News and Opinions

Well, it’s that festive time of the year, and what could be more appropriate than the remake of Black Christmas hitting the theatres on December 25? Now, I haven’t seen this film, of course, but the advance word is not encouraging. Head on over to www.dreadcentral.com and you’ll see that it seems that directors Glen Morgan and James Wong know how to do comedic horror (Final Destination), but have no idea how to play things straight. Sounds like we have another fine mess on our hands. But the remake has ...ad a good result in the re-release on DVD of the 1974 original. While the new version has lost some of the features of the previous release, it is now in 5.1. Whatever the home video version one watches, however, this is a terrific film, and perfectly perverse counter-programming.

Director Bob Clark has had an extremely eclectic career. Anyone who manages to have both Porky’s and the Sherlock-Holmes-versus-Jack-the-Ripper effort Murder by Decree on their resume isn’t in any danger of being stuck in a rut. But he also must be one of the few directors to have made not one but TWO significant Christmas movies: Black Christmas and A Christmas Story. Different enough for ya?

Old fogey time. When I first encountered Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K, don’t you know), it was an authentically viral phenomenon. This would have been circa 1993. It was still on the Comedy Network, a station that very few of us in the Great White North had access to. But the closing credits ordered, “Keep Circulating Those Tapes,” and people did. Often, this meant viewing the episodes in multi-duped EP versions so muzzy the dialogue was barely audible, but enough was discernible to know that we were w...tching sheer genius.

A few years later, things become easier. Rhino started releasing episodes on VHS. Renting became a possibility, as did outright purchase, as the prices were eminently reasonable. Flash forward to today. More and more episodes are being released to DVD. At first, there was a mere trickle (two episodes per case), but now multi-volume box sets are the order of the day. So too, unfortunately, is a concomitant increase in price. MST3K is a wonderful show, but not all the episodes are equally funny. Joel, Mike and the ‘bots had some pretty grim movies to work with, and not all of them turned out to be gold mines of humour. But the best episodes have a tendency to reduce one to lethal paroxysms of laughter, and these are well worth the effort to track down.

I’ve danced around the subject a few times already, but I haven’t directly dealt with Edward D. Wood Jr. in this column yet. Frankly, to do so seems rather superfluous. If you’re reading these words, you are in all likelihood intimately familiar with the great man’s work. So I’m not going to do any kind of survey or intro here. Instead, this is something of a plea.

Cult film fans have long been used to having to view their faves under conditions that are often less than ideal. Ten or fifteen years ago, befo...e the full onslaught of the DVD, and when most people didn’t own laser disc players, awful bootleg VHS was often the only alternative. Fortunately, this was never the case with Wood. There were plenty of legit releases of his work, especially those that had fallen into the public domain.

A few weeks ago, I profiled Cult Epics, which has become the reigning king when it comes to DVD companies specializing in vintage sexploitation, erotica, and the like. That position is likely to remain pretty secure for some time, what with the release of such treasures as The Irving Klaw Classics box set, but there are a couple of recent contenders for the throne that have just come to my attention, so I thought I’d say a few words about them. These are Private Screening Collection and Severin Films.

< ...>Both firms have about a half-dozen or so titles out so far, and both specialize exclusively (to date) in the erotic (right down to their logos). There’s a further point of connection, too, if only an indirect one: Private Screening’s focus is on producer Harry Alan Towers, while Severin has released two films by Jess Franco, who made several films for Towers (though you’ll have to see Blue Underground for those collaborations). The similarities end there, though.