vhs

Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made (2016)

/ swampflix / Leave a comment

EPSON MFP image

threehalfstar

Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made is exactly what the title says. In 1982, three boys from Mississippi decided to make Raiders of the Lost Ark. They had only their friends, their mothers’ basements, and their allowances. They spent seven years of their lives doing this. They filmed every bit of it except for the airplane scene. This documentary examines this gargantuan project framed around the ultimate goal of them going back as adults to film the one remaining scene.

It’s hard to watch Raiders! without thinking of other recent movies in this vein: Best Worst Movie and Jodorowsky’s Dune. They all explore the idea of what it means to be a cult film, how cult films spread in strange, strange ways, and the drive and obsession it takes to keep pushing yourself to complete an unconventional project. Of course, Raiders! is different from those other examples, because the film they were trying to make already existed. It’s also different because this is a group of kids who spent a good chunk of their childhood doing this, not professional filmmakers. They weren’t trying to make a movie for mass distribution. It just happened.

At it’s heart, though, this is a movie about childhood and reckless, adolescent ambition rather than filmmaking. They took risks. They almost got themselves maimed or killed multiple times and nearly burned down a house. It’s genuinely hilarious to learn about what these kids thought was a good idea and how they accomplished some of what they did.  They were these imaginative, creative kids who attached themselves to this project and never let go. Even as adults, this project still has this magical hold on them. At some points you feel some secondhand embarrassment as these grown men drag out childhood relics and memories and chase after this strange goal, but for the most part you’re rooting for them.

At the end of Raiders!, I couldn’t decide if what these kids were doing was filmmaking at its best or its worst. And I don’t really care. I’m just glad it exists, and I’m happy that there’s a documentary to show me how.

-Alli Hobbs

Chuck Norris vs. Communism (2015)

/ swampflix / Leave a comment

EPSON MFP image

fourstar

Don’t be fooled by its meme-minded title. Chuck Norris vs. Communism is a powerful documentary that offers a fascinating history lesson of Romanian oppression in the mid 1980s. I’d place it up there with Corman’s World & the Golan-Globus doc as a means to get excited about the potency & cultural significance of trashy 70s & 80s action cinema as a form of high art. Hell, it might be one of the best documentaries about cinema as a powerful form of storytelling & a source of comradery in an even more general sense. The film’s title recalls the proto-meme of Chuck Norris jokes that flooded the internet in the early 2000s, but it actually has very little to do with the content of this work as a whole. There’s a great deal more going on here.

Under the totalitarian rule of Nicolae Ceaușescu in the 1980s, Romanian citizens lived a very hushed, secluded life. Foreign media was severely censored & everyone under Ceaușescu’s rule feared surveillance from the government’s secret police force. Almost all entertainment available to the Romanian consumer was some form of government-sanctioned propaganda. VHS cassettes changed all that. Almost overnight a black market for foreign (mostly Hollywood) films began smuggling VHS contraband into Romanian living rooms like hard drugs or military-grade weaponry. This influx of forbidden art not only gave Romanian citizens access to free speech & expression in a way they hadn’t before experienced under Ceaușescu’s ever-tightening grip; it also opened up a world of travel, wealth, and excess they had been shut off from their country’s restrictive borders (even if it was through passive consumerism). Imagine a county-wide version of The Wolfpack & you’ll have  pretty good idea of what’s being documented here, except there’s a much less participatory/celebratory spirit at its center.

Part of the reason I’m not in love with Chuck Norris vs. Communism‘s title is that it drastically downplays the film’s true hero: Irina Nistor. Nistor risked imprisonment (or worse) by translating American films into Romanian dubs at a bewildering six to ten films a day at her peak. Nistor became the voice of American cinema for Romanian audiences. She voiced every single character in nearly every film illegally distributed. Chuck Norris and similar action stars like Van Damme, Schwarzeneger, and Stallone may have captured the imaginations of Romanian people. Norris’s Golan-Globus production Missing in Action might’ve even been a particular nexus for their dreams of escape & retribution. However, this film is really Irina Nistor’s story. She’s not a name that would do the film any commercial favors, but she is undeniably its most important facet.

As a documentary, Chuck Norris vs. Communism has an interesting way of experimenting with form. It works mostly as an oral history of the underground VHS market as told by the Romanian people who lived it, backed up by a dramatic re-enactment of Irina Nistor’s personal story. This combo recalls the high production values & word-of-mouth narrative of works like The Nightmare & Thin Blue Line, but by far the most interesting aspect of this film is its content, not its form. There’s an inspiring story at work here about the growing political unrest fueled by illegal Movie Night screenings secretly held in Romanian living rooms. The movie works best when it lets this renegade secrecy grow on its own & may over-extend a little in the back end when it claims that smuggled VHS tapes were the spark that eventually flamed into an overthrow of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s regime. It’s in the smaller, more intimate moments when Chuck Norris vs. Communism excels, especially when it lets Irina Nistor’s fascinating story & the nostalgic potency of the VHS-grade cinema she translated speak or themselves.

-Brandon Ledet

Mad Ron’s Prevues from Hell (1987)

/ swampflix / Leave a comment

EPSON MFP image

threehalfstar

campstamp

Way, way back in the magical time of the 1980s, VHS cassettes opened up a new, exciting world where films could suddenly be copied & distributed among nerdy weridos looking to sidestep the interference (and profits) of the movie studios that owned them. That role has, obviously, been filled by the Internet in recent years, so it’s hard to imagine just how exciting this development was at the time. It was suddenly dirt cheap for independent producers to churn out schlock & put it directly in the hands of fans. Special interest markets like skateboarders & pro wrestling nerds all of a sudden had a way to record & distribute their favorite content among like-minded geeks. Not only was a new market of nerdom opened for media junkies that allowed them to trade & curate content once impossible to own at home, but there was an element of danger & piracy involved in the process, which afforded the underground video market the same inherently dorky cool as phrases like “the dark web”.

Mad Ron’s Prevues from Hell could have only existed in this sleazily magical time when underground VHS trading was a dangerous-feeling form of nerdy fun. Less of a documentary & more of a straight-forward compilation, Prevues from Hell assembles a montage of movie trailers from horror’s drive-in, grindhouse era. It’s an endless assault of in-bad-taste horror advertising from the 1970s loosely stapled together by stale comedy bits that should feel familiar to anyone who’s ever caught a television broadcast hosted by an Elvira or Morgus-type. The film seemingly assembles every Fangoria & Rick Baker fan in Pennsylvania in an ancient cinema to serve as the audience for this cavalcade of schlock trailers & evil ventriloquist-MC’d wraparound segments. The monster make-up is fairly top notch for a straight-to-VHS horror compilation, but this connective tissue is ultimately a painfully corny diversion from the film’s main attraction: advertisements for long-gone coming attractions. That is, unless someone really, really wanted to see gags like a dummy handing his ventriloquist operator a severed finger & quipping, “Get it? I’m giving you the finger! I’m giving you the finger!”

As for the film trailers included in Prevues from Hell, there’s an interesting variety on display: cult classics with wide appeal (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Night of the Living Dead, Argento’s Deep Red, De Palma’s Sisters); grotesque films I wish I could erase from my memory (The Wizard of Gore, 2000 Maniacs, The Last House on the Left); forgotten gems I’d love to track down (The Corpse Grinders, Cannibal Girls, Flesh Feast); and nasty-looking works of depravity you’d have to pay me to watch (Africa: Blood & Guts, Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS, etc.). The most interesting thing the film’s endless montage of grindhouse trailers does is set up Prevues from Hell as a cultural relic from two separate eras of cult cinema. It’s not only an artifact of the underground VHS trading era of the 80s & 90s; it’s also a comprehensive tour of the carnie huckster style of advertising that defined the drive-in era of horror trailers. A lot of schlock producers at the time threw all of their weight into the advertising end of their product, promising the world in the trailers & having very little pressure to actually deliver a quality product once tickets were purchased. The claims in these ads are outrageous: “The most blood-chilling motion picture you’ve ever seen!” “The most shocking ordeal ever permitted onscreen!” “The world’s first horror movie made in hallucinogenic hypno-vision!” The spirit of larger than life hucksters like William Castle & David Friedman are alive in every ad. Any one of these producers could’ve enjoyed a second life as a self-hyped politician. And, sadly, because these trailers are primarily from horror’s nastiest era, the 1970s, they do a pretty good job representing the gleeful depictions of sexual assault that make a lot of these works much more enjoyable to digest in 90 second clips that they’d be as full-length films.

Of course, everything about Mad Ron’s Prevues from Hell is obsolete in 2016. You could most likely find each & every one of these trailers (if not the films in their entirety) uploaded to YouTube in some form and a very helpful Letterboxd user has assembled the full list of titles the film compiled so you don’t even have to bother with the corny wraparound segments to track down what made the cut. Modern documentaries like Corman’s World & Electric Boogaloo that function like similarly-minded schlock clip compilations provide enough talking head interviews & historical context to make their trips down horror advertising memory lane worthwhile in an informational sense, but Prevues from Hell provides no such context. For instance, who is Mad Ron? Although he’s shown twice in the film I honestly have no idea who he is or what he contributed to the production. Does he own the theater where this was filmed? Is that how he obtained the trailer reels on display? Does that even matter? Prevues from Hell is only an educational experience in that it’s a glimpse into two long-gone eras of horror’s past: the grindhouse drive-in 70s & the underground video swap 80s. Otherwise, you’re probably better off skimming YouTube & assembling your own Prevues from Hell off the cuff.

-Brandon Ledet

Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension (2015)

/ swampflix / 5 Comments

EPSON MFP image

three star

campstamp

I’ve happily managed to avoid seeing any of the Paranormal Activity films until now (with ease, I might add), but a convenient showtime & a free ticket recently changed that for me. My first Paranormal Activity film ended up being the sixth in the series and you know what? It was actually pretty enjoyable. A found footage ghost story set during Christmastime 2013 (a temporal detail that adds essentially nothing to the equation), The Ghost Dimension is a fairly straight-forward collection of jump scares & spooky happenings. It’s a film that never dares to stray from its basic, by-the-books formula, but I have to admit that the formula kinda worked for me. Nothing about the film’s over-reliance on the idea that children are creepy or its assumption that all Catholic priests are prepared at a moment’s notice to wage metaphysical war on demons is anything new in terms of ghostly horror movies as a genre, but those tropes exist for a reason. They’re good for a cheap, easy lark. I could see how six films into the franchise someone could tire of Paranormal Activity‘s over-simplified ghost genre formula, but since I was just looking for a pleasant slice of generic horror, I was well satiated.

I’m guessing that what most distinguishes The Ghost Dimension from its five predecessors is the attention paid to the camera that records the film’s ghostly events. An old, bulky VHS camcorder from the 1980s (yes, that decade’s aesthetic is now antiquated enough to be spooky, as evidenced by the V/H/S franchise), this special piece of recording equipment has a built-in lens that allows it to pick up the, um, paranormal activity that plagues the film’s haunted house. It’s spirit photography made easy. At first, the film’s central pair of protagonist brothers don’t’ know how seriously to take this discovery. The iconic hipster asshole of the pair jokes while filming his paranoid brother, “My camera’s picking up something! It’s a dipshit.” Tripping on psilocybin mushroom doesn’t help the paranoia factor, especially once the brothers start diving into the box of VHS tapes that arrived in tandem with the camera. Much of The Ghost Dimension works this way, like a scary version of those hopelessly useless YouTube “reaction videos” people seem to be endlessly churning out lately. At one point, the brothers end up filming themselves watching themselves watch the haunted VHS recordings. It’s quite silly. What’s much more interesting, of course, is what’s actually on the tapes themselves: the home tapes of two young girls being raised/manipulated by a cult called The Midwives. That’s right. They’re a 1980s coven of devil-worshipping child care witches. In other words,, they’re total badasses. Too bad they get a pitiful amount of screentime.

No matter. Things pick up once the non-hipster-mustache brother’s little girl gets recruited by this cult through some space-time tampering in order to do the bidding of a wicked demon named, you guessed it, Toby. Once the little girl is in cahoots with Toby she transforms into a little Satanic badass– burning Bibles, biting priests, and burying rosaries in the backyard. By the time she’s talking to ghostly beings on the other side of mirrors & opening a physical portal to the titular ghost dimension, I was totally on board with what she was selling. Too bad her pesky parents get in Toby’s way & try to muck up his plans with their “innocent” little girl. There’s a surprising amount of ghostly action to be found in the film as these modern Toby/little girl shenanigans clash with the 1980s timeline of The Midwives coven, the world crashing in around them as they join forces.

What I thought I understood about Paranormal Activity as a franchise leading up to The Ghost Dimension was that the films required a lot of patience. It seemed that to attempt a “realistic” aesthetic (and to save money) the earliest films in the series were a slow burn of security footage-style still cameras & Paris Hilton night vision. The Ghost Dimension is much more kinetic that I expected based on this assumption. It’s packed to the gills with violent jump scares & images of Toby taking form by gathering a gestalt of black spiritual particles that’re pretty much the philosophical opposite of Dust in Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials. The film is relentlessly dumb & resistant to reason. For instance, why would the parents move their daughter out of the house immediately instead of videotaping her & lightly suggesting that she stop talking to Toby? Why does Toby show up on the 2013 recordings, but not on the 1980s VHS tapes that were presumably captured with the same equipment? Why would someone, when fleeing from an interdimensional demon, shout to their spouse, “Stay upstairs! Lock the door!” as if it would make a difference? How could a bulky camera from thirty years ago seemingly manage to have a 24 hour battery life? These are silly questions to ask of such a silly movie. Continuity & basic logic aren’t nearly as essential to The Ghost Dimension‘s trashy charms as the simple pleasures small children acting creepy, CGI ghosts reaching for the audience in fits of 3D format gimmickry, and good, old-fashioned cheap jump scares. Perhaps after five similar films this wasn’t enough to hold the attention of returning audience members (there was a lot of iPhone scrolling & open conversation at my screening, despite it being opening night), but as a newcomer I was pretty well entertained.

-Brandon Ledet

V/H/S (2012)

/ swampflix / 6 Comments

EPSON MFP image

three star

Something about the traditional, pessimistic story arc of the horror genre can wear you down after overexposure. For instance, when a DVD sale sent me on a Tales from the Crypt binge a few years back, I started to get really weary of watching a horrible person suffer horrible punishment for their horrible deeds episode after episode. Although V/H/S is just one film, its anthology format allows the marathon of its segments to be equally exhausting, especially considering the kind of cretins the movie punishes in various, horrible ways. In abstract, I like the idea of a horror movie attacking bro culture archetypes as punishment for their predatory misogyny & sexual assault, but in practice I was a little worn down by the end of its too-long, two hour runtime. Besides, the movie did at times veer into the grotesque leering & sexual exploitation that it supposedly abhors. Still, there were too many enjoyable moments & interesting ideas in the film for me to brush it off completely, exhausting & compromised or not.

V/H/S‘ wraparound story sets the brotesque horror tone early. In a crude montage that faithfully recreates the blue screens & static flashes of an overused VHS cassette, a gang of reprehensible bro monsters are loosely profiled. The scumbags in question are prone to filming themselves having sex without their partners’ knowledge, forcibly stripping strangers for the camera to shouts of “Show her tits!”, casually using racist language, and mindlessly destroying private property with aluminium bats. The found footage format of the film works greatly to its advantage in the depiction of these atrocities (even if the shaky cam can be a bit tiresome), making the characters feel like real people that you really, really want to see brutally murdered. It’s a godsend, then, that they’re subjected to watching haunted VHS tapes that supernaturally end up offing them one at a time.

In the first, strongest segment a group of bro thugs are punished for attempting to film a hidden camera porno without the participants’ knowledge. They’re viciously ripped to shreds by some sort of humanoid, vampiric gargoyle for their transgression. Other segments include similar sexist pricks getting stabbed in their sleep, tormented by ghosts in the woods, and running a bizarre guantlet in a real-life, occult-themed haunted house. There’s one incongruous vigniette involving an Unfriended-esque videochat that doesn’t fit in with the film’s general Bro Culture on Trial vibe, slightly undercutting any clear message the film may be trying to get across (not to mention the lack of explanation as to why or how a Skype session would be committed to a VHS cassette in the first place), but that’s to be expected in a horror anthology that features ten different directors (including up & comers Ti West & Adam Wingard).

It’s interesting to see such a wide variety of voices fused together in a single work, which is often how the horror anthology excels as a format, but in other ways it’s that very same variety that also works to the V/H/S‘ detriment. Not only does the relentless horrible people horribly punished cycle get a little tiresome after a few segments, but some segments uncomfortably cross over from bro shaming into bro voyeurism. For instance, the awful “Show her tits!” scene from the wraparound is shown repetitiously in the end credits to a dance beat (provided by The Death Set) as if it were (worst case scenario) originally purposed for titillation & not abject terror. A compromised tone/message or not, V/H/S is a serviceable horror anthology. It’s just one that can either feel like an example of reprehensible bro culture or an indictment of the very same thing depending on exactly which minute of the film you’re watching. I’d be a liar if I said it wasn’t often fascinating stuff or that the surface pleasures of the special effects & gore didn’t overpower my occasional moral objections with a few of its individual choices. I was by no means enthusiastic about V/H/S as a whole, but as far as generic, late night horror fodder goes, it’ll do.

-Brandon Ledet