165: Deep in the Heart (with Jonathan Hertzberg of Fun City Editions)

Junk Filter

CW: This episode discusses cinematic sexual violence.

The founder of Fun City Editions, Jonathan Hertzberg, joins the podcast from New York City to discuss the boutique video label and their latest blu-ray release, 1983’s Deep in the Heart, aka Handgun, directed by Ken Loach’s longtime English producer Tony Garnett.

Deep in the Heart, a brutal portrayal of American gun culture as seen from an outsider’s perspective, stars the undersung actress Karen Young in her screen debut as a Boston schoolteacher working in Dallas who is groomed and then sexually assaulted by a well-liked local attorney and antique gun collector. She gets nowhere trying to get the police and the church to support her quest for justice, but gets all the help she needs from the local gun club, and transformed by the culture and her experience, plans her revenge. The film was bought by Warner Bros. not to release the film properly, but to keep it from interfering with the commercial prospects of their upcoming Clint Eastwood release with a similar theme, Sudden Impact.

Deep in the Heart is the kind of film this label specializes in: films that have for various reasons been forgotten in the modern age but deserve to be restored, reissued and rediscovered. Jonathan gives us insight into the process and the challenges of locating and reviving these catalogue titles, and how Deep in the Heart still speaks to contemporary American concerns over 40 years later.

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Follow Fun City Editions on Twitter.

You can order Fun City Editions’ new release of Deep in the Heart through their website.

Trailer for Deep in the Heart aka Handgun (Tony Garnett, 1983)

Fun City Editions trailer for Seeing Red: 3 French Vigilante Thrillers

Trailer for Strangers Kiss (Matthew Chapman, 1983), restored version coming soon from FCE