BACK CATALOGUE: SYNAPSE

When one of the most respected indie DVD labels agreed to let me mine their back catalogue I was ecstatic. Don May JR. head of Synapse is by all accounts one of the good guys and one of the reasons people look to small labels like this with increasing respect. He treats the material he chooses to release with the respect it deserves and often goes through hell and high water to get his product up to snuff. Some day some smart journalist (maybe even May himself) will write a Bruce Campbell styled reminiscence of what it was like producing DVD’s of some of the most beloved cult films of all time. I’ve only had the pleasure of talking to him two or three times but in every conversation I’ve had with Don he’s brought up hilarious anecdotes about dealing with the talent (and the not so talented), wrestling over rights with the big boys and struggling to make technicians understand that this stuff deserves to be treated with respect.

Street Trash is a rather amazing flick by any standards. No matter how you feel about the aggressive vulgarity that drives it Street Trash finally emerges as a sort of street philosopher’s middle finger extended towards censorship. Does that make it a good movie? It is entertaining but to any thoughtful person provokes questions. Even allowing for the sort of broad comedic tradition it stems from, the movie seems too interested in pushing the envelope of taste, suggesting that if anything you see troubles you then you just aren’t hip enough to get it. Even allowing for impossibly broad taste the most troubling thing about Street Trash is the way it makes use of our prejudices and ignorance about “winos,”, “bums” and mental illness. The film jokes about these things with some social awareness but the mean spiritedness, the basic empty headedness, is all too apparent. While I don’t believe that grown men and women tend to change their physical behavior simply because they are exposed to film violence I do believe film is an excellent motivator of thought and empathy and Street Trash, though it does display some empathy for its mostly poor, homeless and mentally ill characters it also reinforces a lot of the misconceptions we all have about them. Even after having reviewed the extensive supplementary materials, I have to say if guilty pleasures got any guiltier it would be difficult to call them pleasures at all. Patently offensive, at times hysterically funny, if Street Trash is the ultimate argument for art for arts sake (and I ain’t sayin’ it ain’t art) it may ironically also be the best argument for a little more self restraint on the part of those who create art. As a friend of mine said, “Free speech is one thing but is this all you can do with it?”

The extensive supplemental material here makes this a must for anyone interested in modern horror films. The 2 hour documentary The Meltdown Memoirs has to be one of the most thorough and interesting film docs I’ve ever seen. There is literally everything anyone could want to know about this project available here.

Maniac Cop stars a then largely unknown Bruce Campbell as a cop framed for the revenge killings of an undead fellow police officer. Wildly over the top, filled with great action this is guilty pleasure stuff to be sure but of a far more palatable sort than Street Trash and its pleasures don’t end with the presence of Campbell. Also present and accounted for is genre stalwart Tom Atkins, who’s appeared in a number of John Carpenter films. Lastly, in the title role, is the startling Robert Z’Dar. Z’Dar is best known for his constant presence on the convention circuit these days owing mostly to his appearance here as a hulking undead policeman bent on revenge. Campbell and Atkins play members of the force who have to fight the big boys downtown to clear Campbell’s name and get the zombie bad guy. That’s all you really need to know except that this is fine, unusually atmospheric little number.

Castle of Blood purports to be unrated and international in the cut of its jib. Of course these days we understand that where once exploitation filmmakers lured us into cinemas with the promise of salacious stuff they seldom really delivered and that is the same here. Some mild and unnecessary top-less-ness doesn’t detract too much from a highly atmospheric example of golden age Italian spookshow. And the presence of Barbara Steele at the height of her powers is just one more reason to make sure that this gets a place on the shelf next to Black Sunday and Black Sabbath. It’s sobering for classic horror fans to realize that they can now fill an entire shelf with the foreign horror of the 30s thru the 60s. Start watching enough of those films and they begin to compete for your affections pretty aggressively. No matter the charms of Frank, Drac, Wolfie, and Mummy these foreign horrors are absolutely must see, must own, must digest filmmaking. The Casa Negra label should be referenced here.

The Brain That Wouldn’t Die is presented here in a restored version. Don’t worry, despite the twenty minutes of additional footage the movie is still unimaginably bad in the same twonky loveable way it always has been, and remains, in my opinion, one of the most consistently entertaining of the so-called so-bad-it’s-good films. What is really needed here is a Joe Bob Briggs commentary but barring any substantial extras this is available at a good price and really contains the only good print of the complete theatrical version of the film available. Remember wearing your mothers bra on your head when you were a kid. Remember dancing around the room trying to get a laugh. You don't? Then I pity you. Anyway the monster here actually needs a bra on his head. In fact I'm pretty sure he inspired Madonna to create her infamous conical costume.

Likewise with The Beast From Haunted Cave, I made it through this with just me, myself and the TV for company. This is The Crawling Eye level bad filmmaking. Directed by Monte Hillman who also directed Two Lane Blacktop this goes on the shelf with the Brain That Wouldn’t Die as a courtesy in my opinion. The lack of extras isn’t hard to figure out here since the film itself is so bad that it would be hard to imagine generating any. But if Beast demonstrates anything then it’s the power of the moving image and little cheap costuming to hold the human at attention. One could easily imagine being captivated by this stuff as a kid and there was still enough of the kid in me to find myself smiling as the hour and half this film took over my lazy Saturday afternoon.