VHS Lives! SOME MOTHER'S SON (1996)

Back for one night only, it's the return of VHS LIVES!

Tying two of my interests together (i.e. Irish cinema and the joys of old VHS tapes) I decided to sit down and watch this tale of the Troubles, a controversial but critically acclaimed drama that remains unreleased on DVD to date.

Although co-written by Irish film stalwart Jim Sheridan, the directing duties are given to Terry George, probably best known for his Oscar-nominated film HOTEL RWANDA.

Like that movie, SOME MOTHER'S SON is another story ripped from the headlines about a man standing up for his principles. Slightly more controversially this time, that man is a young cellmate of Irish hunger striker Bobby Sands.

The star of the film however is Helen Mirren, the mother of the young man in question, who finds her life turned upside down when her son is imprisoned and ultimately prepares to die for a cause that she can't bring herself to fully support.

Films revolving around either the IRA or related subject matter have always been touchy in the UK and this one is no exception. Its standing in the UK however is probably not helped by the inclusion of a two-dimensional villain (the nasty Englishman out to crush the Irish rebels) played by Tom Hollander. I don't have a problem with making the Brits the bad guys, but making your bad guys at least vaguely human or three-dimensional would be better from a cinematic point of view. This guy may as well have walked straight out a pantomime.

In fact, acting is a big issue with this film. As the titular character, Aiden Gillen (star of the equally controversial TV series QUEER AS FOLK) does not convince. It's not that there's much wrong with his acting exactly. He just lacks screen presence and has a habit of being overshadowed by the rest of the cast. I can't fault him from a technical standpoint, he just doesn't register highly on the charisma scale.

On the other hand, actors such John Lynch (playing Sands) and Ciarin Hinds (Sinn Fein leader), who are usually so reliable, do the best with what they've got but are woefully underused (which might not have been such an issue had Gillen been able to carry more of the film).

Leave it then to Helen Mirren to rescue the film. As reliable as ever, Mirren is at the top of her game in the role of the worried mother who gradually becomes more involved in the trouble.

The film moves along at a reasonable pace and holds the attention throughout. You can't help but roll your eyes however as the Irish pipe music gets trotted out again. Visually, the film feels very small and looks rather drab - even allowing for the fact that I'm watching it on an old VHS tape - which has the unexpected benefit of really suiting the prison scenes but slightly reining in everything else.

What will be really interesting to see however is how the film holds up against the Bobby Sands biopic HUNGER, which has scooped various festival prizes and hits UK cinemas at the end of this month (I hope to catch it before then at Cork). If nothing else, the attention might at least awaken interest in a DVD release of SOME MOTHER'S SON, at which point I can finally bin this old tape.

Cirio H. Santiago

While the movie world was still mourning the passing of Paul Newman (and rightly so, he was a fine actor and a decent guy) another movie legend of an entirely different sort shuffled off this mortal coil with slightly less attention in the mainstream media. He was, however, still exceptionally successful in his own way and was probably a much larger influence on my movie watching habits than most Hollywood legends I could think of.

Filipino filmmaker Cirio H. Santiago was a purveyor of cheap, shameless, trashy exploitation films of the finest kind. While working with many people (including the legendary Roger Corman) and in many genres, he created a seemingly endless catalogue of cheap films that always put fun ahead of everything else, including credibility and coherence in a lot of cases. However, what he deserves special mention for, in my book at least, is his contribution to the world of post-apocalyptic movies, specifically the MAD MAX 2 rip-offs that filled the shelves of your local video rental stores in the early 80s.

Churning out a number of these films, often shamelessly re-using footage from his other films, he supplied the lucky viewer with a healthy dose of violence, nudity and abandoned quarries dressed up to look like post-nuclear landscapes. Sure, he contributed a lot to the Filipino film industry too, but to me he's just Mr Post-Apocalyptic. Plenty of directors entered this genre in the late 70s and early 80s but I don't think anyone put their mark on it quite as much as Mr Santiago.

I've mentioned this story before, but when I was a youngster with an interest in post-apocalyptic movies (albeit of a more mainstream variety) I found myself in a closing-down video rental shop in Harrogate in the north of England. Despite the fact that there were barely a dozen tapes left in the entire shop, I still bought a couple, including Santiago's WHEELS OF FIRE. Sure, I was clearly too young to be watching it (one of the stills on the back cover was of a helpless blonde with breasts exposed, tied to the bonnet of a souped up car), but it was post-apocalyptic so I had to have it.

My eyes were opened to a world of cinematic pleasure. While I was familiar with the films that were being ripped off, I had no idea that such rip-offs existed, especially not in such numbers. This was the film that turned me on to the cheap MAD MAX 2 rip-off post-apocalyptic movie, a very particular kind of movie (usually made by Filipinos or Italians) that I have since spent my life collecting old VHS tapes of.

It has become an obsession, but one that has brought me no end of exploitation movie joy - and for that, I have to thank Cirio H. Santiago, the Filipino master of post-apocalyptic cinema. May he rest in peace.

Tellingly, several other blogs that I read regularly have also reported on his passing, so click on these links to read about Santiago at Video Watchblog, Johnny LaRue's Crane Shot, Quiet Earth and Post-Apocalypse. And if you're still hungry for more, go and search blogs via Google for the last week or so and marvel at his influence.

At some point in the near future I'll have to dig out my old tapes and do a proper tribute, but in the meantime, the Freakpit salutes Cirio H. Santiago.

VHS Lives! CHE!

Ah, look at that picture, doesn't it just make you misty? Well, okay, it also looks a bit misty itself, but it didn't look that blurred on my camera. Honest. Anyway, these are the five tapes I've been using to relive the VHS glory days with you this week, with today's oddity at the front. And yes, I realise I forgot to post it yesterday. Again. Sorry.

This last film (for the moment) in my VHS series is the one film out of all of them that I actually went out of my way to track down, due to its almost legendary status. In fact, the tape I eventually managed to get my hands on is an old pre-cert copy from 25 years ago, which cost me about... well, more than I should have paid for it anyway but what's eBay for if not for wasting money on rubbish. (For those of you who don't know about "pre-certs" and such things, that means it predates the Video Recording Act 1984, after which all videos had to carry a BBFC certificate)

Imagine if you will, a film with the following talent involved. It was directed in 1969 by Richard Fleischer. It was co-written by Michael Wilson. It had music by Lalo Schifrin. It co-starred Omar Sharif and Jack Palance. Sounds quite promising, doesn't it?

Well let's not forget that none of the above were infallible. Let's now say that it starred Omar Sharif and Jack Palance... as Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. That's right, Jack Palance as Fidel Castro. I am not making this up.

This bio-pic of Guevara tends to be talked about more than seen - it's rarely on TV (I've certainly never seen it aired) and it remains unavailable on DVD, and probably will be for the foreseeable future. It's become almost mythical and, to be totally honest, it's probably better that it stays that way.

For you see, it's a pretty bad film. And yet, it's not quite so bad that it's good. It's just bad. It begins with Che's death in Bolivia at the hands of the US government, then goes back and examines his time with Castro and his quest to free South Americans that eventually ended up with the aforementioned assassination.

This scattershot approach would seem to lend itself to covering a lot of territory but in truth it covers very little but seems to take an age to do so. Indeed, the box for my VHS release states 113 minutes in length, yet it only lasts for 93 minutes. I can only assume the extra 20 minutes is a result of the fact that it feels that long.

Sharif is neither bad nor good in the role and in the end, despite small appearances by the likes of Woody Strode and Sid Haig or the strange switch to documentary-style interviews, the only real highlight is provided by Palance.

Every time Palance is on screen, he chews up the scenery, spits it out, then chews it up again - in other words, it's a hammy performance worthy of Palance at his enjoyable best. His Castro comes off as a mixture of the real Castro and the Castro you'd expect if he was being played by an escaped lunatic. It's ironic that during the film it's supposed to be Che that has the health problems and yet it's Palance who throws his arms around and launches into crazed spasms that suggest it's really he who is having a fit.

All in all, the film is not good enough to recommend for any reason but not as bad as legend would suggest. It's certainly a curiosity though, and one that I advise you to keep an eye out for in the TV listings and second hand shops - because it really doesn't look like Fox will be dusting it down for a DVD release any time soon.

VHS Lives! ONE ON TOP OF THE OTHER (1969)

Today's VHS release may, I suspect, be a bootleg. Please don't call the police, I didn't know at the time. Okay, I might have suspected, but come on, I really wanted to see it. The tape just has a plain white label with ONE ON TOP OF THE OTHER IN ENGLISH printed on it, while the box looks like a colour copy of a rental release. If it's an official release, it's not a very impressive one.

But on to the film. If you read the previous entries in this VHS Lives series, you'll know that I was promising another Marisa Mell appearance (that's her above). This is it. Once again there's sleaze galore but in a surprisingly classy cult movie that marked the beginning of a sustained period of quality movies by legendary Italian cult cinema maestro Lucio Fulci.

Although Fulci is most famous for his gore films, such as ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS, THE BEYOND and HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY, this one is more of a Hitchcock-style thriller. In fact, if there's one film it owes a real debt to, it would be VERTIGO. That's not to say that this is in the same league as Hitch - it isn't - but it is a highly competent and taut thriller that proves what all of his fans (including me) always knew. Fulci was more than just a cheap hack with a gore fetish.

That's not to say that it's kiddy-friendly by any means. Aside from the storyline being rather complex - Jean Sorel is the young man who becomes involved with a stripper (Mell) who resembles his dead wife - there are a lot of, er, "adult situations" and the goremeister does at least manage to get one decomposing corpse in. Sleazy women, rotting bodies... actually, maybe it's a more typical Fulci movie than I thought.

To say much more would be to risk spoiling it for you. Suffice to say it's a tightly-directed thriller with plenty of twists, including a great unexpected ending, and also happens to boast a rather wonderful swinging score by Riz Ortolani, the Italian composer responsible for setting MONDO CANE and CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST to music.

The film has had a tricky history due to censorship and alternate cuts floating around over the years and so it's hard to say which version is definitive, if any. The good news however, especially for folks wishing to replace their VHS copies, is that Severin Films in the USA have just released a 2-disc region-free DVD version (the second disc in the set being a copy of Ortolani's score) which finally gives us a wonderfully remastered widescreen copy of the film, looking better than it ever has before. Again, it's not necessarily the complete or definitive version, but it does boast more of Mell (though not necessarily more clothing) and will certainly keep fans of the film happy.

And yes, I have bought a copy (this alternate cut now being released under the title PERVERSION STORY - that's where I took the above picture from, which is why it's rather nicer than VHS).

So now I can bin my possibly shady copy and you don't need to call the police after all.

The VHS marathon concludes tomorrow!

VHS Lives! HUMANOID WOMAN (1981)

The next tape from the pile is HUMANOID WOMAN. This began life as a Russian science fiction film (CHEREZ TERNII K ZVYOZDAM - difficult to say, but cracker of a score at Scrabble) before someone decided it would be nice to re-edit it, dub it into English and release it under the aforementioned new moniker. This is a UK release on the Xtasy label and it's not the first time they've released such cheeky stuff. When some episodes of Japanese PLANET OF THE APES rip-off SARU NO GUNDAN got dubbed and re-edited into the movie-length TIME OF THE APES, it was those good folks at Xtasy who released that one too. If it wasn't stuck at the bottom of a pile of old tapes in a cupboard somewhere, you'd probably have been hearing about it this week.

But back to HUMANOID WOMAN. I found this one for a quid in a charity shop in Kirkcaldy on a day off work - nobody can say I didn't make constructive use of my time. Actually, I think it may have been when I took the day off for last year's Oscars. But anyway, I'm digressing again.

The reasons I bought it? Well for one thing it was an old sci-fi film that I'd never heard of. Secondly, it had a weird looking guy on the cover who looked quite menacing which, combined with the 18 certificate, made it seem quite promising. The third and final reason was that there was no way I could resist a film whose sleeve featured the tagline "ZOMBIE BEAUTY IN SPACE MASSACRE".

As it turns out, it's not as dark as I'd anticipated. In fact, it's really rather silly. Now I'm honest enough to admit that the film is not in its original form and certainly the dubbing alone would make even the greatest film seem a tad sillier. However, when you see things like a household robot that looks like a cross between a robot and a cake (but, for some reason, with the feet of an elephant) you can't help but wonder if the film was ever serious in any language. My doubts were not eased by the sight of someone crashing through a glass wall and leaving their exact outline, cartoon-style, where they passed through it.

But I'm getting ahead of myself; I suspect you'd like to know a bit about the story. Well, it starts off with some astronauts, one of whom has the best beard in history, coming across a space station inhabited by a strange - wait for it - humanoid woman. The discovery is laced with some pretty psychedelic colouring, but I couldn't work out if that was some kind of visual trickery playing tribute to classic Russian sci-fi flick SOLARIS or if it was just that my tape has gone a bit dodgy with age.

Anyway, it turns out that the woman's some kind of advanced being from the planet Dessa. Advanced, but servile. So much so, in fact, that one of the men who meets her declares in all seriousness that since she offers total obedience, she'd be the perfect wife. Ah, they don't make them like this anymore.

So basically there's this humanoid clone thing who is really advanced but takes orders from some evil guy on Dessa. The evil orange-looking guy looks a bit like Richard Harris, or rather what Richard Harris would look like if he was made out of marmalade.

I'd like to tell you more but I hastily scribbled down some notes while watching it ages ago, and now I can't remember what they mean. There's something about a record player, some gas masks and an evil dwarf in a leather jacket. Anyway, this combination of orangey evil men, humanoid women, astronauts, a pint size Fonz and also some mutants who are a bit like those ones from BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES all culminates in a fun romp to the post-apocalyptic ruins of Dessa and a totally barmy finale combined with some fantastic metaphorical imagery.

I guess it's probably better if you just go and watch it for yourself. Shouldn't be too hard - that's what eBay's for.

The VHS appreciation marathon continues tomorrow!

VHS Lives! DIARY OF AN EROTIC MURDERESS (1974)

With a title like that, you just know this film is crying out for a DVD release but so far no such luck. Given the pedigree of some of the talent involved though, it's probably only a matter of time before some enterprising DVD company adds it to their Euro-cult slate though.

Like yesterday's DR BLACK, MR HYDE (okay, it was actually two days ago - sorry), this tape is yet another NTSC copy from the USA (released, appropriately enough, by the wonderful people at Something Weird Video - a favourite company of mine), although the film is Italian/Spanish in origin.

The story concerns an old man (Richard Conte) who hires a beautiful young woman (Marisa Mell) to look after his son (Anthony Steffen). Just to make things more interesting though, the woman secretly seduces the son, the son happens to be mad, and the old guy happens to be very rich, something that the young woman is banking on.

It's got a decent cast but the stars are undoubtedly Mell and Steffen.

Steffen was the star of numerous cult Italian movies, particularly spaghetti westerns (yes, I'm a fan) but also, notably, THE NIGHT EVELYN CAME OUT OF THE GRAVE. I mention this film in particular because, with its blend of insanity, sleaze, a big house, a sinister woman, and a seriously mind-bending story, it's a very similar movie to this one.

Mell, a favourite of mine, has also starred in several cult European movies. Most notably she appeared in Mario Bava's classic comic caper DANGER: DIABOLIK!, undoubtedly one of the main inspirations for the AUSTIN POWERS movies. She has also graced such films as BEN AND CHARLIE (a rubbish spaghetti western which improved for the few minutes she was on screen) and several other cult classics which, rather annoyingly, I've just forgotten. Well, except for one other one, but I'll not mention that because it's going to feature in this series.

Sinister though Mell's character may be, you can almost forgive some of her actions given that she is systematically mistreated at least once by every man in the film. It almost makes it acceptable that her sole mission seems to be to get rich off the suffering of men.

I already mentioned the EVELYN connection, and it's fair to say there's a similar kind of vibe to YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY, another Euro-cult classic that boasts a suitably crazy title and totally insane storyline. The story this time round involves sex, murder, the corpses of the Templar Knights (seriously) and yes, even the titular diary, all of which brew away in a delightful cauldron of Eurosleaze, served with a side order of lounge-tastic "oooh aaaah" music and garnished with a fantastically nutty ending. Marvellous.

Oh yeah, and one more thing I just remembered. BEAST WITH A GUN. That's another cult Italian movie that Marisa Mell appeared in. Just in case you were wondering.

More VHS goodness tomorrow!

VHS Lives! DR BLACK, MR HYDE (1976)

A MONSTER HE COULD NOT CONTROL

HAD TAKEN OVER HIS VERY SOUL!

A SCREAMIN' DEMON RAGES INSIDE,

TURNING HIM INTO MR HYDE!

SUPER-STRONG! SUPERNATURAL! SUPERBAD!

INDESTRUCTIBLE! NOTHING CAN STOP HIM!

NOT BOMBS, BULLETS OR BULLDOZERS!

God, I love blaxploitation trailer voiceovers. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

It's hard to believe that in this technological age where films can be bought on DVD, HD-DVD, downloaded from the web or wired directly into your brain (okay, I made that last one up), there are still some folks out there who buy VHS tapes. I'm not talking about people who haven't joined this modern age, nor about people who refuse to - I'm talking about people like me who still find great delight in dredging up some long-forgotten classic for a quid in a jumble sale or who spend more money than they would normally spend on a new DVD buying an old cassette of something that hasn't seen the light of day since its first release.

For you see, and it'll be no surprise given some of the obscurities I've discussed here, there are still some films that have never seen the light of day on DVD and probably never will. This could be because they're terrible and there's no demand for them, it could be because there are complicated rights issues, it could be because nobody's that bothered... there are a number of reasons, and it's because of things like that that people like me occasionally still buy the odd tape. Sure, it would be nice to have some digitally remastered DVD or have the entire film in pill form (okay, I made that one up too) but there's something satisfying about coming across some VHS obscurity that would have otherwise slipped you by.

And that's the reason for today's post. Just as I've got another semi-regular series devoted to "gobsmacking cinema" and have done the occasional marathon of similarly-themed movies, I'm now instigating a new series devoted to my beloved collection of old (or should that be odd) VHS tapes.

First up is a wacky blaxploitation film from, of course, the 1970s. Just to really emphasise the obscurity, this one is not only a rather old VHS tape, it's an NTSC release from the US. Was it worth tracking down? Absolutely.

The title reels you in straight away. DR BLACK, MR HYDE is, as you'd expect, a black remake of the classic Jekyll/Hyde story. Or at least it sort of is. Actually, it's more like that's the starting point and then it veers off into other storylines altogether.

DON'T GIVE HIM NO SASS OR HE'LL KICK YO' ASS!

JUMP BACK, JACK, OR YOUR SKULL IS CRACKED!

I've long been a fan of 70s blaxploitation films, but two of my favourite aspects are the horror films and the black remakes of other films, so naturally the black remakes of classic horror tales come pretty high up my list. There are loads of them - BLACULA, BLACKENSTEIN, etc. - but now that I think about it, there are actually so many that I could write another series of blog entries just about them. So, at some future date, I will. Now it's back to DR BLACK, MR HYDE.

A great title has always been a key to success for exploitation films, regardless of how inaccurate they might be, and this one is no different. On the one hand, the doctor in the film (played by Bernie Casey) isn't actually called Black for a start. But that's not important - what I do love about the title is the fact that on some releases it was retitled DR BLACK, MR WHITE. How great is that? It really emphasises the fact that there's nothing more evil that a black man can turn into than a white man. That might sound a little daft today, but in the world of blaxploitation, it's fair game since white guys are nearly always the bad guys.

It's also appropriate not just in name but in the fact that he does turn into an evil white man. Not a proper played-by-a-white-guy white man though - nope, it's just Bernie Casey in white powder make-up, sort of like the old black and white minstrels in reverse. The funny thing is that the film actually has a make-up credit for Stan Winston, the man who would later find fame as one of the kings of make-up and special effects, crafting the iconic creations that featured in such blockbusters as JURASSIC PARK.

THERE'S A HEEL BEHIND THE WHEELWHEN HYDE TAKES HIS RIDE!

NO MAN CAN SURVIVE WHEN HE SHIFTS INTO DRIVE!

IT AIN'T NO JIVE TRYIN' TO STAY ALIVE!

The thing about the whited-up Bernie Casey though is that it makes him rather reminiscent of the villains in THE OMEGA MAN, one of whom was a black man made up with white make-up, and the comparison isn't helped by having the love interest played by THE OMEGA MAN's Rosalind Cash.

What of the story, I hear you ask?

Well, aside from the obvious bit about a doctor who takes a serum that turns him into a blood-crazed reverse-minstrel, there's a bunch of other stuff about his mother and his desire to murder prostitutes. What's a shame about this is that they could have split the story into two films and easily come up with another prostitute-murdering horror bonanza and called it BLACK THE RIPPER. See what I did there?

(So pleased with myself was I for coming up with that that I went off to do some research - turns out that there was a movie called BLACK THE RIPPER but, aside from one advert in a magazine, there isn't actually any evidence it ever existed.)

On top of the unminstrelising of Casey and the slashing of prostitutes, the story adds one more familiar element when, during the finale, Casey's monster climbs up that wirey tower thing in Watts (sorry, I'm too ignorant to know what it's called) and is eventually shot down. Not sure why he thought it was a good idea to try that, but it means that the film eventually moves from Jekyll and Hyde into Jack the Ripper before morphing into a black take on KING KONG at the finale. It's all very strange.

Everything else you'd expect from a blaxploitation movie is there - the 70s fashion, the 70s dialogue, the bad acting (except perhaps for Casey, whose performance treads a very thin line between touching and pantomime). In other words, it's a whole lot of fun and deserves a decent DVD release immediately. I, and the half-dozen other people who are interested, would be very grateful.

SHOT FULL OF LEAD, AND HE STILL AIN'T DEAD!

Join me tomorrow (yes, that's right, I'm on a roll) when I'll be uncovering another tape from the VHS pile!