DARK SECRET

The Dark Brothers, so called, are venturing out into the light. The one-time porn kings (one critic dubbed them “the most influential force in ‘X’ today”) are going mainstream. But, sssssh , it’s hush-hush.

Currently shooting in and around L.A., Metropolis Pictures’ “Dead Man Walking” (starring Wings Hauser as a mercenary tracking a psychotic killer) is exec produced by Walter Gernert and written and directed by Gregg Brown. Several astute readers caught the listing in Calendar’s Movie Chart and tipped us that Gernert and Brown are Walter and Gregg Dark, whose own film logo once proudly proclaimed them “Purveyors of Fine Filth” (later changed to “Purveyors of Fine Art”).

When we called, a Metropolis rep at first denied that Gernert and Brown (not really siblings) were also the brothers. When Gernert finally got back to us, he wasn’t thrilled to be grilled: “We would like to leave our past behind us. We’re no longer doing pornography. We’ve spent the past 18 months developing three (non-X) films which we have high hopes for.”

Gernert lashed out at hypocrisy: “So-called respectable people can watch the stuff. But if you make it, it’s as if you’ve got a disease. I can tell you that after this story appears, some casting directors will not want us to work with their talent.”

That’s the primary reason, he said, that he and Brown chose not to be billed, this time out, as the Dark Brothers.

Gernert vehemently denied reports from several Outtakes sources that he and Brown opted for a name change to avoid connection with certain of their movies, featuring a then-underage Traci Lords. (“The whole Traci Lords situation is very complicated--and a very long story.”)

The subjects of a recent article (“A Walk on the Dark Side”) in Vanity Fair by James Wolcott, the Dark films are known for ungentleness. Wrote Wolcott: “They attempt to bring to porn what Sam Kinison brings to stand-up comedy: sacrilege, no apology, hostile pathology, hoarse gusts of laughter from the jaws of hell....”

Gernert described the films this way: “Certainly we went way out on the edge. We tried to make them asexual. That is, a lot of people try to put love stories around pornography. We said, let’s get to it--but let’s do it with some higher pretensions stylistically, with elements of absurdist conceptual art.”

“Dead Man Walking” marks the first Dark attempt at an R-rated film.

Said Gernert: “There will be no nudity and we aren’t going for four-letter words. But it will be nihilistic. I also promise you that the film will be very good--the rushes look great.”