'Filmed in the Black Rock desert of Northern Nevada, the film is about a long shootout between a younger man with a pistol and an older man with a rifle. The vast panorama of the desert provides the backdrop for the encounter of the two men, its suspense heightened by the tightly controlled photography of both the spectacular landscape and the action we witness. Hard Core may be called a minimal-suspense-western with an underlying politico-historical theme. The threatening crescendo of oceans and drums (played by de Maria) underscores the starkly visual drama contained within the circular, bounded field of our observation, and its silent comment on war and violence in man.' - Art + CinemaThe essential experience of transformation, between Life and Death, death and birth, or rebirth. In four reels, the first three adapted from the Bardo Thodol, The Tibetan Book of the Dead. The fourth reel is the form of a black and white one-reeler Western summarizing the material of the first three reels, which are color and abstract [Source: Theatre Vanguard Program Notes, 1974]