Sep 24, 2020

[Thursday Nostalgia] Frankenstein Must Be Snowed In

In its day, Frankenstein On Campus (1970) gained some notoriety as the first film to be produced with assistance from the Canadian Film Development Corporation, and summarily was met with jeers that such a film was funded by taxpayers' money (and this was years before David Cronenberg's Shivers received greater controversy for its public funding). The film (re-titled Dr. Frankenstein On Campus) was picked up for American distribution on a drive-in double bill with Night Of The Witches, but has been seldom seen since, except for sporadic revival screenings, or late night viewings on Canadian television (when they still showed movies). To date, it has never had an official video release (although, as of this writing, Sinister Cinema offers it for sale, and a funky copy can be viewed on YouTube). 

Way back, in a time before YouTube really became a thing (that is, when singular uploads could only be ten minutes in maximum length), yours truly had planned to attend a revival screening of this "should-be cult classic", at the University of Toronto (where it was filmed). One March weekend, the U of T Film Festival was scheduled at Hart House. 

On the Thursday night (when our tale took place), the festival would commence with Horror 101, a series of horror-related student films, followed by a screening of Frankenstein On Campus, with a panel of participants from the film! Scheduled to attend were the film's director Gilbert W. Taylor, writer-producer Bill Marshall (later a founding member of TIFF), and Paul Hoffert (of the band Lighthouse, who appears in the film's party scenes), with Rodrigo Gudino of Rue Morgue magazine, and Adam Lopez of Toronto’s After Dark Film Festival

Alas, I didn't go, because.... and this is so Canadian... Hogtown was hit with a freak snowstorm! 

A blizzard, coupled with wind and thunder, descended upon the city, which created a big snarl of traffic. (Our city usually turns into a commuting nightmare with the first raindrop or snowflake, but this was something else!) At the time, I was still working downtown. Our office had closed early because of the weather. I was the last to leave, either because I was still debating going to the screening after work, or just waiting it out to see how the weather would change. I now forget exactly what prompted the decision not to attend. Perhaps it was the hour-long streetcar ride to the subway (a jaunt that normally took fifteen minutes), after which I was too dragged out to wait around for an event that may have been cancelled for all I knew. Or if I had decided to go home and head out later, that decision would have changed upon arrival in our neighbourhood, when I had to walk thigh deep in snow to the front door!

Instead, the evening was more low-key, spent in the kitchen with a couple of drinks, and watching Larry Buchanan's Curse of the Swamp Creature on the portable DVD player, while making pot roast. Still, to this day I wonder if that screening continued. This week, I finally got around to seeing the film (via a squiggly bootlegged copy), and was reminded of that crazy day all over again. Art and life were in sync: that day's frustration and ultimate surrender mirrored much of Canadian cinema in a nutshell. Our movies could be sub-titled "Cinema Of Frustration", as many narratives are characters falling short of their goals, and our feature film industry in general has a pervasive tone of self-deprecation. (This notion is deserving of its own future blog post.)

Frankenstein On Campus deserves better than its resignation to bootlegs or the occasional screening, because it is much more entertaining than its reputation would have you believe, with its hip (though not jokey) sense of humour, and inventive ideas. It was understandably picked up for American distribution (such as it was), because the film doesn't feel Canadian, if that makes any sense. It lacks the self-conscious tone of so many Canadian genre pictures of the time. If proper film elements still exist, a boutique company like Vinegar Syndrome should restore it for a DVD or Blu-ray release. After fifty years, it is time for this Frankenstein to rise again. 

While I regretted skipping that screening as soon as I set foot in the snow, I smile while thinking of those days, for it was a true Cinema Paradiso back then. For three years, Susan and I worked around the corner from each other. We were steps away from Cinecycle, Queen Video, Trash Palace, Centre For The Arts (where I hosted my own screenings at the time), to say nothing of numerous restaurants and taverns we'd frequent between gigs. By the end of the decade, we were both gone from this location. Our departure seemed synonymous with much of the area's re-development. Many of our favourite haunts (and "slop shops") would soon disappear as the landscape began to resemble something out of Blade Runner.

Oh yes, about the U of T Film Festival. The Friday night had three programs (student films, plus an initiative entitled UofTube, followed by a feature, Drop Box). On Saturday, Super 8 films were projected, with live accompaniment by Guh! (Oh, where was I then? Were we still snowed in?)

Sep 21, 2020

[Zine Review] Drive-In Asylum #19

In recent years, we've witnessed a resurgence in film-related print zines: Tim Paxton's Monster!; Brian Harris, Paxton and Tony Strauss's Weng's Chop; Mike Watt's Exploitation Nation; Pete Chiarella's Grindhouse Purgatory. The first generation of film zines (in the 1980s and 90s) was supplanted by the Internet, and blogs in a sense became the new film zine for those who follow less-than-mainstream cinema. But, to quote Tim Paxton, "The Internet is getting boring." So, it is a pleasure to see fellow film enthusiasts continuing the older tradition in print-on-demand formats. To the list of the film zine's new generation, editor-publisher Bill Van Ryn's Drive-In Asylum is a fine addition, itself recalling the cut-n-paste xeroxed fanzines we used to read in the heyday.

To date, Drive-In Asylum has had twenty quarterly issues (the latest just came out, and has yet to arrive), and four special issues, "in print only". (In other words, no e-book.) If your passion lies in horror-exploitation from the drive-in's heyday, circa the 1960s to the 1980s, then this publication is a worthy addition to your shelf. In addition to film reviews, this digest-sized gem is noteworthy for other reasons. 

Each issue features an interview with someone who worked before or behind the camera. For enthusiasts (like yours truly) of regionally-produced genre films from that era, these interviews are important documents of an alternative cinema history that needs to be preserved. In Issue #19, actor Terry Tenbroek shares his memories of working in the 1979 horror film Delirium (such as juggling his acting career with his full-time job as a firefighter), as well as other highlights in his career before the camera. After reading about this film (which was also added to the dreaded "Video Nasty" list back in the day), I had an interest to watch it. I remembered the VHS box art from my beloved Paragon label, and went to pull it from the "Paragon pile", only to discover that I didn't have this movie after all! Oops! YouTube, here I come!

The film reviews are refreshingly personal, as Bill's writing staff often conveys how they first encountered the movies, or how much they play in their lives. For instance, in Issue #19, Joseph Perry's overview of Sunn Classic Pictures, Andy Turner on Fireball Jungle, Sam Panico on the late Mexploitation classic Cemetery Of Terror (coincidentally, being released by Vinegar Syndrome next month), and Robert Freese's Manhattan Baby, will surely give you a deja vu feeling of discovering these films for the first time at the drive-in, grindhouse or even on the late show. I especially like Roger Braden's reminisces of seeing Mario Bava's Beyond The Door II (aka- Shock) in the bottom of a drive-in triple-bill, and J.H. Rood's discovery of the Thriller TV series on late night television. (Note to self: research Psycho Cinema from KASA TV 2 in Albuquerque.) But Drive-In Asylum exists as more than just nostalgia. I like how JC Greening's correlates his revisiting of Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girls to the "unprecedented" times in which we now live. 

Additionally, Drive-In Asylum is noteworthy for its eye-filling pages of vintage movie ads from newspapers and TV Guides. Their "in print only" mandate cited above is most telling here. This design simply couldn't be replicated properly in an electronic medium. (Even the front cover is designed like a marquee: the logos are the "attractions" you will read about within these pages.)

This plethora of ads also reminds you of the moviegoing experience back in the drive-in's golden age. There were dozens of films to choose from, instead of today's usual handful. And in a time before Internet, before Rotten Tomatoes, before IMDB, you just picked something and went. Discovery is part of the fun!

The Drive-In Asylum enterprise exists online in several fashions. Their Facebook group, entitled Groovy Doom (itself a cool title neatly summarizing a time and place), has of late featured Saturday night live streaming events, hosted by Bill and Sam, introducing a double bill of vintage exploitation. Groovy Doom also exists as a blog. Additionally, Sam Panico and his wife Becca review similar genre fare online in B&S About Movies

As prevalent as they are online, though, do pick up the print zine of Drive-In Asylum, and prepare to get lost in those pages. (Bring your own tinny speakers and mosquito coils.) You can order their zines at the link below. If you're a Canadian reader, to save shipping costs, it would be advisable to order several issues at once. (And believe me, you'll want to get a few anyway.) Check out their shop today!

Links:

Drive-In Asylum's online store at Etsy

Groovy Doom on Facebook

Groovy Doom's blog

B&S About Movies


Sep 20, 2020

Buyer Beware: Subway Riders on DVD

For the past several weeks, I've been on a "Downtown New York" kick, watching as many films as I can from New York's Lower East Side scene circa late 1970s to early 1990s (which included, but was not limited to, such movements as No Wave and The Cinema Of Transgression). This is timely because, of late, films by Amos Poe (a mover from this era who did cross over to comparatively mainstream success) have enjoyed a resurgence on disk. Vinegar Syndrome (via the subsidiary label, Fun City Editions) recently released Alphabet City to Blu-ray (review forthcoming). This month, MVD Visual has released three of his films to DVD as part of "The Amos Poe Series": The Foreigner, Unmade Beds, and Subway Riders

As far as I knew, Subway Riders had previously not been available here in any home video format, so I was thrilled to acquire a copy. That feeling quickly evaporated upon tearing off the shrink wrap and dropping the disk into the player. It is one of the most piss-poor "mastering" efforts I've ever seen, making Cheezy Flicks look like Criterion. I could live with the fact that their print was murky and washed out, knowing how hard it is sometimes to find a pristine master of such a rare title. HOWEVER. Not only is the movie stretched to 16x9 from its original 4x3 source, it is also rendered unwatchable due to interlace problems throughout. 

Come on, MVD. This is really lazy shit. I was so disgusted that I watched the movie on YouTube instead. The copy currently floating on there is much more watchable, even if it has non-removable German subtitles, with better colour and in its proper aspect ratio. If Poe's other two films are presented by MVD in the same piss-poor fashion, you're better off searching instead for those two titles on the now out-of-print releases by Eclectic DVD.

The DVD cover is posted above, so you know what to avoid. Definitely wanting a refund on this release.