Documenting Icons - Chicken Ranch details
| Format: | 15 DVD |
|---|---|
| Starring: | Nick Broomfield, nick broomfield (pres, Narr) |
| Director: | Nick Broomfield |
| Genre: | Documentary - General |
| Studio: | METRODOME DISTRIBUTION LTD |
| Name | Discs | |
|---|---|---|
Documenting Icons - Chicken Ranch |
15 Feature |
DVD Information
| Run time: | 1 hour 15 minutes |
|---|---|
| Rental release: | 07 Mar 2005 |
| Main languages: | English |
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Most helpful review
Head Start
By a customer from Nottingham , 08 Jun 2005[Highly rated reviewer]
Documentaries about pornography and prostitution are a mainstay of late-night trash-TV schedules, and have been for years. Without this sub-genre - usually employed as a legalistic wheeze to show porn without 'showing porn', thus targeting male libidos without falling foul of broadcasting regulations - Channel Five TV schedules would, for many years, have been bereft of programming after about ten at night, and many satellite channels would have little but true crime series and music videos (themselves often barely disguised pornography) to entice the post-nightclub audience.
Most documentaries about the sex industry are 'softcore' in every sense of the term: neither meaningful nor masturbatory.
Some films about the industry, however, are incredibly poignant and powerful; compelling explorations of living within a paradoxical cultural ghetto: at once despised and desired, utterly natural and utterly artificial.
Chicken Ranch is, happily, the latter type of film about the sex industry. Like Soldier Girls, which Broomfield made contemporaneously, it shows how living in an extreme environment can change people. Unlike Soldier Girls, however, the women in Chicken Ranch have already been changed. The women already regard both themselves and their clients as 'things', objects devoid of emotion and meaning beyond the mechanistic exchange of semen for cash. Both close friends and rivals, the relationship the Ranch 'Chicks' have with one another is as surreal and artificial as one would expect given the situation they face: holed up together in the middle of an inhospitable desert, near-captives of a vicious pimp and harsh economic, social and personal circumstances.
An air of underlying menace and malaise haunts the whole film. The tension between the girls and the sociopathic brothel owner makes for uneasy viewing. The lack of natural lighting and superficial service-caf? feel of the Ranch make it seem like a kind of peripatetic Purgatory: a live-in hell for trapped souls and fallen angels.
As far as powerful, existential films about the sex industry goes, Chicken Ranch almost works precisely because it's so impersonal. It's difficult to connect with any of the women involved because no one stays for very long, leaving one with little knowledge of the past or future of these people outside the ranch (And also because of the age of the film: from the late seventies.) In this sense, it's near antithetical to the (much superior) Sex: The Annabel Chong Story, which chronicles the ambivalent rise-and-fall of a significant US sex industry 'footnote' from a position of almost solipsical intimacy.
This is almost the opposite: it tries to be warm, but ends up feeling a bit distant.- Was this review helpful to you?
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(8)Rather dull
By GwydionM (57 reviews) from Peterborough , 19 Jul 2011About as erotic as a chicken farm. You see the ladies presenting themselves and that is all you see. Might entertain you if the very thought seems fascinating.- Was this review helpful to you?
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Oh so quiet
By a customer from London , 01 Nov 2008An excellent documentary hindered by poor sound quality; this DVD is unwatchable! Even if one sets the volume to maximum, the words distort without ever becoming audible. A very, very sloppy release - look out for this on TV instead!- Was this review helpful to you?
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Chicken Ranch
By SAI81 (360 reviews) from Tonbridge , 03 Apr 2007The Nick Broomfield who made this film was clearly a different director than the one working today. These days he narrates his films and is a character in them himself. Here he is barely glimpsed, and never speaks. Instead he lets the story of the people working in the legal brothel of the title tell itself.
It's quite a schizophrenic film; as often funny as it is disturbing and it is packed with memorable character (most notably Fran; the Madame and Connie; the most vocal and angriest of the prostitutes).
It never truly satisfies though. Broomfield never really finds an arc, he's just showing moments rather than a story and the ending is incredibly abrupt, crying out for some input and context from the filmmaker.- Was this review helpful to you?
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Back to the beginning for Broomfield fans
By MikeCarterInLondon (151 reviews) from London , 22 Dec 2005A reminder that Broomfield was an accomplished documentary maker before he started the occasionally annoying habit of making himself the star of his movies rather than his subjects.
It's a sweet protrait of a group of girls knuckling down and getting on with 'the job' so to speak.
The extras contain a Broomfield presented show reel which is definitely worth a look. There's some great insights into a long and sometimes traumatic career.- Was this review helpful to you?
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The DVD was knackered
By a customer from London , 10 Oct 2005I couldn't hear a thing. Nice one Screen Selectors!- Was this review helpful to you?
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