Straight to Video and later DVD – Diamonds in the rough.

Wikipedia defines the term 'Direct to Video' as follows:

"A film that is released direct-to-video (also known as made-for-video, straight-to-video and, more recently, straight-to-DVD) is one which has been released to the public on home video formats (historically VHS) before or without being released in movie theaters or broadcast on television. The term is also at times used as a derogatory term for sequels of films that are not expected to have financial success."

Back when I first got into films, apart from being taken to see the Star Wars trilogy on its endless theatrical run in the UK along with ET, video was where it was at. In the beginning there was Betamax and VHS and VHS did slay its younger gimpy brother and assume the throne of the video shop king. When I was a kid we were first members of a shop that I don't remember the name of in Eastcote. Apart from when Star Wars first came out on VHS I don't especially remember renting anything from here via my parents that was released in the Cinema.

The one video that stands out was some kind of video which had cartoons and clips on it and was aimed at kids. The clips included cartoons (including some blatantly racist stereotype crows) a clip of the main battle from Godzilla classic Destroy all Monsters and an episode of Ultraman.

This was cool because it was the first exposure I had to Japanese culture and it left a big impression. From there we then joined Dynamite Video in Ruislip Manor. Again no cinema releases stand out as being available in this shop but I do have a vague memory of seeing lots and lots of Video Nasties on their shelves which scared the bejesus out of me from the covers alone. From there we then joined Middlesex Video in Whitby Road and its here that my spiral into VHS addiction truly began.

During the time the shop was standing and not a wedding cake shop for about six years as a family we must have rented two titles a week. Back then the cost was a pound and later went up to one pound fifty (compared to now when its £3.90 in Blockbuster, inflation is a bitch).

This must have been about 1984 and amongst the cinema releases that never seemed to be available (stuff like Ghostbusters, The Goonies and Gremlins) there were an endless supply of straight to VHS Mad Max, Star Wars and Conan clones. Films with titles like Ragewar, Metal Storm, The Eliminators, Breeders, Lorca and the Outlaws, Gremloids, The Barbarians and so on.

Not really being conscious of the fact that there was a reason that I had never seen any evidence of a cinema release for these titles and being super impressed by the cover art my brothers and I lapped up these titles and got Mum to rent us everything that was below an 18 certificate. Check out the below artwork and tell me that your inner 7 year old wouldn't be excited in 1985!

Now at the time this was living, We were enthralled at the plotlines and cardboard effects and cherry coke had just come out. One particularly stand out creation was a cyborg who had tank wheels instead of legs and this guy featured in our childhood games for a good 5 years afterwards. Looking up some of these titles on the IMDB now and you see just how innocent we were as those evil cynics on the IMDB boards love nothing more than trashing our childhood memories with comments like 'This film is fucking lame' and 'Worst Acting ever' but you also get comments from those like me like 'Perfect Saturday afternoon B-Movie' which is probably when I would have watched it on a rainy weekend. For all the nostalgic comments though, Eliminators still has a rating of 2.7 out of 10 on its IMDB Page. 

You also notice the names Roger Corman and Charles Band coming up more often than not on these titles in a producer capacity and I would later learn that these were the guys behind cash in's on popular movies of the time like Battle Beyond The Stars and Trancers which were rip offs of Star Wars and Terminator and some of these got a limited cinema release in the US.

As time moved on and we were allowed to see 18 certificate movies starting with Rambo 3 and our choices were widened to include everything, apart from the porn section. We still had to get Mum to rent us stuff being 12, 10 and erm 8 years old and occasionally perhaps understandably she wouldn't budge on things like Evil Dead or Robocop.  This was around 1987 and the Mad Max clones had faded into obscurity so we turned our attention to Martial Arts movies.

No Retreat, No Surrender featured a young Jean Claude Van Damme and was like The Karate Kid except more brutal and it blew our minds. The Chuck Norris starring Missing in Action-Braddock movies also featured people with limbs blown off and necks getting broken by a badass with a ginger beard which was just too much to take in at 9 years old and our impressionable minds were overwhelmed. My brother started Karate lessons perhaps because of Chuck Norris although he would probably prefer us to think it was because of Jean Claude.

Eventually you had the likes of Van Damme and some mean looking bastard called Steven Seagal in movies like Bloodsport, Kick Boxer and Nico (Aka Above The Law) and in the school holidays of 1989 these movies were our life. For some reason watching the Albert Pyun directed Cyborg starring Van Damme really stands out in my mind as I watched it with my parents one Friday after school and there was little dialogue in the film and a lot of violence. I think my Mum and Dad were a little shocked when they realized what we had been watching during the holidays when we should have been out in the sunshine.

As I grew and went into secondary school my attentions turned to horror films and I was particularly into gorefests like Class of 1999 and Society and less bothered about Seagal, Van Damme and Lundgren as they started getting limited theatrical success with the likes of Dark Angel, Hard to Kill and Double Impact and somehow it felt less dangerous than before. Middlesex Video died a slow death as it started getting more and more arcade machines like Golden Axe and Snow Bros.

There was finally some whispers about a drug dealing operation and the shop closed down in late 1990. It remained closed for a year or so to finally re-open as a wedding cake maker. Its truly sad when something so integral to your childhood disappears and this was my first realization that nothing lasts forever, akin to when my rabbit George was killed by a fox and his bloody carcass was strewn across the lawn. One of my frequently recurring dreams is that the place is re-opened which shows just how big a thing it was in my formative years. Gradually the local video shops disappeared to be replaced by the huge and rather soulless Blockbuster chain and Ritz stores which were later taken over by Blockbuster where there were never any obstacles to renting Beetlejuice or Total Recall as they had 20 copies.

My brother kept the faith and stayed around for the Van Damme and Seagal clones like Don 'The Dragon' Wilson and Olivier Gruner. He said he found some good films in there, but my interest had died. Being 14 or so I would now only rent films that had come out in the cinema and was truth be told a bit snobbish about the whole direct to video thing. Interesting that now 15 years or so on from then Van Damme and Seagal have gone back to the Straight to Video ( Now technically straight to DVD) hell from whence they came. They were truly products of their time.

After the DVD format took off the straight to DVD market has become big business with the likes of Disney's animated sequels to Jungle Book and Peter Pan doing well alongside the American Pie sequels like Band Camp and The Naked Mile. Studios also seem to be doing okay with sequels to their cinematic hits like Wrong Turn, Walking Tall and Starship Troopers. Times have changed so much that now a typical Van Damme straight to DVD film costs around 20 million with the Muscles from Brussels taking home around 4 million. Nice work if you can get it, or do the splits with your butt crack showing.

Recently as I have started to regress into adolescence as I approach 30,buying comics and collecting retro video game releases on the PS2. I have also started to read Fangoria magazine again and I have realized that I have neglected this market for far too long. There are some really interesting titles on the shelves at your local Blockbuster and okay so they only have one copy compared to 30 copies of Next or whatever but seriously folks I have found two shining examples of great horror on the shelves and they are the following:

Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon 

                                        

Okay now imagine if the murders and events of films like A Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween had actually happened and Freddy and Michael Myers were serial killers as notorious as Bundy or Dahmer. Now imagine if a bunch of film students had found the murderer in a crap slasher film like Valentine and followed his every move with cameras as he prepared for the events that took place in the film. That's the set-up of Behind The Mask. A bunch of students follow led by Taylor (Angela Goethals) follow Leslie Vernon (Nathan Baesel) as he stalks his victim or 'Survivor Girl' as he labels her and her stoner friends.

As well as being chilling the film is hilarious and if marketed correctly by a studio willing to take a risk could have had just as big an impact as Scream did back in the late 90's. There are so many classic lines its hard to pick a favorite. I think the best part is when Leslie is asked why keeps up such a vigorous exercise routine and he tells the interviewer that its important as being a serial killer involves a lot of running except you cant look like you are running just walking fast.

We also have such scenes like Leslie and the crew visiting an old pro in the slasher game Eugene (Scott Wilson) who now lives with a former victim of his as her husband and buries himself in a coffin in the garden to get good at looking dead. There is also a scene where Leslie and Eugene celebrate as Leslie gets himself an 'Ahab' a Dr Loomis like figure who knows the killer and will try and stop his killing spree. In this case its Leslie's former psychiatrist from Nevada.

The film builds towards what would be the typical finale in a slasher movie. An abandoned farmhouse in the middle of nowhere where the kids come to party is set up by Leslie with a plan for each kid to get scared in a certain place and then run to another place where he will be waiting to kill them. Things go wrong when the crew realize they can't stand idly by whilst murder happens and also finding out that Leslie's intended victim may not be quite so innocent after all.

This is one of the most fun films I have seen in a while and has great performances all around. Especially from Nathan Baesel as Leslie Vernon who is able to slip from charming to funny and then scary all in seconds. It also gets plus points for an inventive end-credit sequence and use of the Talking Heads song 'Psycho Killer'. Hopefully through good word of mouth this will become a success on DVD and get a sequel from director Scott Glossier. Its certainly better than some recent horror releases that got a cinema release like The Messengers and Hostel part two.

Flight of The Living Dead: Outbreak on a Plane

                                        

Formerly entitled Plane Dead this was made with the intention of cashing in on the predicted success of Snakes on a Plane by the same studio New Line. Thing is this film is actually better than Snakes on A Plane which crumbled under the weight of expectation as well as its own ridiculousness. This film knows its ridiculous and is all the better for it. The zombie movie fad has more or less played itself out now along with torture porn so we are likely to see a lot of these types of movies hitting the DVD shelves and bypassing cinemas. If this is be its last hurrah then Flight of the Living Dead is a good film to go out on.

The film starts like all disaster movies do and we are introduced to the stock characters. The Pilot who is on his last flight before retirement, the bimbo air hostesses, the jocks and their bitchy girlfriends, The golf pro and his shrew of a wife, the FBI agent escorting a criminal to jail in order to give everyone suspicion when half eaten bodies turn up. With all of the characters/meat in place we also learn that in cargo there is a half dead body which is the possible key to finding eternal life and that there are some very corrupt employees of the government on board. Naturally the plane flies through a storm and the body is released early and bites someone. This leads to some awesome gore and scenes of zombie carnage even greater than that seen in Land of The Dead.

The acting here is not great truth be told but the make up effects and sense of humor are where the film scores and is an awesome watch after a few beers. The film takes rather too long to get going but the last half an hour scores with the amount of shooting and heads being blown apart and the usual disaster-on-a-plane ending of an amateur pilot having to land a jumbo in the desert. Unfortunately its in the plane flying in daylight scenes where the films low budget becomes obvious as it looks really fake and is bad CGI.

Overall though if you are a zombie movie nut like me then this is well worth your time and is great post pub viewing. Its still better than all the Resident Evil movies.