Alamo Drafthouse Cinema is launching a publishing arm, with its debut title focusing on the significant (if overlooked) role played by VHS tapes in the evolution of film as a medium. Video historian Josh Schafer’s book, Stuck On VHS: A Visual History of Video Store Stickers, makes a case for film preservation from an unexpected angle. It showcases the small but distinctive messages and retrospective aesthetic that have been applied to artifacts any Gen-x cinephile will instantly recognize: former rental videocassettes. The book features essays by Schafer, who edits Lunchmeat, a magazine dedicated to the lore of endangered horror and genre movie titles like Enter the Devil, Sorority Slaughter and thousands more that gained cult followings via VHS tapes. The book’s design and photography, including three peel-off pages of VHS stickers, is by Jacky Lawrence. “90% of the movies from the silent era are gone forever,” Alamo Drafthouse founder...
- 1/6/2020
- by Dade Hayes
- Deadline Film + TV
Purveyors of Eurotrash should delight in the resuscitation of the obscure 1979 eroto-giallo Play Motel, directed by Mario Gariazzo under the pseudonym Roy Garrett (a director of twenty or so features best remembered for casting into a sea of Friedkin capitalizations with 1974’s The Sexorcist, aka L’Ossessa aka Enter the Devil). By this period, the provocative Italian subgenre was already well into its dog days, with imitators churning out murder mysteries imbibed with a healthy dose of pornographic soft-core elements. It would be unfair to rightly classify Gariazzo’s film as classic giallo, a muddled narrative cramped significantly by enough naked women to rival Jesus Franco.
The sleazy Play Motel is a den of infamous iniquity, and wealthy businessman Rinaldo Cortesi (Enzio Fisichella) hires the voluptuous Loredana (Marina Frajese) for a kinky round of S&M. The next day, explicit pictures are sent to his office via registered mail in...
The sleazy Play Motel is a den of infamous iniquity, and wealthy businessman Rinaldo Cortesi (Enzio Fisichella) hires the voluptuous Loredana (Marina Frajese) for a kinky round of S&M. The next day, explicit pictures are sent to his office via registered mail in...
- 8/26/2015
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Frankenstein’s Army
Written by Richard Raaphorst, Chris W. Mitchell, and Miguel Tejada-Flores
Directed by Richard Raaphorst
Netherlands/USA/Czech Republic, 2013
Frankenstein’s Army is the closest thing thus far to a live-action Bioshock adaptation. The second Frightfest feature to resemble a video game – albeit in a positive light – the film forgoes the tiresome trademarks of the found-footage format, its curious lens rendering the entire escapade a thrilling a first-person adventure. We begin among a troupe of Russian soldiers during World War II as they delve deeper from the outskirts of the forest and into a laboratory of mechanical nasties, eventually confronting the mad scientist responsible for their creation. All the while, the camera never skirts from its responsibility as a steadfast explorer.
Dr. Victor Frankenstein’s creativity – and by extension, that of director Richard Raaphorst – is truly something to behold. There’s a huge range of beasts in all shapes and sizes,...
Written by Richard Raaphorst, Chris W. Mitchell, and Miguel Tejada-Flores
Directed by Richard Raaphorst
Netherlands/USA/Czech Republic, 2013
Frankenstein’s Army is the closest thing thus far to a live-action Bioshock adaptation. The second Frightfest feature to resemble a video game – albeit in a positive light – the film forgoes the tiresome trademarks of the found-footage format, its curious lens rendering the entire escapade a thrilling a first-person adventure. We begin among a troupe of Russian soldiers during World War II as they delve deeper from the outskirts of the forest and into a laboratory of mechanical nasties, eventually confronting the mad scientist responsible for their creation. All the while, the camera never skirts from its responsibility as a steadfast explorer.
Dr. Victor Frankenstein’s creativity – and by extension, that of director Richard Raaphorst – is truly something to behold. There’s a huge range of beasts in all shapes and sizes,...
- 8/27/2013
- by Ed Doyle
- SoundOnSight
There’s kind of a thing with Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. Doesn’t it always seem like when Tim Burton sits down to make a movie, Johnny Depp plays a main character? There was a similar bond between director Nick Millard and Priscilla Alden. In this instance, Priscilla Alden—who opened up Millard’s alteration from softcore porn to horror cinema with the 1975 Criminally Insane—appears in many, many Millard films. She’s not alone. There are a bunch of other actors—only about four or five others, really—who appear constantly in every single horror movie Millard made up until Death Nurse 2 in 1988. To some, the fact that so few different actors just shows that Millard was a lazy filmmaker who didn’t have any friends. And to me, it shows that there’s something else: continuity. A shared universe. Something that goes beyond just one or...
- 7/12/2012
- by Adam Bezecny
- The Liberal Dead
Once upon a time, there was a man named Paul Kener. He was a director who was also a nature person, and he decided that he had a nature film in him. He started on what would become Wendigo. Then, something started to itch at him. It was a dreadful itch. He really wanted to have a scene in the movie where a monster kills a guy. So he shot it. Then, he decided he really liked how that turned out. So what would become Wendigo became Wendigo, and thus would begin a fantastic albeit obscure movie career. He went on to make a second movie, Savage Water, this time about a mysterious murderer who wipes out a party of whitewater rafters. Then, as spontaneously as his career began, it ended. Two whole films were made. He was never heard from again, though there are hushed legends that ride on shallow winds.
- 8/11/2011
- by Adam Bezecny
- The Liberal Dead
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