Sunday, April 24, 2022

Lisa Petrucci of SOMETHING WEIRD VIDEO reveals da goods in two parter podcast

Part one:  Part two:
  
Here's a brand new two part episode (April 2022) of a podcast called The Walter Paisley Movie House podcast. The guest is Lisa Petrucci of everyone's fan favourite video label Something Weird Video. I've never listened to this podcast before, and I only know of its existence because someone posted about the two episodes in the SWV fan group on facebook (actually I think it was Lisa Petrucci herself). 

The interview is pretty good, and Lisa has an interesting background story. And it is certainly good to see she is keeping Something Weird Video alive after Mike Vraney - the guy who started the company - passed away. I've only ordered directly from them maybe a dozen titles over the years due to fairly obstructive ordering procedures; For a long time they didn't take PayPal. And later they did decide to take PayPal, but only thru direct personal e-mails which took days to get thru. And of course now they don't take orders for physical formats from outside North America at all!! Some titles you can order for download, but the download versions are of a less good quality (according to Petrucci herself), and you don't get a cover with your downloaded film! 

I've never before wanted to order from their download catalogue, because I want physical copies to put on my shelves. However, I caved in and ordered a download recently. It was a film you can't get anywhere else. Not even via YouTube. I wrote to Lisa Petrucci and asked for a scan of the cover from their dvd-r version of the film (I'm positive they've got digital copies already - how else would they print out covers for the physical dvd-r versions) but the reply was a no can do. I love SWV but I'm not one to kiss ass and I'll call out annoying things when I see them - and this is annoying!!! Luckily, a collector in the US who had bought the physical version was kind enough to help me out and make a copy. But still. I can't rely on helpful fans for every download I might want to order. But, hey, forget about my being grumpy here and click that play button. It's a good podcast! 

Wednesday, April 20, 2022

Constipated Henry in sequel


I rewatched HENRY - PORTRAIT OF A SERIAL KILLER, PART 2 (aka Henry - Portrait of a Serial Killer 2: Mask of Sanity) last night. This time on blu-ray (Njuta Films, Sweden). I still can't make up my mind about it - do I like this or don't I. But no matter what, I've bought the fucking film three times! (fullscreen UK dvd, widescreen US dvd, and widescreen Swedish blu-ray)

It's a shit film compared to the original. And Neil Giuntoli is certainly no Michael Rooker. But as someone mentioned recently, if you're going to make a HENRY sequel without Rooker, Giuntoli is your best Henry. And yeah, I guess. When he's good in the film he's quite good. But there's just too many scenes where it was obvious the director said, "be Henry like Michael Rooker!" and he just looks like he's constipated. However, as a fun (and nasty) sequel it works alright. 

The question is just - should a "kinda good, kinda shitty" sequel exist to a fantastic original film? If they had called the film "Henrik - Portrait of a Mass Murderer" I would have no hesitation in barracking for it.  

PS: Be careful if you buy a reg. 1 dvd: there are two releases, one is heavily cut and one is uncut. The UK dvd is uncut (but fullscreen). The Swedish bluray is uncut and widescreen. 

Now, watch dese two different trailers (the top one being the longer, more nasty one):

PS: For some reason these two trailers have no avatar BUT they do work!

:

Thursday, April 14, 2022

Cronenberg - that's **David** Cronenberg - is finally back with a new body horror film

Teaser art poster

The last few years fans - well, at least I - have been looking towards Brandon Cronenberg for the latest kick in body horror. But it's rumoured (again: by me) that old man David sat down, watched his son's flicks, and thought to himself, "Ahh man, I should do body horror again!". He couldn't come up with a new title so he went back to his student films and - I guess - figured that nobody would remember he once used the title CRIMES OF THE FUTURE for an early short film. Oh well, we forgive you, Dave-oh cos we luuuv ya. And the two trailers look promising so I for one am certainly looking forward to CRIMES. It'll premiere at Cannes this year and premiere at cinemas in June. 

Watch both trailers, they're quite different: 



Tuesday, April 12, 2022

Kier-La Janisse and Lydia Lunch talk folk horror

I like Lydia Lunch's old band, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, and some of her other stuff. She's pretty cool and interesting. She does her own podcast, "The Lydia Spin'', which is interesting if you look at her list of guests. However, when you actually listen to the show ... less so. I find it mind-numbingly boring to listen to their 20-30 minute intros often (but not always) about ... nothing really. Often just blah blah blah. And her male podcast partner, Tim Dahl, and his constant loud, fake laughter ... I wish there were a feature to block people on podcasts like you can block someone on facebook.

Anyhoo, here's a pretty good episode with Kier-La Janisse who did the (apparently huge, I haven't got it) booklet for the folk horror bluray box set that came out a few months back. Skip to ca. 18 minutes into the podcast where the interview starts, and hit the stop button once Dahl takes over and starts babbling about killer car films and animal killer films that he doesn't know anything about ("Did you invent the term 'folk horror'?" Argh!).


PS: don't worry about the "part 2". There is really only this one new part. "Part 1" was a different interview from two yrs ago.


Friday, April 1, 2022

Original kill scene from KARETECI KIZ - without fake death scream

Someone - whoever they were - added a fake death scream to a certain kill scene in the Turkish revenge film KARETECI KIZ (1974) and it has become one of the funniest scenes on the internet in recent years. It's been out there for so long now that people think this is how the real scene plays out in the film. Well, it's not! This is an upload of the scene with its original audio from the Turkish print. It's still not a great scene by any means. It's still funny as hell. And the actor is still terrible. And the actress (Filiz Akin) still couldn't fight her way out of a paper bag. But ... it's a funky soundtrack and no death scream. 

PS: the film was dubbed into English and released as "Karate Girl" on vhs in various territories back in the day.

For a wee bit more info about the film check out this previous post on my other blog. 

   

Swedish vhs / English dub / Swedish subs / fullscreen