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Windows 98
Nov 13, 2005

HTTP 400: Bad post

Mel Mudkiper posted:

pretty sure thats the movie that broke me

Its hosed up when you have to watch Salo to wash the taste out of your mouth

Seriously true. I’ve seen a hugely significant portion of the films on the nasties list, and Gestapo’s Last Orgy is like light years beyond depravity compared to the rest. It legitimately puts the more famous films like Salo and Cannibal Holocaust to shame. It’s absolute pure filth and will test your ability to sit through 90 minutes.

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Neo Rasa
Mar 8, 2007
Everyone should play DUKE games.

:dukedog:

LORD OF BOOTY posted:

Also, the one with the weird "child" is Burial Ground. I actually like that movie, in spite of its... quirks; the zombie makeup is loving amazing.

I like this movie quite a bit but it really is weird as hell/bad in a lot of ways, but I dig it.

The zombie makeup is one of the most interesting things about it as it seems very polarizing - I've only ever seen people think that it's either horrible or amazing with little in between. My opinion kind of shifts a little every time I watch it. I will say though that any time they're darkly lit? Holy poo poo it owns, also I like that they're totally silent like the Blind Dead. And the shot towards the end where one of the survivors breaks into the chapel to gets the priests' attention but oh poo poo they're all zombies already! is awesome. I like how the zombies feel so stagnant and like a genuinely entropic force on the world and I do think the makeup is a big part of that. The title card at the end has two typos in it, "nigths" instead of nights and "profecy" instead of prophecy. Also I love that it ends with that title card because, what? So janky but I really do enjoy the movie despite its flaws.

I've seen and Italian dub of it where Peter Bark's voice is clearly an adult guy in his 20s/30s, like they both tried and didn't at the same time. :3:

Windows 98
Nov 13, 2005

HTTP 400: Bad post
Pig (1998)


https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xx2okj
— Watch Here

I think this was a few years away and never made it on a nasties list. But this film is 22 minutes long and will fill your body with Satan if you watch the whole thing. I highly suggest you give it a view instead of another episode of The Office for the 700th+ time.


Begotten (1990)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gXIaTnT1zE

Begotten somehow also managed to not make it on an officials Nasties list but absolutely belongs on one. For those of you who have not seen it, basically image like sitting down to watch the actual film of what’s on the tape in The Ring. Read the Wiki article while you watch, still won’t make sense. But god drat this is a grime and gross bloody mess that deserves to be on the list, officially.

Windows 98 fucked around with this message at 09:02 on Dec 29, 2018

Hollismason
Jun 30, 2007
FEEL FREE TO DISREGARD THIS POST

It is guaranteed to be lazy, ignorant, and/or uninformed.
Video Nasties is a very specific term used to describe films that were banned in Britain the official "list" is like 72 films but there have been other films that were "banned" but not on the Video Nasty list. The phrase was coined I believe by a British Parliament member to describe the videos and that's where the name comes from.

Really what your just talking about is extreme horror or exploitation films.

Cause to be a video nasty you have to actually meet a criteria which is " Be on the list, be banned in Britain". Otherwise its just a banned film which there are a lot of.

Like for example all of the Guinea Pig movies were banned films but they're not actual Video Nasties.

Here is a complete list :

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls051364249/

Also, a lot of films kind of snuck in under the radar meaning that there were so many videos being produced it really wasn't possible to "ban" all of them a good example being like City of the Living Dead being on the list but afaik The New York Ripper was not ( although it was banned in Germany I believe).

So its this whole weird thing where videos you think would think would have made that list didn't and some that are on it are rather tame.

Really the list was just sensationalism by politicians similar to the video game violence panic in the 1990s.

Hollismason fucked around with this message at 16:31 on Dec 29, 2018

Mel Mudkiper
Jan 19, 2012

At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Hollismason posted:

Video Nasties is a very specific term used to describe films that were banned in Britain the official "list" is like 72 films but there have been other films that were "banned" but not on the Video Nasty list. The phrase was coined I believe by a British Parliament member to describe the videos and that's where the name comes from.

Really what your just talking about is extreme horror or exploitation films.

Cause to be a video nasty you have to actually meet a criteria which is " Be on the list, be banned in Britain". Otherwise its just a banned film which there are a lot of.

As I said in the OP, for this thread we can use a broader definition of Video Nasty to include not just the official list, but also the films that were of the same zeitgeist even if they didn’t make the list.

Windows 98
Nov 13, 2005

HTTP 400: Bad post
Don’t be such a party pooper Hollis

Davros1
Jul 19, 2007

You've got to admit, you are kind of implausible



Don't forget about the best thing to come out of the Video Nasty scare:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPrwTsjwOxE

The Damned reunited to do this show, then got into a fight and broke up afterwards

Bluedeanie
Jul 20, 2008

It's no longer a blue world, Max. Where could we go?



Does swap.avi count as a video nasty?

Neo Rasa
Mar 8, 2007
Everyone should play DUKE games.

:dukedog:

Hollismason posted:

Video Nasties is a very specific term used to describe films that were banned in Britain the official "list" is like 72 films but there have been other films that were "banned" but not on the Video Nasty list. The phrase was coined I believe by a British Parliament member to describe the videos and that's where the name comes from.

Really what your just talking about is extreme horror or exploitation films.

Cause to be a video nasty you have to actually meet a criteria which is " Be on the list, be banned in Britain". Otherwise its just a banned film which there are a lot of.

Like for example all of the Guinea Pig movies were banned films but they're not actual Video Nasties.

Here is a complete list :

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls051364249/

Also, a lot of films kind of snuck in under the radar meaning that there were so many videos being produced it really wasn't possible to "ban" all of them a good example being like City of the Living Dead being on the list but afaik The New York Ripper was not ( although it was banned in Germany I believe).

So its this whole weird thing where videos you think would think would have made that list didn't and some that are on it are rather tame.

Really the list was just sensationalism by politicians similar to the video game violence panic in the 1990s.

I don't mean this against just you personally, but if you're going to be this exacting with the term, then your own post is objectively false - "Video Nasties" at the time and today referred to way more movies than the 39 specific ones that were successfully prosecuted and banned under the VRA and was a term before the list itself even existed. But even just from a legal standpoint, the term include section 3 of the DPP's list which was an additional 82 films that could be confiscated but specifically not prosecuted under a "lesser obscenity" thing where if a shop was found to have them the person in charge could go on the record to basically say "Oh sorry yeah that video IS pretty nasty now that you mention it I'll have to turn in all copies of it ASAP wink wink."

On top of that the 72 movie list everyone touts includes both the 39 flicks in section 1 of the list (these were the only movies that were actually successfully prosecuted and banned!) as well as the 33 section 2 flicks that were released but with cuts (or in some cases they failed to actually get released officially, but not by because they were banned, they just didn't get a certificate immediately and then no one picked them up for release).

So if you wanted to make a narrow definition of what a Video Nasty is I'd say it's appropriate to count those additional 82 movies even if they weren't technically banned - they're straight up part of the list - and including them makes it easy to see how movies with similarly transgressively perceived content would be appropriate subject matter in a thread talking about the ins and outs of why movies that did make the list were the way they were.

Regarding The New York Ripper and Maniac which get brought up as movies that "slipped under the radar" often, both of these movies were absolutely banned in the UK for years. They just weren't on the Video Nasties list because they were banned in the early 80s window where politicians were raising concerns about these movies but before the VRA itself was actually passed. You could go so far as to say they're both a part of why the VRA came to be.

At this point in time "video nasty" was already a commonplace term in the UK for any movie that would be criticized for being violent or otherwise, well, nasty, by the press and religious groups and stuff. It was never a very specific term even when the list was made and it's kind of pointless to limit its colloquial use today when it's not like we don't have the official lists available at our fingertips thanks to the internet anyway.

Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 17:41 on Dec 29, 2018

Franchescanado
Feb 23, 2013

If it wasn't for disappointment
I wouldn't have any appointment

Grimey Drawer

Windows 98 posted:

For anyone going “hey what’s probably the most hateful and brutal film on the video nasties list” my vote has to go to Gestapo’s Last Orgy.

I read a synopsis and this sounds unbearably ghastly. I watched a couple of the Ilsa flicks in November, and there were moments in the first two that were hard to stomach, but that is just over-the-top bleak.

Nazisploitation flicks that tantalize the torture of Jews are bizarre to me. Is the audience watching them because they want to see people tortured? Do they think Nazis are sexy? Do they hate Jews? Is it fun because it's wrong? I don't really see the appeal for the audience.

Hollismason
Jun 30, 2007
FEEL FREE TO DISREGARD THIS POST

It is guaranteed to be lazy, ignorant, and/or uninformed.
Its still very specific to England and not just like all movies. I dunno if you should count ones not on the list also there's more than one list if films. Your just talking about extreme horror and banned movies. Like Cat 3 films from China

The initial list is even nebulous as you said because some were prosecuted and some weren't

I don't think New Ripper was banned pretty sure it's not on any of the list and skated through but regardless the fact remains that a lot of the so called dvideo nasties we're just something for politicians to point to as a moral decay of society similar to American politicians in video games.

Neo Rasa
Mar 8, 2007
Everyone should play DUKE games.

:dukedog:

Franchescanado posted:

I read a synopsis and this sounds unbearably ghastly. I watched a couple of the Ilsa flicks in November, and there were moments in the first two that were hard to stomach, but that is just over-the-top bleak.

Nazisploitation flicks that tantalize the torture of Jews are bizarre to me. Is the audience watching them because they want to see people tortured? Do they think Nazis are sexy? Do they hate Jews? Is it fun because it's wrong? I don't really see the appeal for the audience.

Gestapo's Last Orgy is insane. Some of the worst stuff in it isn't as brazen on screen as you'd expect but between that and how it's described and discussed by the characters - which I assume disappointed some people who saw it back in the day when at one point it was released with the title "Caligula, Reincarnated as Hitler!" - it really still is an unbearably ghastly movie. I think part of it too is that while it's obviously a very cheap movie like the other Nazi exploitation movies of the time it's JUST well made enough and takes itself seriously enough that it's hard to dismiss as easily as stuff like the Ilsa movies.

The way Gestapo's Last Orgy and some of the other Nazi exploitation movies are framed, it was less that they thought Nazis were sexy at first, and that it really began as way to "legitimize" the exploitative trash in the movies themselves. Same reason so many Nazi exploitation movies open with some sage quote from Nietzsche or whatever. Like this isn't trash you're watching, it's uh, uhm, historical fiction! You can see the same thing in Europe with all of sleezy movies with titles like "Housewife Report" that are framed like a documentary about suburban life or how lots of Category 3 films are set in the distant past. All three of these were sold with an important distinction from other exploitation movies. You weren't told you were going to see shocking stuff, you were told you were going to see shocking TRUE STORY THIS IS HOW IT REALLY WENT DOWN IN REAL LIFE stuff.

I never understood the mindset myself, but maybe they wanted to balance a line of being as nasty as possible while still giving folks a subtle out to see it without feeling guilty about it or something?

Neo Rasa
Mar 8, 2007
Everyone should play DUKE games.

:dukedog:

Hollismason posted:

Its still very specific to England and not just like all movies. I dunno if you should count ones not on the list also there's more than one list if films. Your just talking about extreme horror and banned movies. Like Cat 3 films from China

The initial list is even nebulous as you said because some were prosecuted and some weren't

I don't think New Ripper was banned pretty sure it's not on any of the list and skated through but regardless the fact remains that a lot of the so called dvideo nasties we're just something for politicians to point to as a moral decay of society similar to American politicians in video games.

The New York Ripper was, per my post, absolutely banned by the BBFC in 1982 and was not released there officially until 2002 and even then still had half a minute or so cut from it.

And to that end, if you would compare this to the US' reaction to violent video games in the early 90s, when people do talk about violent video games if someone mentions Splatterhouse no one rolls up to say "Uh actually guys that's a Japanese game and only Doom and Mortal Kombat and Night Trap were complained about by US politicians in the 90s so..." Because that's what the list was at the end of the day, the most infamous by reputation flicks rather than necessarily the worst flicks. There's nothing wrong with bringing up Chinese Torture Chamber Story (hell folks have already been talking about Hong Kong category 3 films in this thread) and other stuff of that ilk in a thread called "Video Nasties: Art, Capitalism, and VHS." I'd say anything that came out on VHS is fair game. :D

Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Dec 29, 2018

Hollismason
Jun 30, 2007
FEEL FREE TO DISREGARD THIS POST

It is guaranteed to be lazy, ignorant, and/or uninformed.
I just don't think you can use the term to be all encompassing. It's very specific to a country and period of time. Like we're talking about VHS exploitation films is fine but I wouldn't refer to anything modern as a video nasty.

Sort of like how the term kind of changed into or morphed into the phrase "torture porn".

Edit
A actual good VHS film from that era is Evil Dead Trap and the continuing series.

It borrows a tremendous amount from Italian horror films of the 70s even down to the sound track. It's basically a Japanese giallo.

Hollismason fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Dec 29, 2018

Neo Rasa
Mar 8, 2007
Everyone should play DUKE games.

:dukedog:

Hollismason posted:

I just don't think you can use the term to be all encompassing. It's very specific to a country and period of time. Like we're talking about VHS exploitation films is fine but I wouldn't refer to anything modern as a video nasty.

I think we have to agree to disagree, the only other thing I could say is that I'm assuming anyone who clicks on this thread and even glances at the first post will be aware of what a video nasty is. No one's going to read this thread and then become the laughingstock of their horror circle because they say that, I don't know, Scorpion's Revenge is a video nasty in the legal sense that was banned in the UK when it wasn't.


Hollismason posted:

Edit
A actual good VHS film from that era is Evil Dead Trap and the continuing series.

It borrows a tremendous amount from Italian horror films of the 70s even down to the sound track. It's basically a Japanese giallo.

Evil Dead Trap owns. :)

Windows 98
Nov 13, 2005

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Franchescanado posted:

I read a synopsis and this sounds unbearably ghastly. I watched a couple of the Ilsa flicks in November, and there were moments in the first two that were hard to stomach, but that is just over-the-top bleak.

Nazisploitation flicks that tantalize the torture of Jews are bizarre to me. Is the audience watching them because they want to see people tortured? Do they think Nazis are sexy? Do they hate Jews? Is it fun because it's wrong? I don't really see the appeal for the audience.

I think it’s just one of those “it’s taboo so I want to see it” things. Part of the “fun” is that it’s so insanely depraved and horrific. It’s not something you see every day (well, you shouldn’t anyway). Truly just an awful novelty to test yourself with. I myself am Jewish and I’m relatively a fan of Nazisploitation, but because normally the Nazis get their poo poo kicked in at the end. Also, I feel like laughing at Nazis is the appropriate stance to take, and Nazisploitation is so goofy almost always that it’s hard not to laugh. Additionally, as someone who enjoys watching things that are intentionally made to offend is sort of fun for me, and Nazisploitation by its very nature is designed to offend. In moderate doses in the proper mood they can be fun. But....

Something about the tone of Gestapo’s Last Orgy is suspiciously pro-Nazi. If you’ve seen a bunch of Nazi stuff you can immediately tell something is off about it. It doesn’t fit the Nazisploitation mold tonally. Not only that it’s truly EXTREME. I know a lot of gore hounds and exploitation fans say that all the time. And frankly it’s not so much gore that’s extreme. The depravity is so over the top it’s truly a sight to behold that no one should bother watching unless they really want to test their morality meters.

Hollismason
Jun 30, 2007
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Like Men behind the Sun level or like just extreme stuff.

Mel Mudkiper
Jan 19, 2012

At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Franchescanado posted:

Nazisploitation flicks that tantalize the torture of Jews are bizarre to me. Is the audience watching them because they want to see people tortured? Do they think Nazis are sexy? Do they hate Jews? Is it fun because it's wrong? I don't really see the appeal for the audience.

I've thought about this, and the answer is the fantasy of total moral inhibition. The romance of naziism and the concentration camp is that those in power were not held back by either ethics or laws. They were given complete and total ethical freedom. The fantasy for the viewer is to be given the freedom to do whatever they wanted, no matter how hateful or dark, without consequence.

However, if you have even an inkling of empathy, which most of us do, the films come off as almost unwatchable. But they are not meant for us. As I said before, the Video Nasty thrived on giving very marginal markets exactly what they wanted to see.

Mel Mudkiper
Jan 19, 2012

At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Hollismason posted:

I just don't think you can use the term to be all encompassing. It's very specific to a country and period of time. Like we're talking about VHS exploitation films is fine but I wouldn't refer to anything modern as a video nasty.

I would argue the fact that exploitation films were primarily disseminated through the cinema while video nasties were primarily VHS is a significant difference. VHS exploitation films don't exist, because the nature of the market of exploitation films was inseparable from the theatres in which they were shown. I do agree however that timeframe is important. Video Nasties, as a genre, began around 1979 and ended around 1988. That is when the VHS market went from "extreme micro markets" of the video nasties to "cost/profit filmmaking" seen by my favorite studio of the 90s, Full Moon.

Because there is not really a defined genre term for hyper-specific VHS films from 1979-1988 meant to appeal to extremely niche audiences through explicit violence and sexuality, I tend to use Video Nasty as a catch all term.

Which leads to my next effort post I will be working on

Eli Roth is a loving disgrace

Mel Mudkiper fucked around with this message at 20:12 on Dec 29, 2018

Hollismason
Jun 30, 2007
FEEL FREE TO DISREGARD THIS POST

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I'd put that a little later and say it was round the mid 90s really because otherwise your ignoring the entire Asian ( except Japan) and South American video market boom which was slightly behind the US in terms of time frame.

I'd consider the end to be 1997 and the end of the Cat 3 era for China.

Japan is it's own separate thing where the genre still survives really.

So like those types if films never really "ended" because you had places like Spain , Mexico , China , Brazil etc... Carry on with the video markets.

I'd say when the local video stores started closing was the death knell.

Hollismason fucked around with this message at 20:25 on Dec 29, 2018

Mel Mudkiper
Jan 19, 2012

At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Hollismason posted:

I'd put that a little later and say it was round the mid 90s really because otherwise your ignoring the entire Asian ( except Japan) and South American video market boom which was slightly behind the US in terms of time frame.

I'd consider the end to be 1997 and the end of the Cat 3 era for China.

Japan is it's own separate thing where the genre still survives really.

So like those types if films never really "ended" because you had places like Spain , Mexico , China , Brazil etc... Carry on with the video markets.

I'd say when the local video stores started closing was the death knell.

I'd argue that the video nasty as a genre is kind of exclusive to Europe and the US tho, especially since the exoticism of the "other" is such an essential narrative point in so many of the films. The dehumanization of peoples in Latin America, Africa, and Asia were essential to the genre. Once they started producing their own content, that became something entirely different.

Hollismason
Jun 30, 2007
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They produced content for American audiences just like Italy did. Like Shaw Brother Golden Harvest were heavy in the American video market during that time. So was Japan they weren't solely relegated to hose countries.

Like a lot of those production companies that produced exploitation films were Italian and Chinese. Japanese as well

I'm saying though the VHS market was still very much alive in those countries when it was kind of ending in the USA.

So those films were still being sold in foreign markets even into the mid 90s.

Like Evil Dead was I think still made on VHS until like the late 90s it was just for foerign markets like Brazil , Mexico , South America etc..


Basically as these " third world " countries developed and more people were able to afford VHS players and VHS players fell in price those markets opened up.

So those same videos from the 80s were marketed in those countries when that happened.

Hollismason fucked around with this message at 20:38 on Dec 29, 2018

Windows 98
Nov 13, 2005

HTTP 400: Bad post
It blows my mind that Shogun Assassin is on the list but not Shogun’s Sadism

DeimosRising
Oct 17, 2005

¡Hola SEA!


Hollismason posted:

Like Men behind the Sun level or like just extreme stuff.

It’s somewhat like MBtS in terms of content, but with a lot more rape. It also has a rat scene, but instead of a cat it’s a woman’s head being stuck in a box of rats and they’re actually fucken guinea pigs I think, it’s a rare funny moment in a pretty nasty piece of work. Oh but then she gets raped and it’s not funny anymore

It doesn’t have any real atrocity or autopsy footage that I recall, like Black Sun does

Hollismason
Jun 30, 2007
FEEL FREE TO DISREGARD THIS POST

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That reminds me of Red to Kill which is a Cat 3 film and VHS Chinese film which is basically a 85 minute rape scene.

It's just a really hosed up film.

Neo Rasa
Mar 8, 2007
Everyone should play DUKE games.

:dukedog:
I'm glad the upper edge of where it ends was pushed into the 90s not just for category 3 films on the whole but because in the 90s there were like three or four sequels to Men Behind The Sun (one of which was directed by Godfrey Ho!!!).

I, Butthole
Jun 30, 2007

Begin the operations of the gas chambers, gas schools, gas universities, gas libraries, gas museums, gas dance halls, and gas threads, etcetera.
I DEMAND IT

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Eli Roth is a loving disgrace

Fuckin hell yeah wanna read this post.

Having (perhaps fortunately) missed the Cannibal Holocaust chat, I will recommend Calum Waddel's book on it as part of the Devil's Advocate series. He's currently doing a lot for old cult/exploitation film over at the UK's 88 Films and is also currently doing a doc on Cat 3 films, I believe. And while it's not directly about video nasties, Jack Sargeant's writing on underground films is nasties-adjacent and is well worth checking out.

E: although, thinking about it, I probably owe a lot to Roth regarding my extreme horror film fascinations. I slipped a Hostel DVD into my parents rental pile when I was 14-ish (mainly from the Tarantino connection, because I didn't really have any clue about it) and it's spiralled from there.

Hollismason
Jun 30, 2007
FEEL FREE TO DISREGARD THIS POST

It is guaranteed to be lazy, ignorant, and/or uninformed.

Neo Rasa posted:

I'm glad the upper edge of where it ends was pushed into the 90s not just for category 3 films on the whole but because in the 90s there were like three or four sequels to Men Behind The Sun (one of which was directed by Godfrey Ho!!!).

Early 90s is easily where the best stuff from Japan was coming out. Like before they became obsessed with CGI blood for that terrible ten year period

Atomic Robo-Kid
Aug 18, 2008

.Blast.Processing.



I believe this release of LHOTL is the only one to have the alternate "Krug and Company" cut. I haven't watched it but there's a special feature about the movie bring shown uncut in the UK for the first time.

FAB Press has done some fantastic books on horror movies.






Nekromantik is one of my favorite horror films. When it got announced for re release on blu ray I would check constantly online a release date.

Id still consider these movies to be somewhat taboo. Put it mildly, they are not easy to discuss. Anyone talking about these movies has to acknowledge the rape and necrophilia that occurs.

Mel Mudkiper
Jan 19, 2012

At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.
Last House on the Left is a tragic film for me because the bumbling cop subplot destroyed what was otherwise a sublime film

Windows 98
Nov 13, 2005

HTTP 400: Bad post

Atomic Robo-Kid posted:

Nekromantik is one of my favorite horror films. When it got announced for re release on blu ray I would check constantly online a release date.

Id still consider these movies to be somewhat taboo. Put it mildly, they are not easy to discuss. Anyone talking about these movies has to acknowledge the rape and necrophilia that occurs.

That Blu-ray of Nekromantik was put out by Cult Epics. The guy who ran the company is actually the director of that movie Pig (1999) I posted about earlier that Hollis says we can’t talk about haha. They did a coffee table book of all their releases (not all are Blu-ray unfortunately) with interviews and behind the scenes and all sorts of good stuff. It was a GoFundMe campaign and I paid $70 for the book. It kept getting delayed over and over again and eventually came like 8 months after it was supposed to. When it arrived the corners of the hard cover were kind of bent and hosed up and I was actually pretty upset that I paid $70 for the book and waited forever and never asked to be refunded and it finally arrived all hosed up. So I contacted them and asked if I could exchange my copy for a not damaged one. They said they couldn’t because apparently the delays were due to the owner of the company committing suicide, and they were unsure if they were going to continue to operate, and had no more books because they were essentially made to order. The guy signed my book before he passed so there’s that.

When I get home tonight I’ll take some pictures. Only a few hundred of us have the book I think it was a real small campaign. Aside from the corners this book is one of the coolest exploitation purchases I’ve made, and I have a pretty cool collection.

Windows 98 fucked around with this message at 23:11 on Dec 29, 2018

Atomic Robo-Kid
Aug 18, 2008

.Blast.Processing.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Last House on the Left is a tragic film for me because the bumbling cop subplot destroyed what was otherwise a sublime film

So Sadie riding Krugs lap discussing Sigmund Frued was ok? How about the soft la la song while Mari and Phylis get ice cream?

The movie definitely has a lot of tonal weird spots.

ruddiger
Jun 3, 2004

Which video nasty has a couple of parents getting absolutely owned by a huge log blowing right through their station wagon window in front of their little kids? One of the local theaters in LA was doing a video nasties retrospective and I managed to catch that one and a few others. They had Johnny Ryan do the artwork for their flyers, I still have mine somewhere in my apt back in LA.

https://www.amoeba.com/blog/2012/10/video-maniacs/cinefamily-presents-nightmare-city-a-video-nasties-celebration.html

https://vimeo.com/50181719

ruddiger fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Dec 29, 2018

BeanpolePeckerwood
May 4, 2004

I MAY LOOK LIKE SHIT BUT IM ALSO DUMB AS FUCK



Neo Rasa posted:

Gestapo's Last Orgy is insane. Some of the worst stuff in it isn't as brazen on screen as you'd expect but between that and how it's described and discussed by the characters - which I assume disappointed some people who saw it back in the day when at one point it was released with the title "Caligula, Reincarnated as Hitler!" - it really still is an unbearably ghastly movie. I think part of it too is that while it's obviously a very cheap movie like the other Nazi exploitation movies of the time it's JUST well made enough and takes itself seriously enough that it's hard to dismiss as easily as stuff like the Ilsa movies.

The way Gestapo's Last Orgy and some of the other Nazi exploitation movies are framed, it was less that they thought Nazis were sexy at first, and that it really began as way to "legitimize" the exploitative trash in the movies themselves. Same reason so many Nazi exploitation movies open with some sage quote from Nietzsche or whatever. Like this isn't trash you're watching, it's uh, uhm, historical fiction! You can see the same thing in Europe with all of sleezy movies with titles like "Housewife Report" that are framed like a documentary about suburban life or how lots of Category 3 films are set in the distant past. All three of these were sold with an important distinction from other exploitation movies. You weren't told you were going to see shocking stuff, you were told you were going to see shocking TRUE STORY THIS IS HOW IT REALLY WENT DOWN IN REAL LIFE stuff.

I never understood the mindset myself, but maybe they wanted to balance a line of being as nasty as possible while still giving folks a subtle out to see it without feeling guilty about it or something?

But the western fetish with nazi style is completely suss-able. The Nazis were absolutely obsessed with sexual aesthetics and the power dynamics conveyed in turn, in a way that has influenced S&M culture for 80 years, and for some that type of fetish aesthetic is therapeutic for some weird reason. I dunno, trauma is a strange thing.

See part 2 of this essay by Susan Sontag, which is a classic if you've never read it

http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/classes/33d/33dTexts/SontagFascinFascism75.htm

BeanpolePeckerwood
May 4, 2004

I MAY LOOK LIKE SHIT BUT IM ALSO DUMB AS FUCK



Also I recently watched The House That Jack Built and it's pretty much a textbook example of a contemporary exploitation film.

Windows 98
Nov 13, 2005

HTTP 400: Bad post

BeanpolePeckerwood posted:

But the western fetish with nazi style is completely suss-able. The Nazis were absolutely obsessed with sexual aesthetics and the power dynamics conveyed in turn, in a way that has influenced S&M culture for 80 years, and for some that type of fetish aesthetic is therapeutic for some weird reason. I dunno, trauma is a strange thing.

See part 2 of this essay by Susan Sontag, which is a classic if you've never read it

http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/classes/33d/33dTexts/SontagFascinFascism75.htm

I don’t believe it’s on the list but Salon Kitty is an amazing example of this

Mel Mudkiper
Jan 19, 2012

At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Atomic Robo-Kid posted:

So Sadie riding Krugs lap discussing Sigmund Frued was ok? How about the soft la la song while Mari and Phylis get ice cream?

The movie definitely has a lot of tonal weird spots.

The comedy subplot completely poisoned the message and experience of the movie in a way those other scenes didnt

Neo Rasa
Mar 8, 2007
Everyone should play DUKE games.

:dukedog:

BeanpolePeckerwood posted:

But the western fetish with nazi style is completely suss-able. The Nazis were absolutely obsessed with sexual aesthetics and the power dynamics conveyed in turn, in a way that has influenced S&M culture for 80 years, and for some that type of fetish aesthetic is therapeutic for some weird reason. I dunno, trauma is a strange thing.

See part 2 of this essay by Susan Sontag, which is a classic if you've never read it

http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/classes/33d/33dTexts/SontagFascinFascism75.htm

Oh yeah this is totally and that is indeed a GOAT level essay, just in the case of some of those 70s Nazi movies and Gestapo's Last Orgy especially or the Ilsa movie with the scene where they cut Uschi Digard's (?) arm open and place live insects on the open wound and stuff that there's multiple "appeals" there beyond just "look at these vulnerable bodies getting destroyed" or "Dyanne Thorne in SS garb ordering the torture of concentration camp prisoners is hot." To quote Sontag's essay, "The solemn eroticizing of fascism must be distinguished from a sophisticated playing with cultural horror, where there is an element of the put-on."

But in classic grindhouse form a lot of these movies try to have their cake and eat it too to get as many people to give them a dollar as possible. Like Hollismason is 100% right when he points out how many of the Nazisploitation movies are completely ridiculous, and are a put on because they often end with the Nazis getting owned. But some of them, regardless of their intention, just don't play out that way at all and it's hard not to read them as generally, like, pro-Nazi. And you can see an easy line from that to movies and nerd stuff that comes out today that is released with the premise of playing with cultural/historical horror or being a put on, but is in reality a solemn manufactured nostalgia. That goes beyond the personal fantasy escapism of Nazi sex fetish stuff and I think that's why some of those flicks besides Gestapo's Last Orgy feels that way to lots of folks.

Sareini
Jun 7, 2010

ruddiger posted:

Which video nasty has a couple of parents getting absolutely owned by a huge log blowing right through their station wagon window in front of their little kids? One of the local theaters in LA was doing a video nasties retrospective and I managed to catch that one and a few others. They had Johnny Ryan do the artwork for their flyers, I still have mine somewhere in my apt back in LA.

https://www.amoeba.com/blog/2012/10/video-maniacs/cinefamily-presents-nightmare-city-a-video-nasties-celebration.html

https://vimeo.com/50181719

That is (most likely) Nightmare Maker, or to use its original title, Night Warning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Warning

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Choco1980
Feb 22, 2013

I fell in love with a Video Nasty
I've totally missed that this thread is a thing. Horror and Censorship are two fascinating subjects for me, so I've done quite a bit of research into the topic myself. I've even started doing a lecture panel on the subject at a nearby annual geeky convention.

A little late to the Cannibal Holocaust discussion, but yeah, the OP totally is missing that the film is deliberately trying to accuse the active viewer. It's part of the whole take it has on the Mondo movie genre that it's harshly criticizing, which whole appeal were "come see this lurid and outrageous stuff that we totally assure you is for real!" and is saying "How dare you create a market for that sort of thing" It's out of print now, but "Sweet & Savage: The World Through The Shockumentary Film Lens" is a pretty comprehensive book on the subject of the Mondo world from an objective perspective.

Regarding the Nazisploitation fad, I think it falls back on how there are lots of cycles in Italian cinema where they simply try to jump on bandwagons without even really paying attention to what makes the wagon worth following (see: peplum, zombie films, post apocalypse stuff, etc) and in this case they jumped onto chasing after the success The Night Porter had, which is full of sex and violence and a former SS officer reigniting a love affair with a former camp prisoner--In fact, I'd say Gestapo's Last Orgy explicitly is trying to ape this part of the plot with their framing device. So many of these types of films are attempting to draw a cartoon bolt on a can and tell you they're selling the lightning in a bottle.


ruddiger posted:

Which video nasty has a couple of parents getting absolutely owned by a huge log blowing right through their station wagon window in front of their little kids? One of the local theaters in LA was doing a video nasties retrospective and I managed to catch that one and a few others. They had Johnny Ryan do the artwork for their flyers, I still have mine somewhere in my apt back in LA.

https://www.amoeba.com/blog/2012/10/video-maniacs/cinefamily-presents-nightmare-city-a-video-nasties-celebration.html

https://vimeo.com/50181719

Night Warning aka Butcher Baker Nightmare Maker. It's not all that graphic, but it feels super duper sleazy anyways. Also, Reb Brown plays about the biggest rear end in a top hat cop of all time in it.

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