Arena (TV Series) Hollywood Babylon (1991) User Reviews

Interesting tho more fiction than fact

[Musicianmagic · 5/10 · 31 July 2018]

Based on the book by Kenneth Anger. Anger narrates during the movie while a passenger in the back of a hearse. Individual stories surrounding various hollywood practices, incidents and stars. While each are based on fact like someone's death, he expounds the story of their life or death often to an absurd point. That makes it interesting but obviously not reality. Of course if you have no knowledge of the incidents or people discussed, he does make it sound believable. There are also some brief snippets & discussions of Anger's own films. If I missed watching this, I would not have missed much.

A book of morbid curiosity becomes a tacky documentary not even worth airing.

[mark.waltz · 2/10 · 14 May 2015]

You need to take the gossipy narration of this story of alleged tragedies and scandals of Hollywood figures of the silent era through the 1960's with a pillar of salt. Yes, certain tragedies are presented with accuracy, but others are mostly hear-say. It isn't just the invasion of privacy of deceased actors we still watch on TCM that makes this disturbing, but the disrespect with which it is presented. Reading the book is fascinating in a macabre way, but when two obnoxious drag-queens begin walking down Hollywood Boulevard, making tacky comments about each of the stars on the walk of fame they pass (most of them sexual or bitchy), it goes way beyond the epitome of bad taste into the depths of disgusting self-promotion. A tacky rendition of "The Boulevard of Broken Dreams" is the nadir of Dietrich impressions, and even attempts to recreate some of the actual situations discussed (the Fatty Arbuckle scandal for one) is amateurish at best. Yes, we know who killed themselves, who had egos larger than the Hollywood sign, and who was sleeping with who. All the world wants is dirt, it seems, and they don't care if it's true. Poor Lupe Velez and Ramon Novarro get their last moments turned into cartoons, while there's more than enough information on the deaths of James Dean and Sal Mineo that is presented realistically and sympathetically. This is filled with a hateful narrative, which makes the fact that it's Kenneth Anger's book which it documents that makes it an ironic twist. Save yourself an hour and just pick up other books on the subjects mentioned here to see what episodes of their lives lead up to their mostly tragic conclusions.