Film/Video Discussion Thread - The Bear and Badger

I_R

Yeah, that was a real VHS staple. I never twigged it was Chrichton, never got mentioned when he became hot again.

Gremill

Parasite was the other tape that my 10yo self never had the guts to rent. Shad the shopkeeper would’ve rented it to me, but the risk of my mum finding an 18/X rated film was too much. I vividly remember this still from the back cover:

Think I dodged a disappointment bullet though, it’s got a whopping 11% on rotten tomatos.

g.man

Gremill wrote:

djchump wrote:

How Did This Get Made did an episode on it. It's up there with Runaway in the awful late 80s/early 90s shit scifi league table.

Runaway was rented instead. At least twice. Wonderfully shite.

Aye, hilarious shite that was.

g.man

There was also a thriller with Harvey Kettle and Johnny Rotten. Right lot of old pish that was.

Dark Soldier

Gremill wrote:

Shad the shopkeeper would’ve rented it to me

I.miss those days of being 7 and the guy who ran the VHS stall in the market near me.renting me I Spit On Your Grave, Texas Chainsaw, Sleepaway Camp etc. Wonderful days.

Reminded me of my gran taking an 8yo me.and my.cousin to the local VHS rental place when I stayed up.at Scotland. We had the choice of two films each so I got WWF Royal.Rumble, and Captain Flash, which she soon realised I'd actually picked Captain Flesh when she put it on in front of everybody and there were tits galore. Took her a good ten minutes to realise though. I'd never heard a religious woman swear as.much as she did when she dragged me back there.

Paul the sparky

Flesh Gordon?

Dark Soldier

Shit that was it. Drugs have not been kind to the memory.

Gremill

Heh. Yeah, my first forays into horror were through inappropriate VHS rentals. Evil Dead, the Romero zombie trilogy, the Thing. Good times.

This was another rental favourite:

g.man

tigersgogrrr

And there was me thinking Bad Taste was in bad taste.

Dark Soldier

This was the one for me (apart from Tremors):

Dark Soldier

Also, watching Blade again. That opening is still incredible.

Gremill

Dark Soldier wrote:

Also, watching Blade again. That opening is still incredible.

Yeah, watched that a few months back - it’s still a decent film with some great stuff in it.

davyK

Seeing those old VHS era films reminds me of a real mind-fuck of a film called Brain Damage.

Remember that one?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub0QVniKTmg

tin_robot

I finally got round to watching Synechdoche, New York last night. I'm a Kaufman fan, but had put it off as I was worried it might be, I don't know really, a bit much. Anyway, I do a sort of film club thing with some friends (because we're too lazy to read books) and this was the pick.

I could write a huge rambling essay, but I'll spare you for now. The quick version - in some ways my fears were right - I found it utterly overwhelming. It jabbed at all of my buttons simultaneously, and I found myself going to bed feeling like someone had just delivered a personal rebuke to every single thing I despise about myself, and a few I hadn't noticed yet. (Despite the film arguably being, at least in part, a warning against precisely such solipsistic self indulgence.)

Having largely got over myself this morning, I've found myself thinking about it a lot, and it is, I think, pretty damn extraordinary. A lot of the stuff I'd thought of as wilfully strange or surreal has sort of coalesced into ideas that make sense to me, irrespective of the original intention, or anyone else's take. (The burning house, the green stools, the shrinking paintings versus the expanding drama, Ellen etc etc.)

The ideas in it are ones Kaufman has mined both before and since (with some fairly explicit similarities to Anomalisa), but for all its tangential weirdness, I think this is also the Kaufman film that most clearly expresses a lot of them.

So yeah, I'd be lying if I said I enjoyed it, but it's a phenomenal piece, and I suspect it's going to be rattling around in my head for quite some time. I'm both glad I watched it, and kind of wished I hadn't.

Moot_Geeza

I went through most of the horror section in my local Ritz. Loads of guff, obviously, but a couple of gems stand out in the memory - Dolls (1987) and The Changeling (1980). Both will probably always make my horror to 20, just because. It's the only genre I can happily sit through regardless of quality.

g.man

Aye, the 80s really were the golden age of guff on VHS.

great memories

g.man

afgavinstan

Always remember the cover of Maniac Cop frightening the life outta me as a nipper.

Earliest memory of watching a shite VHS would probably be the ultra violent Fortress, starring don Christopher Lambert.

g.man

Maniac Cop. A true classic of the genre. Utter shite.

g.man

Actually, I'm sure we had the cover as a poster in the hall of a flat I shared back in the day...

Moot_Geeza

Moot_Geeza

Oh noes, now I'm entering the trailers wormhole.

g.man

nick_md

Driller Killer vhs cover yo

Moot_Geeza

davyK

Ah. Basket Case - same director as Brain Damage.

regmcfly

tin_robot wrote:

I finally got round justto watching Synechdoche, New York last night. I'm a Kaufman fan, but had put it off as I was worried it might be, I don't know really, a bit much. Anyway, I do a sort of film club thing with some friends (because we're too lazy to read books) and this was the pick.

I could write a huge rambling essay, but I'll spare you for now. The quick version - in some ways my fears were right - I found it utterly overwhelming. It jabbed at all of my buttons simultaneously, and I found myself going to bed feeling like someone had just delivered a personal rebuke to every single thing I despise about myself, and a few I hadn't noticed yet. (Despite the film arguably being, at least in part, a warning against precisely such solipsistic self indulgence.)

Having largely got over myself this morning, I've found myself thinking about it a lot, and it is, I think, pretty damn extraordinary. A lot of the stuff I'd thought of as wilfully strange or surreal has sort of coalesced into ideas that make sense to me, irrespective of the original intention, or anyone else's take. (The burning house, the green stools, the shrinking paintings versus the expanding drama, Ellen etc etc.)

The ideas in it are ones Kaufman has mined both before and since (with some fairly explicit similarities to Anomalisa), but for all its tangential weirdness, I think this is also the Kaufman film that most clearly expresses a lot of them.

So yeah, I'd be lying if I said I enjoyed it, but it's a phenomenal piece, and I suspect it's going to be rattling around in my head for quite some time. I'm both glad I watched it, and kind of wished I hadn't.

Tin, I shall both save your time and pimp myself by giving you an essay I wrote on Synecdoche.

enjoy? Maybe.

Lord_Griff

Braindead gave me nightmares.

Skondo

Fairly regularly a friend and I would rent a film on a Saturday, however we had slightly different tastes. He liked horror and comedy and I liked sci-fi, thrillers and comedy. Therefore we often compromised. I remember us being stuck one day and really didn’t know what to get, so we found a sci-fi comedy called Terrorvision.

Have a look on Youtube, it was bloody awful.

A couple of other friends enjoyed ninja films. American Ninja perhaps? I saw one and it’s one of the worst film I’ve ever seen, but nothing I’ve seen can compete with Stonehenge Apocalypse.

Gremill

davyK wrote:

Ah. Basket Case - same director as Brain Damage.

Also Frankenhooker.

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