Video Daze

Back in the early 1980s I worked at a video rental store called National Video in St. Petersburg, Florida. Days and nights spent renting VHS tapes to people thrilled that they could actually bring home any movie they wanted, slide it into a machine and voila.

There was this customer named Jimmy who had a boat docked at the Isla Del Sol Yacht and Country Club located on Sun Boulevard between St. Pete proper and St. Pete Beach.

Jimmy was mostly into action flicks but had developed a penchant - thanks to me - for blaxploitation movies from the 1970s.

The first movie in this genre I suggested he rent was MEAN JOHNNY BARROWS, a 1976 actioner directed by and starring Fred "The Hammer" Williamson. It was a convoluted (if not uneasy) mix of blaxploitation and mafiasploitation (mafiasploitation films exploited the mob on the heels of Francis Ford Coppola's THE GODFATHER and started to peter out by the time BARROWS was released).

Nevertheless, MEAN JOHNNY BARROWS was an economical and violent flick peppered with some A-List (at that time) actors - Elliot Gould and Roddy McDowall. Short, sharp with a cigar chomping Williamson, MEAN JOHNNY BARROWS was a quick punch to the solar plexus clocking in at around 75 minutes.

Jimmy loved MEAN JOHNNY BARROWS and when he returned the video, he said to me, "Anything you want. Anytime," and left the store. I opened the video case to make sure the tape was rewound and a half dozen joints tumbled to the floor. His way, I guess, of thanking me.

Since the National Video store I worked at had a pretty decent collection of blaxploitation, I handed Jimmy the father of all blaxploitation - Melvin Van Peebles' SWEET SWEETBACK'S BAADASSSSS SONG. I told him Van Peebles shot the movie over the course of 19 days with money loaned to him by Bill Cosby. I mentioned the music was a cacophony of Earth, Wind & Fire. I told him it was sloppy, edited like it went through a blender, but loud and infused with a relentless energy.

Jimmy returned the move a couple days later. It was so great he told me he watched it a half dozen times and that it was worth the late fees (which I waived).

Jimmy went on to tell me he had a make-shift theater on his boat - basically, a couple rows of plush La-Z-Boy chairs and a big screen TV (not like today but big for the early 80s, maybe 32-inches 4:3 square screen).

He told me about these weekend movie parties he'd have on his boat.

He then 'hired' me as his personal movie programmer.

What this meant was I would suggest a theme and hand over an armful of tapes that would keep his guests entertained. What was beloved about these parties was exposure to movies the guests never heard of and themes they had never thought of: Italian Crime Film Nite; Foxy Brown and Friends; Don't Go In The House Weekends; Teens Gone Wild; 48-Hour Women in Prison Lock Down...any subgenre theme that popped into my head was fair game and ended up blowing minds.

In turn, Jimmy spread the word about my "services."

The owner of National Video took notice of a Friday night trend. At most video stores (that is, when they existed), Friday night was usually the busiest night of the week. But this store was literally mobbed and by closing time there wasn't a tape left on the shelf. Even the weakest rentals went out due to my on the spot theme development (Pippi Longstockings vs. Italian Zombies anyone?).

Needless to say, I always worked Friday nights.

Revival cinema

L.A.'s New Beverly Cinema is hosting Quentin Tarantino's "March Madness." The director programs the revival theater's calendar for the month of March and, if I lived in L.A., I'd see everything Tarantino has on the docket, including his own KILL BILL: THE WHOLE BLOODY AFFAIR.

Tarantino's calendar encapsulates what I think "revival" should be all about. Rarities, thought long-lost and probably encountered somewhere in your cinephile past wasting away inside a decrepit grindhouse or suburban drive-in. Or, possibly, seen during the halcyon days of VHS when it was a thrill to take movies - any movies - home. The great video stores in the early 80s had enormous backlogs of cinetrash, art disguised as trash, trash disguised as art, Eurotrash, slasher trash, horror sci-fi, Blaxploitation, Ozploitation (Australian trash cinema, i.e., STONE), sexploitation - sub-sub genre films pursued on purpose or stumbled upon accidentally.

All of the films on Tarantino's calendar could be considered cinematic art because the very nature of film translates into art although I'm sure there are hoards of people out there willing to take me on for that statement.

I have a long-lost aunt who won't watch films produced in America because of "their lack of artistic integrity." She only watches foreign films because, in her head, the way of art is through "experiencing cultural differences."

Don't get me wrong, I love global films but which would I rather watch - Ingmar Bergman's THE SEVENTH SEAL or John Flynn's ROLLING THUNDER? Yep - ROLLING THUNDER.

ROLLING THUNDER has enormous cinematic cache - its a visceral revenge film with sociological implications (the plight of the returning Vietnam vet, the nature of loneliness, a family on the brink), a scathing screenplay written by Paul Schrader (who subverts his own TAXI DRIVER screenplay for ROLLING THUNDER), and is acted armed-to-the-teeth by William Devane and Tommy Lee Jones. And, unlike the Bergman film, it moves.

Overall, Tarantino's program is hugely fun and if you're programming for revival - whether grouping the most serious foreign entries or the craziest grindhouse - you've got to have fun doing it.

Give me a revival house for one week and here's what I'd give back (all double features except for Wednesday, which would be a triple...and this line-up is not definitive):

Monday:
ROLLING THUNDER (1977) - director: John Flynn.
Tagline: A Vietnam Vet Kills for Revenge.

THRILLER: A CRUEL PICTURE aka THEY CALL HER ONE EYE (1974) - director: Bo Arne Vibenius (Alex Fridolinski).
Tagline: The Movie That Has No Limits of Evil.

Tuesday:
RABID aka RAGE (1977) - director: David Cronenberg.
Tagline: Pray It Doesn't Happen to You.

GOD TOLD ME TO (1976) - director: Larry Cohen.
Tagline: It Will Give You Nightmares Forever.

Wednesday:
SUSPIRIA (1977) - director: Dario Argento.
Tagline: The only thing more terrifying than the last five minutes of this film are the first 90!

HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS (1970) - director: Dan Curtis.
Tagline: Barnabas Collins, Vampire, Takes a Bride in a Bizarre Act of Unnatural Lust.

HORROR HOUSE aka THE HAUNTED HOUSE OF HORROR (1969) - director: Michael Armstrong.
Tagline: Behind Its Forbidden Doors an Evil Secret Hides!

Thursday:
WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH HELEN? (1971) - director: Curtis Harrington.
Tagline: Heart Pounding Terror!

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (1962) - director: Robert Aldrich.
Tagline: Sister, Sister, Oh So Fair, Why is There Blood All Over Your Hair?

Friday:
WHITE LINE FEVER (1975) - director: Jonathan Kaplan.
Tagline: Carrol Jo Hummer--A Working Man Who's Had Enough!

MACON COUNTY LINE (1974) - director: Richard Compton.
Tagline: It Was the Fall of '54. A Time When Laughing Was Easy. And Laugh They Did, Until They Crossed the ... Macon County Line.

Saturday:
THE GREAT TEXAS DYNAMITE CHASE (1976) - director: Michael Pressman.
Tagline: Move Over Butch and Sundance-Here Comes Candy, Ellie Jo and Slim.

DELIVERANCE (1972) - director: John Boorman.
Tagline: What Did Happen on the Cahulawassee River?

Sunday:
UNHOLY ROLLERS (1972) - director: Vernon Zimmerman.
Tagline: A Locker Room Look at the Toughest Broads in the World!

KANSAS CITY BOMBER (1972) - director: Jarrold Freedman.
Tagline: The Hottest Thing on Wheels.

And, naturally, after laying out the program, you realize there's so many you've missed.