The venerable Paul Corupe is one hell of a dedicated cinephile. He writes about movies for RUE MORGUE magazine, Fantasia Festival's official webzine SPECTACULAR OPTICAL and his own site, CANUXPLOITATION (their 'Summer of VHS' series is HIGHLY recommended!).
Follow him on Twitter @Paulcorupe.
Follow him on Twitter @Paulcorupe.
Siege (1983)
A fictional story extrapolated from a real police labour strike on Canada's
east coast, this fascinating and surprisingly progressive thriller has a
band of citizens trying to hold off a force of vigilante cops who have
forced them to defend themselves inside an apartment complex. Pinned
down by snipers, the group—which includes a pair of blind teens, a
soldier of fortune and a gay man targeted by the police—start to craft
their own homemade weapons and prepare for war. A tense, top-notch
suspense film that makes the best of a modest budget, Siege is
one of the best crafted Canadian genre films of the 1980s, a movie that
builds to a crescendo of violence but also speaks out against police
brutality and homophobia. Siege received a handful of home video
releases over the years, including Media's VHS tape packaged under the
film's alternate title, Self Defense, but still has not suited up for the digital age.
Maybe
not a “gem” in the strictest sense but undeniably the crown jewel of my
modest VHS collection, this interesting little horror spoof stars
exotic beauty Nai Bonet, a belly dancer turned actress who appeared in
handful of exploitation films in the 1970s. Bonet also produced and
wrote the film that posits her as the granddaughter of Dracula, a Club
54-era neckbiter who emigrates fromTransylvania to Manhattan to
vamp it up with a well-stocked supporting cast including John
Carradine, Yvonne De Carlo, Brother Theodore and Sy Richardson as a
badass vampire pimp. One of a handful of similar Dracula take-offs
released at the time, along with Vampire Hookers and Old Dracula,
it's a mostly amusing romp that features endless disco dancing scenes
and an extended nude bath sequence—reportedly the reason that Bonet has
declined to have the film re-released in the last 30 years since its
debut as a Media Home Entertainment VHS tape.
Some
people are surprised to learn that my personal favourite Canadian film
isn’t an exploitation movie, but rather this post-modern spin on
mid-century B-cinema that captivated me as a kid and continues to
impress me to this day. Writer/director John Paizs also plays Steven
Penny, a frustrated screenwriter of “colour crime movies” who can only
think of the beginning and ending of scripts until he receives the help
of his landlord’s daughter. Mining 1950s iconography, the film boasts an
intentionally flat, Technicolor look and a strong graphic design
sensibility as it interweaves fragments from Steven’s absurd unmade
films, which feature a tragic Elvis impersonator, murderous Amway
salespeople and masochistic self-help gurus, all in the staccato style
of 1940s movie trailers. But it’s more than just a goof on the optimism
of post-war prosperity and the frustration of writer’s block—there’s
also a sweet emotional core to the film. Originally released on VHS by
Norstar Home Video, this landmark Canadian film—I consider it the finest
comedy ever made in the Great White North—hasn’t made the jump to DVD,
neglected by a clueless rights holder.
As
I already established in my earlier list of best “bad” movies I love,
there’s few things I enjoy more than a film that makes good on its
simplistically moronic concept. I was sold on Dick Maas’ Dutch horror
oddity about a killer elevator the moment I saw the Media VHS box art—a
crudely drawn man with his head stuck between an elevator’s doors with
the tagline, “Take the Stairs, Take the Stairs…For God’s Sake Take the
Stairs!!!” Anyone picking up this release probably didn’t expect much
more than the usual sleazy schlock, butMaas actually
manages some tangible atmosphere and decent death scenes as a repairman
and a female journalist uncover a nefarious corporate plot that is
killing people. Of course it helps that he doesn’t take things too
seriously either. Maas remade the film in English in 2001 as The Shaft, but this is the real deal, VHS only-style. Going up!
Director Larry Yust followed up one of my favourite unknown blaxploitation films, 1972’sTrick Baby,
with this unique horror film about pensioners who are about to be
evicted out of their apartments by an unscrupulous landlord. Banding
together, they start sabotaging a nearby development, killing the
construction workers and developers that have targeted their building
next. Featuring gritty 1970s location work and a cast of aged character
actors, it’s a visceral horror film with a social conscious that turns
on its wickedly dark sense of humour—a film that’s comparable to minor
cult items like Private Parts and The Wrong Box but has
yet to reach the same notoriety. Released on VHS by Embassy in 1984,
it’s easy to see why the film is still not well known—the plain looking
box art only features a portrait of actress Frances Fuller and the
tagline, “A Murder a Day Keeps the Landlord Away!”, which probably
didn’t draw in any of the horror fans that would have appreciated it
most.
1 comment:
Hi Paul. Nice little piece. Makes me very nostalgic for my big tattered VHS boxes. I still hang on to the rare ones. Of the five I only have Crime Wave. But I'll have to go through my collection to see what's rare. I have a boxless original of The House with the Yellow Carpet, which is pretty rare.
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