Another Night Of Tapes

A couple nights ago, I had my latest VHS movie night. We watched two movies, which was a nice little dent in the backlog of tapes I have been wrestling with. Admittedly that only puts me at 67 tapes to go, but it is better than where I was and gives me a little momentum to build on. So long as I don't buy or accept for free any new ones soon, I should make some real progress. Watching two a day would still take over a month to get me out of the woods, but you can't keep your eyes on the far side of the river while you're swimming.

The first movie we watched was "Amsterdamned". I bought it, of course, only because of the title. That is an amazing title and an amazing example of wordplay. It was a Dutch action movie, so that was of course not its original title, but I doubt whether any other title it has been known by in any other language is that good. In any case, the movie concerns a cop who is after a serial killer who wears a wet suit and travels by means of Amsterdam' canals. The cop is a lackluster father who does well with the ladies and, contrary to the conventions of cop movies, is highly appreciated by his superiors for getting results. It was a good movie.

The second movie was "Escape 2000". It was not, I found, the same movie which appeared on a later season of "Mystery Science Theater 3000", but rather an Australian scifi movie which also goes by the name "Turkey Shoot". It's pretty amazing. In a dystopian future, the authoritarian government has cracked down on 'deviants' and sends them to prison camps where they are hunted for sport. This was a pretty amazing movie, and I don't know if I can explain why more succinctly than by reporting that the movie features a Mr. Hyde-like circus freak and makes no particular fuss about the fact.

The latter movie featured some curiously tame acts of violence that looked as if they might have been curtailed. Since the film clocked in at less than 80 minutes without credits, we made an educated guess that a more extensive cut existed. Sure enough, the film ran 13 minutes longer overseas, and contained considerably more gore. The unexpurgated version was quickly found online, and we searched through it to find every worthwhile moment excised from the domestic version.

I had meant to propose to my guests that they might submit their names to a list of people who I would notify every time I was going to watch a movie just in case they were free and interested. I concede that few people could meet both of those conditions, but my friends are a special breed, and some of them will watch anything, any time. Barring scheduling conflicts, I might get some takers. That would be a big help in squashing the backlog. I'll get it yet.