Reading Material

VHS: Video Cover Art

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vhsvideocoverThomas Hodge’s VHS: Video Cover Art is hardly the only book to lovingly collect outré boxes from the dominant home-video format of the 1980s and ’90s, but it’s the first to feature this eyebrow-raiser from the back cover of the 1986 sex comedy Free Ride:

“HEALTH WARNING
Superglue is not a penis enlarging cream
See inside for details”

Woe be to the horny renter who couldn’t read, I guess.

That’s merely one small delight in Schiffer Publishing’s horizontal hardcover, full of colorful, kitschy boxes handpicked by Hodge, aka The Dude Designs, the moniker under which he creates wonderfully evocative key art of his own to cult flicks of today, from Hobo with a Shotgun to WolfCop. His style clearly kneels at altar of the cassette-rental heyday. It was a time when we were drawn to tapes we knew Mom never would allow us to bring home. With fondness, Hodge remembers the “rows upon rows of fantastically fun, crazed art depicting moustached muscle men, buxom beauties, big explosions, phallic guns, and nightmare-inducing monsters,” he writes in his introduction. “How can the Mona Lisa inspire after you’ve gazed upon the likes of Lust for Freedom and Silk as a kid.”

How indeed? (Although I’m more of a Silk 2 man, myself, being unable to resist photography of Monique Gabrielle wearing nothing but a shiny white bra.)

Hodge also wishes readers will discover many gems, and you will. That’s not because similar books — Jacques Boyreau’s Portable Grindhouse, Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher’s VHS: Absurd, Odd, and Ridiculous Relics from the Videotape Era — have zero overlap, but because Hodge is British. Therefore, the 250-ish tapes featured — obscurities like Blood & Guts: Heavy Thunder, Searchers of the Voodoo Mountain and The Chinese Typewriter — come from companies different from those stateside, meaning the covers are largely alien to Yankee eyes.

Being low-rent, such commissioned illustrations for the UK tapes manage to look really porny. Those companies got away with showing a lot of tits, and we’re not even talking X-rated titles. At least they retain the American practice of seemingly every tagline including dramatic ellipses, e.g. “ONLY ONE MAN WOULD DARE … CHALLENGE THE NINJA” and “THE INNOCENTS HAVE TASTED BLOOD … AND THEY LIKED IT!”

Choice as those lines are, they have nothing on the lost art of back-cover box copy, judging from these examples:
• What a Way to Go: “Kidnapped by a household of women to make love to a sex-starved fat woman”
• Spectreman: “Live actors attempt to outdo Superman through a new power to right wrongs, Spectreman. DEFINITELY FOR THE KIDS”
• Banzai Runner: “Cocaine trafficking is emerging. As one U.S. Drug Enforcement agent puts it: ‘Who’s going to catch you when you’re doing 200 mph.’ The answer could be Dean Stockwell.”

Could be! And yet VHS: Video Cover Art is a must-have. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Documentary

Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau (2014)

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lostsoulIf Hardware auteur Richard Stanley had his way, his adaptation of the H.G. Wells sci-fi novel he loved as a child would have featured such shocking scenes as a human man engaged and engorged in foreplay, sucking the many nipples of a panther woman.

But, as we know, he didn’t; New Line Cinema replaced the in-over-his-head Stanley with veteran John Frankenheimer (1962’s The Manchurian Candidate), and the tortured result, 1996’s The Island of Dr. Moreau, tanked. Today, the colossal boondoggle is regarded as one of the worst movies ever made. Personally, I think that’s a bit harsh, but whatever it is, at least it finally yielded some good, nearly two decades after the fact, with Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau, a documentary of What Went Wrong.

lostsoul1A whole helluva lot! That’s why, even with so many of its players dead or absent, Lost Soul can clock in at feature-length. Admittedly an outsider, Stanley is forthright about the mistakes he made before his dismissal; chief among them, he recalls, “I then made another strategic error: I met Val Kilmer.”

While Stanley is pegged as passionate and paranoid from both his supporters and detractors, no one has nice things to say about Kilmer. Then at the height of his Hollywood powers, the Batman Forever star was, by all accounts, an asshole forever. Further poisoning the well was the legendary Marlon Brando, bringing with him an ego larger than his don’t-give-a-shit girth.

Those stories of bad behavior are well-documented. What justifies Lost Soul’s existence is director David Gregory, co-founder of the Severin cult-video label and contributor to The Theatre Bizarre, allowing more time for anecdotes that didn’t make Variety’s front page. For example, before a single frame was shot, New Line toyed with taking the reins from Stanley and giving them to Roman Polanski; understandably frustrated, Stanley did what he had to do: Enlist a genuine warlock on the other side of the world to cast a spell exactly as the filmmakers met in Tinseltown.

Giving lip service to both sides of the fray, Lost Soul may be executed as a glorified DVD extra, but it’s no puff piece. Between this and 2013’s Jodorowsky’s Dune, the case could be made that any high-profile picture that ends up unmade — or not as intended by its original shepherd — deserves a documentary in lieu of a severance package. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Sex

Camp (2014)

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campCamp is titled that because that’s where it largely takes place, and not — repeat: not — because it bears the qualities of camp. Oh, if only! You’ll wish for some levity, as the Japanese film is as much fun as having the campfire singe your wiener — the edible kind or the sexual tool. Take your pick, but one guess as to which route this flick trafficks.

Sisters Kozue and Akane — respectively, the smart, pretty one and the one who’s not so much — go camping, which is a little strange since the last time they did, Kozue was raped by Akane’s boyfriend. That night is nothing compared to this return trip, when the girls are accosted in the lodge by a party of five hardly reformed sex maniacs, each of whom is code-named for his particular fetish; Copro treats urine like vintage wine, while Pilo, who likes to burn things, fellates a fireplace lighter. A round or few of brandy-laced tea later, they pit the siblings against one another in a game neither will win. You’ll never be able to look at a vacuum hose the same way. The guys are not sick, though; they prefer the term “more affectionate.” In other words, just a typical Tuesday night at the Fiji house, brah!

camp1Call it what you will, but I call Camp utterly misogynist trash. While director Ainosuke Shibata (whose 2013 debut, Hitch-Hike, double-features with Camp on the Troma label’s From Asia with Lust: Volume 1 DVD release) allows for female revenge, those relatively few moments of comeuppance seem like an afterthought, following an agonizing hour of general torture, poop-chute molestation and other acts of extreme deviance. These are depicted fairly graphically and one would assume they are simulated — then again, one of the siblings is played by adult film star Miyuki Yokoyama, so who knows — but they are bothersome nonetheless. That they are portrayed in a manner to titillate is exponentially most distressing.

It’s no I Spit on Your Grave, that’s for sure, and that’s really saying something. So is this: At least Camp mercifully runs fewer than 90 minutes. —Ed Donovan

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Horror

Death Curse of Tartu (1967)

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deathcurseWith his gal pal at his side, a clueless archaeology student asks their chaperone (Fred Pinero) during a school-sponsored camping trip, “Is it okay if we go to the lake and, uh, roast a few marshmallows?”

First of all, ick. Secondly, of course it is! I mean, it’s not as if they’re camping on a sacred Indian burial mound! Because if they were, they would unleash the Death Curse of Tartu.

Correction: They totally are, so they totally do.

deathcurse1Sounding like a cross between Hervé Villechaize’s Fantasy Island character and a sauce popular at all-you-can-inhale seafood buffets, Tartu (Doug Hobart) was a witch doctor with the hit-at-parties power to transform into wild beasts. Today, he haunts the swamps despite being a crusty sarcophagus, which is why those who dare disturb his eternal resting place risk being choked to death by a giant snake, chomped by an alligator or being ass-bitten by one of those ferocious lake-water sharks the media always crows about.

Luckily, all the dumb humans would have to do is listen for the drums-and-chants soundtrack to kick in, because every time writer/director William Grefé (Mako: The Jaws of Death) presses that “PLAY” button, danger is afoot. For viewers of this Florida Everglades-lensed, barely budgeted, half-charming oddity, the sound loop also acts as a wake-up call to snap out of your half-attention stupor and prep for actual action. —Rod Lott

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Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Spaceship Terror (2011)

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spaceshipterrorImagine Alien. Now imagine Alien if the creature were designed not by H.R. Giger, but In-N-Out Burger. That’s Spaceship Terror. No one claims it is good for you, but if you’re in the mood for it, damn, does it hit the spot! (And it’s just as messy — maybe it should have been titled Star Gores.)

Written, directed, produced, edited and everythinged by rookie filmmaker Harry Tchinski, Spaceship Terror opens with half a dozen peeps going on a trip in what will be their least favorite rocket ship, because the craft crashes on a nearby desolate planet. Seeking medical attention for the injured lone male, the ladies come upon a large vessel whose moniker is stenciled in capital red letters. Asks one of the women rhetorically, “Who’d name their spaceship Terror?”

spaceshipterror1Answer: Capt. Terror (Jay Wesley Cochran, The Catechism Cataclysm), an obese psychopath with a tube up his nose, a retractable harpoon gun in his hands and a pink-pantied Asian girl (Emma Lee Nguyen, Teenage Kung Fu Cottontails) trapped in his lair for the last two years. She fills in the new arrivals: “You’re on a death ship! You’re all going to die!”

Elaborating after that fine “how do you do,” she explains that Capt. Terror likes to play hide-and-seek for keeps, with his guests forced to trudge winding, booby-trapped hallways while being pursued by him, his itchy trigger finger and/or his rapey other parts. However, Cap plays fair, giving a count-of-50 head start and, per each death, another piece of the code needed to unlock Terror’s escape pod. With such a twisted game, Capt. Terror is not unlike Saw’s villainous Jigsaw, minus the moral compass, Ivy League diction and the ability to turn down Winchell’s crullers.

Spaceship Terror knows exactly who it wants its audience to be and caters accordingly. (Capt. Terror must be right in sync, cranking the ship’s heat to 120˚ F so the ladies have to strip to sweat-damp skivvies.) With outrageous gore sequences that seek to disgust as they delight — the double de-ankling, the mammary trauma, et al. — the no-budget epic is not for the easily offended. Perhaps I’m the only sick bastard to detect a touch of black comedy in the proceedings, but the flick makes no apologies for the grindhouse cesspool in which it wades.

The acting would leave something to be desired, if performances were a concern. They are not; vehicles like Spaceship Terror are about creative kills, and Capt. Terror, an imposing figure who would be right at home in a Rob Zombie film, delivers. With excellent makeup effects (CGI effects, much less so) and nasty fun, the outer-space slasher is a scrappy work Tchinski can be proud of — not possessive-name-above-the-title proud, but proud nonetheless. (It’s a little early to brand oneself à la John Carpenter.) If Tchinski bows at the big-box VHS heyday as I suspect, further travels of Capt. Terror in the near and exploitable future would not be out of the question. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

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