Hassle With A Passel

Recent months have seen me cool the jets on VHS tape collecting and viewing, letting the thirty or so tapes I had left to watch sit in idleness with few new ones joining them. I had decided there were enough there without adding any more, and also adding more was curtailed by the expense. With that last issue eased somewhat, I reasoned that picking up a few tapes was a fine spark to get me excited about my tapes again, and off the persnickety habit of watching streaming movies online.

I bought ten tapes after an audition recently at the cost of about fifteen dollars, which on a per-unit basis is really very cheap. Among them were three Steven Seagal movies. I recently have grown very enthusiastic about Seagal, who is terrible, but who also is fascinating to think about and whose films are mostly very watchable even if they are generally not very good. There's his big hit "Under Siege" as well as a couple of the films he made just before really cratering.

Cracking The Case

A couple of nights ago, I had my latest VHS movie night. Yesterday I wrote about the first film we watched, "Hurricane Smith". It was enjoyable enough, once people quieted down. It's rather frustrating that people should chatter over the opening scenes and then get upset about not knowing what's going on, but let's not dwell on that. The point is that Carl Weathers went to Australia in search of his sister, found out she was dead and returned home with an Australian hooker with a heart of gold.

The second film- "Crack House" played out slightly differently. You have a teen boy who has quit gang life to pursue his education and work at a burger restaurant. He's drawn back in when his brother (I think) is killed by a rival gang, but this only winds up making a victim of his girlfriend, who is taken captive by the selfsame rival gang. She becomes addicted to crack and is made to debase herself in a myriad of ways by ganglord Jim Brown. Cop Richard Roundtree teams up with the teen boy to free her and bust the gang.

Hurricane Film

I had my VHS-watching night last night. I'd had to postpone it in order to sit in on the "Top Story! Weekly" writing staff, and so it was being held in the first week of June instead of the last week of May. I had some concern about very many people attending, but those fears proved unfounded, and we had a good time watching a couple of old action movies. I think people mainly think of scifi and horror when it comes to "bad movies", but I say action movies are great too.

The first one we watched was "Hurricane Smith". Carl Weathers stars as a Texas oil field worker who journeys to Australia in search of his missing sister. He finds out that she got involved in some bad stuff (IE drugs and sex work) while in the employ of a nefarious underworld figure played by Jurgen Prochnow. Weathers continues to try to find her, but mainly is sidetracked by a hooker and her pimp who he logically ought to have moved on from after he got what information they had.

Kauf Kauf

I saw something a couple days ago that was really something. My backlog of VHS tapes that I have yet to watch is contracting, compelling me to watch tapes that I have to this point passed up in favor of others. One that I have finally dispatched was a gift from a friend, but I hadn't watched it because it was rather short. I don't know if that makes sense, but there it is. It's "Tank You Veddy Much", a video biography of Andy Kaufman.

The production value of the tape appeared low, but I didn't take that to mean that the thing wasn't good. After watching it, I can say at least that I loved it. The reason was not that it disproved any notions based on what the tape's quality was, but that it proved those notions in very strange ways. To begin with, the biography's visuals consist largely of photographs that have nothing to do with the things being discussed by the narration.

Honoring The Past

When I was a boy, I liked the movies as much as anyone, though I didn't get to see as many as I would have liked. I got to see some, not that a lot of those stick out in my mind from the very early stages in my life. One that I do remember is the fantasy film "Willow". What I remember better than seeing it was just it being in the theaters. I remember promotions run through the cereals I ate. I remember the sticker books concerning it (and a sticker book, I should say, is a book you'd buy which I believe roughly laid out the story of the movie, and you filled it out with stickers that you bought in random packs. You had to keep buying the packs until you had all the right ones).

I do also remember the movie a touch from then, but watching it the other night certainly helped refresh my memory, and I have to say that Willow is nothing more so than a fun combination of the story of Moses and "The Fellowship Of The Ring". A prophecy is told that a baby will grow up and overthrow a queen. The queen orders the pregnant women jailed and the baby destroyed. The prophesied baby is secreted onto a raft sent down the river, where it's found by Willow, a very hobbit-like creature called an "Elwyn". He must restore the baby into the possession of its own people.

Little Ones

One of the things I've been doing to more rapidly work down my pile of unwatched VHS tapes is to make a point on some occasions of watching the shorter ones. Long movies (exceeding two hours by a wide margin) tend to linger on the pile for obvious reasons, but so have short ones, oddly enough. Perhaps I have seen them as not a real achievement, but a half-hour or hour-long take takes up one spot in my inventory just like the rest, and I can knock off several of them in the space of one feature-length movie.

Yesterday I watched several short tapes. One- "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" - I found to my chagrin I had already marked as watched, which I suppose is true in that I had watched it in my youth. I did not recall it well, and so I should not have done so. It's a good one anyway, feature some enjoyable animation and a legitimately compelling as well as dramatic story. Rikki Tikki is a mongoose living on the grounds of a British family's bungalow in colonial India. He befriends the family (and most of the animals), then battles a series of snakes that menace them. It's very good, and Orson Welles' presence is a plus.

Bled

Yesterday evening I watched a number of tapes, most of them short in length. I had an episode of "Gilligan's Island" left to watch, a tape containing two episodes of the 80's "Ewoks" cartoon (about which I could write a post, and perhaps might), an episode of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" (about which there is no need to write) and finished out things with a viewing of the 1998 film "Blade" (which I had not yet seen). That's worth writing about.

It's a reasonably enjoyable movie. Blade is an exceptionally taciturn vampire hunter, to the point that I repeatedly and openly pleaded for a smile or some sign that the character felt anything ever. The vampires, by comparison, enjoyed a noticeable zest for life that made them easy to root for by comparison. Indeed, all the bad guys seemed to feel joy and none of the good guys did. Is that not the very opposite of what you would expect?

Shell Out The Money

The same night I watched "The Believers", which I described yesterday, I also watched a couple others. One of them was "Everyone Loves Mel", or as it has been alternately titled, simply "Mel". This is another of those cheap "family movies" that I accrue somewhat unintentionally. They are enjoyable enough at times. I find them a good palate cleanser after more extreme genre movies. The dramatic conflict is light, the characters are amiable, and they do well as a final film of the night.

I slept well enough after this one. Two brothers are struggling a bit for lack of really vigorous parental supervision. The father (Greg Evigan) is evidently a very busy lawyer, and the mother (Julie Hagerty) is a realtor or something. Deciding that it's easier to punt on their kids than their jobs, they send them off to live with her father (Ernest Borgnine). Borgnine is an irascible taskmaster who has apparently been running a farm all by himself in his 80s. He harbors a secret. Namely, he is a friend to the nearby lake's infamous monster, who is a large (if not monstrously so) turtle alternately known as Swannie and Mel. Naturally, a local developer (Jack Scalia) is after the land and has a longtime grudge with Mel.

A Good One

A couple nights ago I watched a few movies, and I stumbled upon a half-way decent one in the bunch. I had some notion that it might be all right because it had Martin Sheen and Jimmy Smits. Smits never has been in a lot of big movies so far as I know- he's known for "LA Law", "NYPD Blue" and "The West Wing"- but he's a fairly reasonable performer who there's every reason to believe could do a decent job in a movie. Sheen of course has been in some classics (and, of course, also starred on The West Wing).

This film was called "The Believers". I figured it was some horror conspiracy movie, and that's about what it amounts to. Sheen plays a therapist working for the police, which is handy since he mostly acts like a cop anyway. He stumbles upon a Santeria-based cult that is comprised mainly of wealthy New Yorkers. They practice human sacrifice to get a head in life, and apparently that works. This is probably not sounding great so far.

"Shame, Shame, Know Your Name"

Yesterday I wrote about "The Invisible Kid". The same evening I watched that, I also watched "Rumpelstiltskin". This, I should say, was a low-budget effort by the Golan-Globus producing team to make a series of fairy tale movies for Cannon, a cheap movie company. I love most movies they make, many of which star an elderly Charles Bronson. This one didn't, but it's still not bad. That is to say, it's watchably terrible.

In the title role, they have Billy Barty, which isn't the worst move you could make. He's fair in the role, although Warwick Davis probably would have been better. Relating the story is probably not necessary. If you really don't know how the story of Rumpelstiltskin plays out, you'd just better look it up and then come back here. I'll say this much for the movie: it tells the story fairly accurately as far as I can recall. It's been a while for me.

Don't See It

One of the latest movies I've watched from my VHS collection, as the unwatched portion of which continues to deplete, is 1988's "The Invisible Kid". To say I had high hopes for it is a slight exaggeration, but I did think there would be some enjoyment to be had. The box cover was promising, and the trailer was as well. That's often when there is trouble ahead. Many of the worst movies I have are supported by great trailers and box covers.

The Invisible Kid largely follows the same plot as "Teen Wolf", which I only recently saw. In that film, a high school loser becomes a werewolf and enjoys new popularity as he leads the basketball team to success. In this one, a high school nerd (who takes off his glasses and instantly stops being a nerd) stumbles upon a formula that turns you invisible. With it, he gets a girlfriend and uncovers a point shaving scheme conducted by the principal and star player. It's pretty terrible.

Not To Be

I was a little upset with myself a couple days ago. As I write this, I kind of still am. What happened is that I had found myself a little stressed out, and as I happened to be in Hollywood, I did what has become habit in such conditions. I went to Amoeba Records and started shopping. I found a Warren Zevon album that I really wanted ("Stand In The Fire", a great live album he did that I could listen to non-stop), and then just a pile of VHS tapes that I loved.

It occurred to me though, that I should think of being frugal. I ultimately concluded that I shouldn't make any purchases just now, and I reluctantly put everything back and left. This was a very hard thing to do. I wanted to have those things so badly, and I knew that was likely to be the case when I walked in there. I have tried not to allow myself to even walk inside, knowing that it's easier to pass on something undefined that I know is probably in there.

Double Shot Of Movies Hot

Last night there was my latest big "VHS Vault" movie watching night. I enjoy those an awful lot, as people are inclined to enjoy presiding over something they like in the company of their friends. I like being able to share things with people, but at the same time to experience them for the first time just as they do. That's how I do it. I go out and find the movies, but then I see the ones I earmark for movie nights only on the appointed date. I feel that's important.

Last night I picked two movies that aren't exactly like many that I grant this honor to. I have a fair number of TV movies and straight to video movies of relatively recent vintage in my collection, but I prefer older movies (falling in or near the 1980s) that received a theatrical release generally for movie nights. These two both (I think) violate those conditions, but I went with them because they seemed like the two best options that I could pair together at the time.

Slip

Well, I had another setback in my VHS backlog-reducing campaign. I had been doing very well, and had gotten down to 44 from above 70. This was having even acquired a number of tapes along the way. I would have been under 40 in a day or so, but I had to go back to Amoeba Records and browse around. I knew that I shouldn't do it, but I also knew how much I wanted to do it, and how much I would enjoy it.

It was in a way a stress-relieving thing. "Retail therapy" is what I think I've heard it called. I'd been to drop off some props for the sketch I'd co-written. I was feeling insecure about how some of those people saw me, because I had rather awkwardly hung around hoping to find out from the director whether what I'd brought was any good. I knew that going and buying some tapes would help take my mind off that, and off of the show to come that night.

Yet Another Set Of Movies

It's another day, and another couple of movies have been dispatched. On this occasion, I ran into no shortage of tape problems. Several movies that I watched or attempted to watch had problems. One turned out to be very probably a PAL tape, which doesn't stop an American VCR from trying to handle it, but does stop the player from handling it properly. Other tapes had their own problems, forcing me to change VCRs or to abandon them altogether and finish the moving streaming from the Internet (which is a terrible betrayal on my part).

The first film I watched was the Michael J. Fox classic "Teen Wolf". I'd never seen it. I enjoyed it an awful lot for a number of reasons. One thing I enjoyed was that it was a basically small story. It's about one kid who turns out to be a werewolf, his father, and his school friends. It never involves the authorities beyond a couple of school officials, and the scope never expands beyond typical high schooler problems. I liked that. I also liked that everyone actually gets over the werewolf thing fast and starts exploring something new. We've seen people freak out over a monster in their midst before, and this film actually looks for something else to do.

Seen It

As I didn't manage to watch any movies last night (to my great chagrin), I thought I would share about one from a little while ago that I have great fondness for. It's called "Tuff Turf", and while not every cast member is very happy with having it on their resume, I was very happy watching it. It's an interesting film. James Spader plays a newcomer in a California town (which is LA, I guess), but he interestingly plays the guy from the right side of the tracks. That is to say that his family is formerly rich, and very mannered.

He meets Robert Downey Jr, who plays a more streetwise teen, and Kim Richards, a romantic foil with hair that reaches well below her waistline. It's a hell of a thing to see. In any event, Spader's entanglement with her arouses the ire of a school tough, and a a variety of hijinks ensue. There's no need to get into any more plot than that, since this movie is more heavy on youthful attitude and music. Like I said, I liked it an awful lot.

Trio, Me-o, My-O

The barrage of movies taken in continues for me. There are another three movies to report on, one of which is not a VHS tape. It's a novel experience to watch a movie via the latest technology (although it's now arguable whether that can fairly be said of Blu-Ray discs) when you proceed to watch two more on technology that was surpassed something like fifteen years ago. The picture and sound may be better, but is the film?

Finally I've seen "Gangster Squad", which I'm sure I meant to watch soon after I saw "Public Enemies". Instead it came a long time later, but if a comparison must be made, it's Gangster Squad that comes out looking better. I would have said a lot better, but then I watched more than the first half hour or so. The film, while gorgeous to look out throughout, and while featuring some really fun performances and moments, just is not there all the way story-wise.

On And On

My enthusiasm for watching VHS tapes continues unabated, and I'm pleased to say that I've gotten back underneath 50 unwatched tapes. It was not so long ago that I was above 70, and I have even taken some new tapes in during this time, so getting to 49 is a meaningful accomplishment as far as sitting in front of a TV for any reason is concerned. To prove what I've done, let me here give brief descriptions of the conquered films as I have sometimes done in the past.

Each of these two films is one that has been sitting around in my collection for want of any severe interest on my part. They looked good enough to buy, but for a long time not good enough to watch. The first was "Light Years", which was laboring under the hindrance of looking like a pretty good movie. It's a French animated film based on an Isaac Asimov story, and contains the voice acting of some notable actors. It plays like an unusually heady "Heavy Metal" story. It was as good as it appeared to be.

Further Apace

I have continued to make progress on my unwatched backlog of VHS tapes, of which there are currently 54. I credit my currently strong resolve as well as a lack of funds to buy any at the present. That does not stop the collection from growing due to the generosity of friends however, and so my task remains an occasionally challenging one. It is, of course, not strictly an onerous task. It is also a fun one, and towards the end of illuminating that fact, here are accounts of my latest conquests.

I managed to watch two the other day. I might have watched more if I had gotten an earlier start and if one of them had not been rather long. That film was "Excalibur", which I was of a mind to watch after having seen "Dragonslayer". I can say that Excalibur is not quite as good. It's possible that it was the prettier film to look at, which is certainly true if one excludes the scenes in Dragonslayer that feature the dragon. Unfortunately, Excalibur was just too hard to follow. The plot was sometimes rather baffling, and never slowed down enough to let you absorb what was going on at any given time.

Ackshun

There's something I really like about straight-to-video action movies. There's a whole different thing going on there. There's a whole different roster of stars who loom large in that arena. The action is different, because they have to come up with things, I guess, that are impressive in some respect without being so expensive. Other people who are into tape collecting like I am are apt to go for scifi and horror movies, or maybe martial arts movies, but not straight action, I don't think.

I may or may not have mentioned "Ballistic", which is about my favorite. Marjean Holden is Detective Jesse Gavin, who is bearing the twin crosses of being a female cop and the daughter of a wrongfully imprisoned cop dad. They actually don't do the worst job of setting Holden up for some kind of success. Of course they exploit her sex appeal with a gratuitous shower and a subsequent sex scene with her boyfriend, but it's striking to me that she winds with him resting on top of her after it's over.