Obsession: A Taste For Fear

Obsession: A Taste For Fear

Italy - 1988

Director - Piccio Raffanini

Imperial Entertainment Corp., 1989, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 30 minutes

Some of my favorite future-sci-fi movies are the ones set in a year which, by the time I see the film, has already passed. I just love laughing at vintage dreams. Even post-apocalyptic films usually do the same thing. They may be dystopian but usually they are typified by fantastic technology and absurd fashion, strange languages. But my, things sure didn’t end up nearly as awesome as they thought they would. Still you can’t help but sympathize with the poor optimistic suckers. Just like we all often do, these films imagined and hoped for something different and better than what they had. Most of them did anyway. There was one era which was so narcissistic that it didn’t really look forward for the future so much as in the mirror.

It is hard to see it now except in film because that is such an all encompassing medium. But if movies are any kind of cultural barometer, the 80’s was so convinced, so all fired sure that the it was the raddest that stuff would ever get, that it cocieved a future that looked, sounded and acted just like itself. Obsession: A Taste For Fear takes this sort of instantaneous self-adoration to new circular depths. It starts with a cookie-cutter thriller/Giallo plot in which young women keep turning up dead and at one time or another everyone is a suspect. Australian actress Virginia Hey stars as Diane, a snotty fashion photographer whose ex-husband George makes abstract video porn. Both call their work “art” presumably because it features boobs, neon and computer screens; all sure to be popular in the future. Soon, their shared models begin to get killed off, their deaths filmed in videos that look just like Diane’s photos and George’s pornos. And just like Obsession: A Taste for Fear. Of course, this makes both of them prime suspects and a surly cop chases them around between scenes of harshly-lit softcore and second-string period hits on the soundtrack. Finally Diane’s gay assistant is revealed to be the killer and Diane herself retreats cathartically into her pornographer Ex’s reassuring grasp. Ladies and gay men take note; the future may remain less than liberatory.

Wow, I honestly don’t know if I can compute that. If the future is exactly like right now how do we know it’s even the future? Truth be told, Obsession does have an odd looking car in one scene and I heard a rumor about a ray-gun somewhere. There are a few computers that clack and bleep so that’s peripherally, hintingly supposed to be the future I guess. What gave it all away though was the overwhelming sense that what was happening on screen, and on the screens on screen, and on screens on screens on screen, was the most significant and important thing that could happen. It was the feeling of imminence exuded like last night’s cocaine from every solipsistic pore of Obsession that made it an exercise in self abuse. It’s the sort of future that looks great in everything except the rear-view mirror.

The Undefeated

The Undefeated

United States - 1969

Director - Andrew V. McLaglen

Key Video, 1988, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 59 minutes

The Searchers

The Searchers

United States - 1956

Director - John Ford

Warner Home Video, VHS 1988

Run Time - 1 hour, 59 minutes

Platoon on NES

Alright, I guess I'm pretty naive when it comes to video games. I stopped keeping up after about 1994, so there's a lot out there that I don't know about. But this one takes the cake.

Platoon the fucking video game??? It's not so much that they would make a literal game out of village search and destroy missions, but that they would do it in 1988. I don't care that kids are playing it, but that their parents who would have been of the 'Nam generation were buying it! Well, once it's a movie I guess it isn't "real" anymore. After all, the word Vietnam isn't used anywhere on the box or instruction booklet.

Saturn 3

Saturn 3

United Kingdom – 1980

Director – Stanley Donen

CBS/FOX Home Video, 1987, VHS

Run Time – 1 hour 28 minutes 

Until my friend laid this old tape in my hands I had never heard of Saturn 3. That isn’t saying much I suppose, but he hadn’t either, and we are both big fans of robot oriented space-fiction so it was a pleasant surprise. Before watching the film I did a little research and discovered some interesting stuff. Despite not initially wanting to write extensively about what is a fairly mainstream film, after watching I was inspired to say something about it its relationship to space-fi in general.

When it was released, Saturn 3 appears to have received generally negative reviews, and remarkably, continues to do so . Not surprisingly these predominantly appear to stem from unfavorable comparison to Star Wars, which was released just a few years before. Although not mentioned in anything I read, I think it also owes a large debt to Kubrick’s 2001 in both overall plot, and Elmer Bernstein's score. But even if it’s not exceedingly original, Saturn 3 does a damned good job of wearing it’s pedigree on its sleeve.

The important thing to remember about Star Wars, especially because it has compounded its cultural significance in the last decade, is that it wasn’t very creative. As I’ve said before, it’s an entertaining movie, but the plot as we know is a generic and predictable white hero myth. Saturn 3 is not as epic or inspiring than its predecessor, but neither is it any less creative. What was so remarkable about Star Wars (and this is what I think most people find so endearing about it) was the visual design. Saturn 3 interestingly enough, was written and (initially) directed by John Barry, the same man responsible for the look of Star Wars.

The story itself centers around Adam (Kirk Douglas) and Alex (Farah Fawcet) on one of Saturn’s moons where they operate a hydroponic farm but mostly shag. When another astronaut, Benson (Harvey Keitel) arrives at their secluded love nest, they soon discover that he and his robot are not on a mission of peace. Compelling? Perhaps not, but visually everything in this movie, from the spacesuits to the ships clicks. The thing that really sells it for me is the robot, “Hector”, an eight foot tall machine powered by a giant tube of vat-grown human-fetus brains. The concept is pretty twisted if you think about it, and the way in which Hector takes on the sociopathic personality of its programmer Benson is particularly well conceived.

I’ve always cushioned my disappointment with the termination of sci-fi cinema’s great sagas with a simple philosophy; If the human geography of space has been expanded as much as my favorite films claim, then it is quite possible that each space-fiction film (of a nominally similar quality) merely represents another local facet in the same broad story. In that sense, there is no “end” to what I call the “Space-Fi Narrative Continuum”*. Garnished with moments of genuine intelligence and clothed in awesome visuals, Saturn 3 definitely makes the cut.

*In the future I'll refer to qualifying films under this label. Previously reviewed films which qualify have been back referenced.

 This Japanese poster is from Movie Outlaw

Rental Store - Fair Market

This label graces the wondrous and wearying film Playroom.

Salt N Pepa: A Blitz of Hits

Salt N Pepa: A Blitz of Hits

United States - 1990

Director - Various

Next Plateau Video, 1990, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 10 minutes

If you grew up in the 90's you couldn't miss Salt N Pepa, hell, I lived in the boonies and they were big even there. Actually, they already had three albums out by 1990, but that's when they really got big. This video more or less corresponds with the greatest hits album of the same name released at the same time.

What fascinates me most now is the aesthetic of that era; the clothing certainly, but the design on this box captures it fairly well. The solid flat colors in boxy shapes, beefy typefaces with randomly colored letters. Wow, that will always be a formative part of my life, and as tacky as it looks now I can't help but love it, just a little.

Double Team

Double Team

United States - 1997

Director - Hark Tsui

Columbia Pictures Home Video, 1997, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 33 minutes

Followers of Hong Kong cinema (of which I am only peripherally) will recognize the name Hark Tsui as that behind a number of epic and popular Chinese films. As a director, producer and actor he has been prolific and successful at re-envisioning the Chinese cinema. Although not his first United Statesian release, Double Team was definitely his worst. Well to tell the truth, I haven't seen his other Van Damme picture, Knock Off, co-starring Rob Schneider, but it sounds better already. Amazingly they both had theatrical releases.

The Killing Fields

The Killing Fields

United Kingdom - 1984

Director - Roland Joffe

Warner Home Video, 1986, VHS

Run Time - 2 hours, 22 minutes

As a longtime student of the conflicts in Southeast Asia, this is among my favorite films on the subject. Although only peripherally related to Vietnam, it is an integral part in the overall history of the region. Not only is The Killing Fields really well acted, (regardless of anything else he has done or will do I have eminent respect for Sam Waterson because of this movie), but it is acted by an actual survivor of the brutal purges, the Killing Fields of Cambodia; Dr. Haing S. Ngor, one of only two non-actors to win an Oscar. Ngor went on to act in a number of films, usually about Vietnam, only to be murdered on the streets of Los Angeles in 1996.

A Long Month

Wow, it's been a long and trying month.

I just moved from my house of seven years into a new apartment here in Seattle. In the process I had to disinter all of the VHS tapes and DVDs that had gradually encrusted the place and re-organize them all in a new unfamiliar space. It took almost 2 weeks to get everything set up and operating so that I could draw and watch movies again. Without those two activities I quickly become a neurotic misanthrope as my partner will attest.

Now we're back in action, although the boxes are sort of still acting as furniture. With luck there are a lot of new things coming at Lost Video Archive. If you've been following lately you'll have noticed some extra reviews over at Paracinema, more to come. I'm working on a larger project similar to that. More stuff over at Illogical Contraption, and for those of you who remember Blair Week and Kotto Week, it's soon time for a new installment!

And so thanks for (unwittingly) bearing with me as I reorganized my life. And now back to our regularly scheduled program.

Striptease Murder Case

Striptease Murder Case

United States - 1950

Director - Hugh Prince
 

Nature's Sweethearts

Nature's Sweethearts

United States - 1963

Director - Larry Wolk

What exploitation enthusiast can forget those laughably innocent days of the nudist camp film?!