Fangoria #48 - The Supernaturals

It's been a while since we posted an old magazine scan here at LVA. While filing away some old Jimmy Carter issues of Newsweek I ran across this issue of Fangoria. Here's an interesting article on the 1985 Civil War zombie film The Supernaturals which we posted on back HERE. The film itself leaves something to be desired, but this article makes up for that. Plus how can you go wrong with zombie pictures. Written during the filming of The Supernaturals (apparently singular at the time, note the first page title), the article makes connections to other contemporary films like The Mutilator and Android, but we'll let you read the article and find out for yourself.

From Fangoria issue 48, published in March of 1985 I believe.

For more of our old horror magazine posts check out Ephemera.

Samsung VCR Advert

Found in an old magazine from 1989. Apparently Rambo 22 was still the "hottest rental" three years after its release. With a G rating no less.

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.

Coming Next Week

This Megaforce advertisement comes from the June 1982 issue of Heavy Metal magazine

Ninja Vengeance

Ninja Vengeance

United States – 1988

Director/Writer/Producer – Karl Armstrong

Columbia Tristar Home Video – 1993

Run Time – 1 hour, 27 minutes

A young man passing through a small Southern town accidentally finds himself at the wrong end of the law. He was just looking for the worldly knowledge and experience that his ninja master (Stephen K. Hayes) babbles incoherently about in numerous homoerotic flashbacks, but cest la vie.

Instead, what he finds is a wealth of white guilt from which he must absolve both himself, and white audience members. A Black kid is killed by racist cops/Klan members who realize that a drifter is the perfect scapegoat. Fortunately our Magnificent Singular Amigo Samurai just happens to have brought his Ninja motorcycle and ninja instructional manuals along for the big fight.

Despite all onscreen visual evidence he does indeed transform into the titular Ninja and take vengeance. However as I mentioned before, the purpose for this is not to bring racist murderers to justice, but to absolve himself of guilt! I presume the yin-yang is used here as a metaphor for separate but equal. For shame!

Watch Ninja Vengeance right now, streaming at NitFlex!

Also read this article on "combat reality training" by Ninja Vengeance co-star and real life ninja Stephen K. Hayes in this spring 1986 special issue of Ninja Magazine

That's Hayes on the right.

Fangoria 56 and 57 - Charles Band Interview

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the Charles Band produced sci-fi flick Arena and I thought it would be a good opportunity to follow up with this old interview with Band. It originally appeared in two parts starting in Fangoria #56 (above) which was published August 1986. It was short enough that I posted the whole thing in clickable images instead of a download.

Enjoy.

 

The interview was concluded in the following issue, Fangoria #57 in September 1986 (above).

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.

Nostromo Officer's Cap

Nerd Alert!

Found this advert in a November, 1979 issue of Heavy Metal Magazine.

Hellraiser

Hellraiser

United Kingdom - 1986

Director - Clive Barker

Anchor Bay Entertainment, 1996, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour 26 minutes (film), 22 minutes (spec. features)

A great example of the wastefulness of the consumerist precept wherein bigger and more equals better. Less than two hours of video is split onto two VHS tapes for no apparent reason except that the consumer could be charged more for the hollow satisfaction of having purchased this visually imposing but pointless box.

Lacking the knowledge of Barker and England that would make for some kind of moderately clever observation about the film, I will use it as an excuse to share some contextual media in the form of some contemporary articles in Fangoria:

 Hellraiser Issue 67
September, 1987
A really good interview with one of the stars of Hellraiser, Andrew Robinson, also of Charlie Varrick and Dirty Harry. This is an article that I have always remembered because Robinson has some great reflections on the  industry from an indie perspective. This issue has already appeared here at LVA with articles on The Lamp, also known as The Outing, and an article on Evil Dead II special effects.

Hellraiser Issue 65
July, 1987
An here's another one from a little earlier in the year. Actually, to be honest, there was a third issue, #66 which had yet another article about the film. You can see that the folks at Starlog got a little geeky about a big movie when it was coming out. Either that or they inflated the articles to take up more space and keep us in suspense until the next issue. Whatever the case, these were the more interesting of the three articles, this second being something of a report-from-the-set with Clive Barker.

Snappy Answers

An old Al Jaffe piece from a 1986 issue of MAD magazine. I appreciate that it relates to a now ancient experience that was so totally ubiquitous to everyone that bad jokes somehow captured its banality. It was an experience repeated so frequently that it became ritual, and yet now, a mere 25 years later seems almost primitive.

Pocket Money

Pocket Money

United States - 1972

Director - Stuart Rosenberg

Starring - Paul Newman and Lee Marvin

These top two posters are from IMPAwards

  

I don't know what Retro Filmprogramm is but issue 49, which I found at rudolfbenda.de features Pocket Money under the title "Two Unlucky Cowboys".

This VHS box comes from 109 Things.

I was hoping for a nice old mass-market paperback with an illustrated cover or something, but the only cover I could find for the novel upon which Pocket Money was based was this contemporary one. The screenplay for the film was written by Terrence Malick who has also directed a few films you might have heard of namely The Thin Red Line which was based on a James Jones memoir.

"New Releases" - Gorezone #2

Issue 2 of Gorezone appeared in July of 1988. It still comes across as a somewhat amateur publication with lots of nice pictures but even in it's second issue was beginning to cary some interesting features that were different from it's parent publication. I specifically selected these two articles for that reason. First is a short article on two "new releases", Jess Franco's Faceless and Juan Piquier Simon's Slugs:

Second is an article that was part of an ongoing series during the magazine's run. Here we have the special effects of Poltergeist III:

And finally, one of the reasons I like these old splatter magazines is that when looking through them, I always find a movie that I completely forgot about. Example, The Unholy:

Blood Feast Comic Book

The title is pretty cool, but to put it directly over the crucial part of the image? What were you thinking! There's a huge ass empty white space at the bottom of the page! Furthermore, there has to be a good reason to put something off center, particularly if the element itself is symmetrical as the title is in this case. Man, talk about bad design. Is it any wonder Eternity comics went belly up? It's been a while since I saw the film, but I don't remember much sex in Blood Feast, maybe they took some liberties with the story line. Let's find out...
Read the entirety of issue 1 (minus some advertisements) HERE.

Sony Betamax SL-5800

Found this in a magazine from December 1980, it's literally dripping with symbolism.
I find it amusing that the guy is in what appears to be a study, suggesting that he possesses both  intelligence and culture. His throne and scepter pose is very fascist/monarchical, and we look slightly up at him, silhouetted and semi anonymous in front of a blazing light as if simultaneously deity and monolith. He is the epitome of unassailable power, reinforced by the lead copy; "Experience the freedom of total control." This dude answers to no one, in fact according to the headers for each segment of the body copy he is the "master" of numerous things that might as well have nothing to do with a video program. Clearly this advert is appealing to a power hungry masculinist psychology well beyond the innocent videophile.
Heavy man, heavy.

Lunchmeat Magazine

Many years ago I was into print publishing. In fact, that’s sortof how I got into writing about movies, by publishing a little punk zine in my backwater hometown. While I am reluctant to call blogs the zines of the 00’s because they frequently require so much less effort than their predecessors, the comparison nevertheless seems mildly apt. In the case of blogs, one just has to filter through a lot more shitty ones before you get to the good stuff. Because they had to be physically constructed, zines required much more commitment and consistency than a blog which (like this one) is also frequently constrained by sctructural limitations imposed by the service provider. While there are many blogs that I think do a remarkable job, I still think that zines, with all their flaws were a much more appealing and fulfilling format.

Now zines are largely dead, and magazines, even well known titles, are struggling to stay in print. Hence it takes even more cojones than ever to try and put out something in print these days. When Josh got in touch with me a month or so ago I couldn’t believe that he was actually putting out a print magazine, much less one devoted to VHS tapes. Lunchmeat Magazine is just that however. It is the magazine I’d like to think I would put out if I had the cojones to tackle such a labor intensive project. I like to think of it as a retro-reunion of sorts, putting print media and video cassettes in the same place seems to me so, well, fitting really. Lunchmeat does it well, with numerous reviews of forgotten video-only flicks from the VHS era and interviews with low budget indie filmmakers printed on quality paper and sandwiched between glossy full-color covers. I hope they'll forgive me for pointing out a flaw or two so that I don't sound entirely sycophantic. Some of the images were so pixelated they made me cringe, and I noticed a few grammatical errors and other minor foibles. Nevertheless, I understand the limitations of indie niche-media and will no doubt do the same myself in the future (maybe in this article). Actually, they're a reminder that real people are actually making the thing.

The point is that Lunchmeat is doing something few people are willing to do anymore, and doing it well. In the first issue Josh sent me (above) I found movies I'd never even heard of, and subsequently tracked down my own copies to watch. I'm hopeful that some time in the near future, Lunchmeat and LVA will collaborate on a project. Consider the bad magazines filtered out. I suggest you track down your own copy of Lunchmeat.

LunchmeatVHS(at)Gmail.com
myspace.com/Lunchmeatzine

From Betamax to Blockbuster

Until about six months ago when I was writing a research paper on VHS and home video, I hadn’t considered including book reviews on Lost Video Archive, but several of the resources I used seemed particularly well suited to inclusion here. I believe that films are historical mirrors of their contexts, and as such, understanding how film changes, even technologically, builds a more holistic understanding of those contexts. The development of home video as a viable commercial enterprise was much more complicated than just putting it on shelves for people to buy. It required a fundamental restructuring of the way studios marketed their product, and how the public viewed movies as a cultural artifact. The creation of home video basically rearranged the entire cultural construction of what movies were. Instead of experiences, they became objects, instead of memories and stories they became possessions. It is a history that can be told from any number of subjective points of view, but Joshua Greenberg focuses on one forgotten aspect. Because all of us as consumers are familiar with the retail rental store, that aspect has received lots of attention. Greenberg’s book From Betamax to Blockbuster bridges an important gap between studio and rental outlet/consumer.

His subheading may be “Video Stores and the Invention of Movies on Video”, but his narrative is primarily concerned with the juncture between studio film makers and the public. Making a successful business out of home video required the creation of a whole new marketing and sale structure, e.g. middlemen. As Greenberg sees it, distributors were instrumental in communicating the public desire for content back to a reluctant film industry. Studios were reluctant to let go of the pay-per-view royalties that were associated with theater and television screenings and set up all kinds of schemes to try and prevent permanent sales of their product on video.

By the end of From Betamax to Blockbuster, (and as this blog attests) the studios got on board with the idea of “home video,” and the product took off. While I would have enjoyed a more in depth discussion of the studio perspective, and it would have made the book better, I understand that Greenberg was intentionally restricting his narrative. Even with its limited scope the book covers a great deal of history that I had never considered, and as such it was a great read and a must have for any serious videophile or movie historian.

Star Strike

I ran across this advert today in an old magazine and couldn't help but post it.

Fangoria 102 - Caroline Munroe/Luigi Cozzi

Luigi Cozzi is a director of unparalleled shoddiness. He may only be the duke to Alfonso Brescia's King of Cheap and Trashy, but Cozzi is the undisputed tyrant of Italian exploitation, challenged by many, but matched by none. The instant I saw Contamination I was sold, but Starcrash absolutely curdled my tender brain, and I mean that in the most flattering way.
This issue of Fangoria was published in May 1991 and features an article about Caroline Munroe one of the stars of Starcrash. She had gone on to star in his film Black Cat which I was attempting to find here, but afterwards as you will see, she had some problems getting Mr. Cozzi to pay her. Makes the guy sound like a real upstanding fellow lemme tell you.