalyst for pushing Crane over the edge, but he had already built up a collection of nude magazines of the day, including Gent, Swank, and others. However, director Paul Schrader indicated Hollywood didn't corrupt anybody, but it allowed corrupt individuals to continue their corruption. I agree with Schrader's assessment. The cinematography uses picturesque Norman Rockwell types of colors and settings in the early part of the film, and then it slowly gravitates to darker hues as the film progresses and Crane's personal turmoil becomes more apparent. The fantasy sequence when Crane's Hogan's Heroes' set collides with his personal demons is just one of these darker moments. Kinnear and Dafoe are both interesting enough to carry the film, and as with most of Schrader's films, the supporting cast is excellent. Rita Wilson, as Crane's high school sweetheart and his first wife Anne, is prim and proper in a 1960's sort of way. Maria Bello is fantastic as Patricia, Crane's second wife he married on the set of Hogan's Heroes. Ron Leibman is great as Lenny the agent who increasingly warns Crane to tone down or hide his personal life or his career will suffer. Ultimately, it's a film that draws no conclusions about Crane's murder or passes no judgment on Crane's wild lifestyle. It's simply a sad story about a likable guy who never realizes his addiction to sex and the effect it has on his career and those around him. It's also a film about exploiting celebrity status for one's gain and the unending number of seemingly ordinary people who are only too willing to be hoodwinked by individuals with barely a modicum of celebrity status. Schrader continues his string of disturbing portraits of male protagonists with sexual ambivalence and hangups. Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, Jake VanDorn in Hardcore, Julian in American Gigolo, Paul Gallier in Cat People, Yukio Mishima in Mishima, Robert and even Colin in The Comfort Of Strangers, Wade Whitehouse in Affliction, Alan Riply in Forever Mine, and now Bob Crane in Auto Focus. The sexual dichotomy in Auto Focus is much more extreme than in the other films, and Crane's rise and fall parallels the innocence to cynicism transition American society underwent from the mid 1960's to the late 1970's at the time. Michael Gerbosi wrote the script based on Robert Graysmith's book: The Murder Of Bob Crane. *** of 4 stars.

Neil Welch This film brings us some interesting material on the birth of home video or, more correctly, the point at which professional video started to cross over into home use.We get to see a number of generations of early video equipment being set up and brought into use, most of which operate in monochrome (most colour TV at the time was film-based and colour videotaped material was not the norm).Editing equipment is touched on, but there is relatively little about it: the film concentrates on cameras and recorders.A fascinating glimpse into the technical side of TV/video in the not-too-distant past! Highly recommended for all video technophiles!Oh, and there's some stuff about Bob Crane, too.