Talk of the Town

VCII boxes have these cool double side flaps, but they are a bit awkward to scan

Talk of the Town: Shows 1 and 2

United States - 1982

Director - Doug Raymond

VCII Incorporated, 1983/'84, VHS

Run Time - 1 horrific hour per show

You will hear these jokes over and over

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The fiction of time travel plays on idealized notions of history and historical moments. It is a fantasy that needs temporal distance, because the actual experience of those moments we would like to visit were really just as mundane as the ones we’re stuck in now. Given the choice a lot of people would probably choose to travel to the 40’s or the 1920’s or something even older, something with “heroism” or “style”. I would go back into the bad old days of the late 70’s and early 80’s. That era appeals to me because through the fog of time and oversimplification it looks like a badly dressed and desperate exercise in cheap self-indulgence. It appears to be a cultural void, without direction or identity, and it is because of this lack of any redeeming qualities that it appears, from this distance to have been tackier, louder, and shallower than anything before or since. Talk of the Town is exactly the sort of eye-popping time travel experience I’ve always wanted to take.

Hostess with mostest makeup.

Produced by VCX, one of video porn’s oldest names and distributed by their in-house non-porn label VCII, Talk of the Town is a procession of desperate posturing set to the worst musical genre (and a bad example at that) to have ever been shat out the sour infected anus of American pop culture. The guests are the dregs, the tail-draggingest end-throes of late70’s entertainment culture at its diveyest. Co-host Pat Cooper, Murray Langston and Rip Taylor provide a fine cross section of the sleaziest in male interpretation of the Aquarian sexual liberation ethic. Hostess Jaye P. Morgan’s repeated crowing about the “unscripted and uncensored” nature of the show (read off of cue cards) gives her male guests in both episodes license to “liberate” and openly express their ever present lecherous objectification.

The classy nicotine stained lingerie of the Talk of the Town Showgirls

Fortunately, things rarely go as planned in Vegas, and since their jokes have been so mind numbingly shitty up to this point, the most amusing part of this exercise in stamina is watching it self destruct. VCX was apparently unaware of the profound contradiction in hiring both boorish male comics and self-identified feminists to have a casual “adult” chat. In the first show, like hungry dogs chewing at their leashes in the presence of raw meat, the men unleash steady stream of childish innuendoes as soon as 23 year old Linda Blair walks on stage. As soon as adult film star Samantha Fox arrives however, the dick jokes of a few minutes ago transform instantly into embarrassed questions about “thingies” and “doing it”. They talk a big game but blood rushes back to their heads when confronted with a nonplussed and confident woman. Whoa, it turns out that liberation is actually pretty intimidating. The second show’s guests include Redd Foxx, Larry Storch and Jack Carter who in good form generally pour on the vitriol until the godmother of feminist comedy Rusty Warren arrives. On second thought maybe VCX did know what they were doing. By putting these women on last we have to consume some forty five minutes of manly non-comedy before the women arrive to get talked over by earlier guests and then cut short by time constraints.

One of the appealing things about time travel fantasies is the unstated and often unacknowledged assumption that one would be so much smarter than those coarse primitive bastards back then. But this is of course predicated on our present ability to know what they did right or wrong and pick it apart. Hindsight is 20/20 after all, and that’s what makes history and laughing at old and/or dead people so much fun. Talk of the Town is imminently mockable, from Jaye P. Morgan’s embalming makeup to the profoundly tacky ranch-style lingerie fashion show that staggers into the middle of both episodes. I only hope that some yet to be born future asshole has the spare time point out how full of shit I will have been.

Shut the fuck up Pat Cooper! SHUT UP!

One of the things I like about VCII tapes is the label on the cassette itself:

VCII had two logos at the beginning of their tapes. This clip is courtesy of LogicSmash

Rental Store - Crazy Mike's Video

Godzilla: Monster of Monsters NES

Who knew? Not me anyway. My partner, witnessing my recent renewed interest in Kaiju picked this up for me at the retro game store.

Godzilla vs. Megalon

Godzilla vs. Megalon

Japan - 1976

Director - Jun Fukuda

Goodtimes Home Video, 1985, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 30 minutes

 All three of these are from Wrong Side of the Art

This is only the first page of an United Statesian promotional comic. You can find the rest over at Magic Carpet Burn where they have also been kind enough to share the Godzilla vs. Megalon soundtrack.

Tintorera: Tiger Shark

Tintorera: Tiger Shark

UK/Mexico – 1977

Director – Rene Cardona Jr.

Media Home Entertainment, 1983, VHS

Run Time – 1 hour,31 minutes

Tintorera came to my attention because of the Hugo Stiglitz name and the raggedy old Media box in which I spotted it. It quickly became evident that despite more obvious on-screen distractions, there was a lot of subtext in the sex and violence that pervade the film, and I wanted to figure it out. Monsters pretty much always represent more complex issues than their own physical or spiritual presence. Animals as monsters, despite common connections to fears of science, can also embody some socially or personally repressed aberration (or both).

Tintorera: Tiger Shark centers around Steve (Hugo Stiglitz,) an affluent and bored middle aged bachelor vacationing in Mexico and his relationship with Gabriella (Susan George) and Miguel (Andres Garcia). Initially Steve chases women in the bars and beaches, but his interest is ambivalent at best. After an insincere argument with Miguel over one particular woman, he and his rival quickly become friends and begin chasing women together. Soon they meet Gabriella with whom they establish a Menage a Trois with some important rules; no attachment to her, and no other women. Much of Steve and Miguel’s remaining time together is spent interacting with one another while Gabriella, whose character remains largely undeveloped beyond her introductory lines, remains peripheral and safely within the prescribed confines of female sexual object. Her presence serves to superficially deny what is becoming increasingly readable as a journey of sexual discovery between our two brotagonists.

 

In the opening scenes while pursuing women, Steve is horrified by a local fisherman’s wanton killing of sharks, but as his relationship with Miguel quickly becomes closer (although never explicitly physical) his friend teaches him how to hunt sharks and he actually begins to enjoy it. Up to this point the violence meted out against sharks is largely implied, but when they start hunting together it is shown quite explicitly, and becomes rather difficult to watch in its gruesomeness. For both the narrative and the film itself, this graphic penetrating violence clearly implies sex between the two men and Steve’s increasing comfort with this new identity. The first time they take Gabriella on one of their hunting forays she is shocked when she witnesses what the men are doing, and as if on cue Miguel is eaten by a Tiger Shark. According to the established rules of the three way, Gabriella takes her leave and Steve is left alone again.

Until this point, social disapproval and condemnation of his sexuality have pushed Steve into bitterness and even self repression which, with Miguel’s tutelage he has overcome. Through their commission of the transgressive act, the sex as violence, the men kill their feelings of lonely ostracism and guilt. In the final scenes after his lover’s death Steve goes completely apeshit and begins clubbing and spearing every shark he sees in a desperate attempt to find the one that ate Miguel. When he does, he kills it at the cost of his own arm.

Violence committed by men has a long and multicultural filmic tradition as a metaphor for sex, so it is not really a surprise to find it surfacing in a Mexican Jaws knockoff. What is interesting are the connotations of that violence as meted out against sharks in Tintorera, and the fact that contrary to Hollywood’s imperialist tradition, it ends on a positive note with the outsider still outside and unrepentant. Although Miguel’s death truncates the possibility of an continued or overt relationship, and the brilliant white hospital room in which Steve wakes suggests a return to safe institutional normalcy (that is, the hetero-normative), Steve is undeniably and visibly marked by the experience. The look of satisfied serenity on his face leads me to believe that his guilt-demons have been finally exorcised.

 This post is part of Queer Film Blogathon hosted by Garbo Laughs

German poster from Grindhouse Database

Japanese art from Super Trash Cinema

"Cult" Classic? I hardly think so.

Three French VHS inserts, all from Agressions Animales

Saigon In Beverly Hills

Saigon in Beverly Hills

United States - 1993ish

Director - Tuan Anh

Tuan Anh Productions, 1993, VHS

Run Time - I don't have the karaoke stamina to count

What blogathon would be complete without a random oddity from the Lost Video Archive VHS vault?  In this case, transgender Vietnamese variety show hosted by singer Tuan Anh who just happens to be on tour right now!

This post is part of the Queer Film Blogathon hosted by Garbo Laughs

Charles Bronson Deja Vu Double Feature

The Evil That Men Do

United States - 1984

 Director - J. Lee Thompson

Goodtimes Home Video, 1989, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 30 minutes

But WAIT! Haven't we seen this same classic manly, phallic-symbol Bronson pose on the promo art for another film?

The Mechanic

United States - 1972

Director - Michael Winner

MGM/UA Home Video, 1988, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 41 minutes

An interesting story that you will find on the Wiki about The Mechanic:

"In Lewis John Carlino's original script, the relationship between Arthur Bishop (Bronson) and Steve McKenna (Jan Michael Vincent) was explicitly gay. Producers had difficulty securing financing and several actors, including George C. Scott, flatly refused to consider the script until the homosexuality was removed.

There's more too if you just click the link above.

 

Queer Film Blogathon

Lost Video Archive will be contributing at least one post to this worthy event. 

Check out host Garbo Laughs for a complete list of contributors and information on participating yourself.

In the meantime, I wrote a short essay on the important subject of "Naming Your Girl Band" which was published yesterday over at the preeminent music blog Illogical Contraption.

Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity

 

Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity

United States - 1987

Director - Ken Dixon

Amazing Fantasy Entertainment, 1987, VHS

Run  Time -  1 hour, 20 minutes

Night of the Lepus

 

Night of the Lepus

United States – 1972

Director – William F. Claxton

Monster movies come in all sorts of forms, subgenres and species. Monsters both in literature and in cinema are almost always a symbol for something more than just a monster. Night of the Lepus ranks alongside such trash classics as Them! , Slithis and Godmonster of Indian Flats as one of my favorite among the nature twisted by science flicks. Fear of atomic power, industrial pollution and even computers have all become cultural boogeymen reformulated as screen monsters. “Progress” is scary because it’s unpredictable, and because man’s intellectual reach outdistances his ethical grasp, and so on and so forth….

It wasn’t until a second watch through of Night of the Lepus that it suddenly dawned on me that the film is a not so thinly veiled parable for the issue of Mexican immigration that has repeatedly proven anathema to deluded United Statesian racists since at least the 19th Century. The rabbit metaphor should be a familiar one, although parallels between “breeding like rabbits” and well established stereotypes about low income ethnic groups are rarely drawn explicitly. “Takeover” by the exponentially reproducing vermin, which threatens to subsume their typical hardworking all-American victims and ruin their good cultural traditions is clear enough. In Night of the Lepus the growth of the rabbits to human proportions and their proclivity for fresh blood and flesh remains mysteriously unexplained leading me to believe that not only are regular sized rabbits just not scary, but that these Lepus are meant to be even more like their analogues, making them still scarier.

The solution in Night of the Lepus, as parroted time and again in real life immigration paranoia rhetoric and literally realized along the large portions of the U.S. Mexico border, is a giant fence. Not only does this one keep them out of “our” territory, but it's also electrified such that any invaders attempting to cross it are thoroughly electrocuted to crispy death.

It is likely true that we often find the evidence we’re looking for. The fact that the film was set in Arizona although based on a novel (Year of the Angry Rabbit) set in Australia, and that it so clearly reproduces established stereotypes about Mexican immigrants in an era immediately following the end of the Bracero Program (and new immigration legislation) is too much coincidence for me to bear! Night of the Lepus is nothing more than a hilarious and ludicrous reification of United Statesian white supremacist paranoia, but damned if it doesn’t make for some entertaining cinema.

Once you know what the movie is about, the posters become even more awesome.
This one is from The League of Dead Films

Is the tagline in this ad meant to mimic the 1967 race-film Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

 Ads from Criticonline.

Rental Store - Video House Hawaii

This rental store label is on my copy of the indie horror flick Mongrel.

Stephen King's Nightshift Collection vol. 1

Nightshift vol. 1: The Woman in the Room

United States - 1985

Director - Frank Darabont

Interglobal Home Video, 1987, VHS

Run Time - 32 minutes

Perhaps most notably this film stars Brian Libby as "prisoner". Libby also starred as the deranged genetically enhanced killer in the Chuck Norris film Silent Rage.