Chiller Con Wrap-Up + DVD Gossip

[bruce h]

Last weekend I made the trek up to Chiller Theatre’s biannual convention in Northern New Jersey and once again the show proved to be worth the time and effort it takes to get there.

As usual the guests are more sci-fi/classic horror oriented, but don’t let that deter you from making the trip, as there are always several “psychotronic” celebrities around to satiate the “cult” audiences. Personally, I was much more excited to meet Bill Grefe than the Lost In Space cast or Pugsley Adams, although Richard Kiel was pretty damn cool. Tracy Lords actually looks like she’s starting to show her age, Ted Mikels is shorter than I am, and I didn’t even see John Saxon.

Another advantage of these conventions is meeting and mingling with like-minded fans you may or may not know. I live in the middle of Nowhere, MD, and being able to sit down, chat, and drink with other people who know what I’m talking about when I mention Takeshi Miike, Jess Franco, or Andy Milligan is like a slice of Heaven on Earth. It’s also always nice to add a few faces to the vast sea of internet names, and this time around I got to meet Edwin from DVD Maniacs, Nathaniel from Mondo Digital, alt.horror friend Art Ettinger, fellow Ultra Violent contributor and Necrophagia frontman Killjoy, and a few others. In one of those “Five-years-ago-I-never-would-have-thought-this-would-happen” kind of moments I found myself sitting in my hotel room, sh*tfaced, at 4 in the morning watching The Brainiac with the director of Last House On Dead End Street. Fun like that doesn’t happen in Maryland.

DVDs were all the rage this year and I bought around 40 of the damn discs, including a whole lot of Mexploitation. My fav? Mau Mau Sex Sex. It’s a great documentary on the history of Exploitation films profiling two of the most influential personalities involved, Dan Sonney and Dave Friedman. All around nice guys and film historians Mike Vraney and Frank Henenlotter even make a few appearances. Films clips and newsreel footage is juxtaposed with current interviews and scenes of the two old fellas (Dan and Dave, not Mike and Frank) enjoying their family life and gracefully living out the last years of their lives. It’s saddening to think that these two greats probably won’t be around too much longer, but it’s nice to know that this documentary will keep their stories alive forever. The disc has no ISBN on it so odds are it’s not going to be in stores, your best bet would be to order it from www.MauMauSexSex.com.

So is the convention perfect? Not at all. The hotel is NOT very vegetarian friendly, the beer is overpriced, and the show was way oversold on Saturday. I actually sat in my room and watched Tiger Cage instead of going into the dealers room. It was HELL. The lines are horrible in the mornings, so I suggest buying advance tickets if you plan on attending. It was also quite cold all weekend, making the outdoor party Saturday night almost unbearable to attend. I sat inside the lobby and drank.

Now, onto one of my favorite parts: DVD Gossip. Whenever you get a bunch of industry people together in a place like this of course they’re going to want to brag a little and get some word of mouth going on upcoming titles, so without further ado…

(Disclaimer: While the majority of this information was supplied to me from company representatives DO NOT take it as the final word. Sometimes sh*t happens, and we might not see all of these actually get released. So don’t get mad at me if one or two gets cancelled or dropped. I assume all of this info is ok to leak out, but if I step on any toes with this just let me know and I’ll be sure and keep my lips sealed about future info)

Let’s start with the current kings of grindhouse goodies, Something Weird Video. I talked with Mike Vraney quite a bit and here’s the dirt on what’s coming up over the next year. Expect to see double features of Curse of the Headless Horseman/Carnival Of Blood, Flesh Feast/Deadly Organ, Johnny Firecloud/Bummer, Hercules Vs The Moon Men/The Witches Curse, and The Psychedelic Priest/The Hooked Generation, as well as Satan In High Heels and a few others. Love Camp 7 will NOT be coming out through Image, even though SWV have the title ready to go. Image apparently had a problem with the content. Also, Mike told me they have a Spaghetti Western double feature ready to go, but decided to pull it back for a while since everyone and their brother is doing SpagWests right now. And could we see some sort of collaboration between Synapse Films and Something Weird Video in the future? It appears Synapse owns the DVD rights to Olga’s Girl’s (Olga #2), while Something Weird has the rest of the series. Sounds like a damn good box set to me.

Speaking of Synapse Films, Don May Jr. told me he recently picked up the rights to Jeff Lieberman’s “Aging-Hippies-Kill-Kids” classic Blue Sunshine and plan on including the film’s soundtrack on a separate CD. Sounds cool to me, although I have to admit Don’s idea of including a free (fake) hit of Blue Sunshine with every DVD is absolutely hysterical, if not exactly PC. I’ll be interviewing Jeff in a few weeks, perhaps he’ll have a few more details for me.

Image Entertainment has a few goodies in the works, and fans will positively be drooling over most of them. In their hit-or-miss Euroshock line Image is hard at work on Antonio Margheriti’s Cannibal Apocalypse, tracking down stills, posters, cover art, trailers, and anything else they can dig up to make this a must-have release. For some reason or another Anchor Bay recorded an audio commentary for the title with John Saxon before they even owned the rights, so now Image is looking into licensing it from them. I hope AB didn’t screw it up for fans of the film, as I’d love to hear what John has to say. Other unannounced Euroshock titles include Fulci’s Seven Notes In Black (aka The Psychic) and The Night Evelyn Came Out Of The Grave. Image has also struck a deal with producer Sam Sherman to distribute several Hemisphere releases he owns, including the entire Blood Island “Trilogy”, The Blood Drinkers, the abysmal Brain Of Blood, and Curse Of The Vampires. I had actually just talked to Sam a few weeks back about licensing the "trilogy" and he informed me he would only get rid of them in a package of six - a package which I wasn't exactly willing to spring for. When he listed the other titles he'd be including I asked him why exactly I'd want Curse of the Vampires since it was already out... bad move on my part. Apparently Sam was completely unaware of Retromedia's DVD and launched into a ten minute tirade about copyright laws and lawyers and NAFTA and the GATT treaty... it was pretty amusing to hear. I would personally like to see him wrestle Fred Olen Ray for the rights. I'm glad to hear someone decided to put up the cash for the films, I personally can't wait for the Blood Island discs and am very curious to see The Blood Drinkers (I honestly think Brain of Blood is wretched).

Fred Olen Ray wasn’t able to attend the Chiller show, so I wasn’t able to get the scoop any Retromedia titles. However, I did recently talk to director Don Dohler who informed me that Fred picked up the rights to his film The Alien Factor. Now if only Troma would release Nightbeast…

No new news from Shriek Show, but I will say that their Creatures From The Abyss DVD rocks the house. The film’s a fun, mindless, 80s Italian monster-mash that reminded me a lot (in tone) of Lenzi’s Ghosthouse or any other Filmirage Production. A nice ltbx transfer, goofy dialogue, silly creatures, bad opticals, some boob, some blood… what’s there not to like? The disc also includes an interview with the director (surrounded by props from the flick), a small stills gallery (which I think are just frame grabs), and some trailers for other Media Blasters releases (including a Demonia trailer that’s not on their Demonia release).

Barrel’s Last House On Dead End Street DVD will be loaded with short films, alternate credits, commentary, phone conversations, etc, and as expected they’re following it up with releases of Nekromantik 2 and Der Todesking.

Criterion will be releasing The Honeymoon Killers and the film that most folks (myself included) claim inspired The Evil Dead, Equinox. No word yet on whether it’ll contain both the Producer’s release cut and the radically different original release cut, but I know they’re trying. Criterion’s Dead Ringers just went OOP, so if you need it, grab it.

If all goes well with Blind Beast Fantoma will also be releasing Tattoo by the same director, and later down the path they’ll be releasing a Coffin Joe documentary that made the festival rounds last year.

Anchor Bay apparently own the rights to The Prowler along with Castellari’s 1990 The Bronx Warriors and it’s sequel. I wish they would release Blood Camp Thatcher (aka Escape 2000), which they picked up the rights to with that monstrous New World batch they bought.

EI Cinema will be beefing up their Retro Seduction Cinema line with several more Joe Sarno titles and some German sex comedies, including 2069: A Sex Odyssey. They also sounded VERY interested when I told them the negative to Jess Franco’s Eugenie had been discovered, so who knows what it may lead to… They also said they’d be including the original German soundtrack on their Premutos release.

That’s really all I have for now, although I have a feeling I’ve forgotten as many as I’ve remembered. That’s what I get for not sleeping and drinking too much liquor I suppose. Hope you guys can all make it out in April.

- Bruce Holecheck

[Jon]

Bruce,
Just wondering if one of the other titles SWV are putting out is Dave Friedman's SMELL OF HONEY, SWALLOW OF BRINE? Been wanting to see that one for ages and since a clip from it is used in the into on their DVD's I was expecting it to be out by now.
Also, are they abandoning the Drive-In double feature concept? While their upcoming discs still look to be feature packed, I really enjoyed the whole "let's go to the drive-in" experience.

[gothbat]

I know what you mean about the crowds in the dealers rooms (or actually all over the convention for that matter), it sucks! They gotta have the con. at a bigger place or at least limit the # of people who can attand. The damn line for tickets was out the door and around the side of the building at 1:00, glad I got my tickets in advance.

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gothbat
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