VHS MASSACRE TOO (2020)
Starring: Lots of folks
Director: Thomas Edward Seymour
The documentary follow-up to, unsurprisingly, VHS Massacre uses the death of the "mom and pop" video store as the stepping off point to explain how this event made it so much more difficult to make and distribute exploitation movies. Such no-holds barred cinematic gems immediately ran into censorship issues that arose in the process of trying to find a rental home with giants such as Blockbuster. Thomas Edward Seymour's film travels the USA to talk to various people across the industry and examines the battles being fought every day to keep indie cinema alive.
Starting off with clips of early exploiters such as Mom and Dad and Reefer Madness and calling off momentarily to say hello to sub genres such as biker movies and blaxploitation on its way through to the video age of indie classics like Surf Nazis Must Die, the mini-reminders of such movies spark the feelings that these stubbornly outré titles gave to those of us looking from something, anything outside the mainstream all those years ago.
The division of the documentary into chapters such as "The problem with Blockbuster Video" or "The risk of making exploitation films" does put the various issues into their own context and prevents the film from just becoming a series of talking heads. The section on video rental places, and the last surviving Blockbuster in Bend, Oregon, did rekindle those memories of my younger self plucking anything from the shelves, especially if it had cool artwork.
Yes, the diet of straight-to-video titles was mostly crud, but a lot of it wasn't bad crud, and there were a handful of diamonds among the dirt which would never have played the cinemas where I lived. I rented so many movies over the years that I was ultimately given a confidence in my level of cinematic knowledge to think that I wouldn't be too bad at writing reviews so you can take that as either a blessing or a curse, I don't mind which.
It might be seen as poetic justice that Blockbuster, the entity held responsible for putting the smaller rental outlets out of business, was eventually put out of business itself as the model for marketing and distributing home entertainment evolved but that's of little comfort to the people who could no longer make the films they wanted to, without the restrictions that would have been necessarily to give their product the "family friendly" seal of approval. One of the questions posed is "Can films go too far"? Well, if you wanted them on the shelves of Blockbuster, chances are they couldn't go very far at all.
Of course, no self-respecting doc regarding indie film production would be complete without a visit to Troma and we're duly presented with this towards the end, Lloyd Kaufman coming across as his usual genial, smart self. Even the Troma method of filmmaking is coming under threat with smaller royalty payments given per view by the streaming services and there's a clear warning that big budget Netflix productions, in addition to the mainstream studio movies from the majors, pose an increasingly large threat to the indie film industry.
However, it's not all doom and gloom as Seymour chooses to throw some of the focus on to filmmakers who've done it their way with dedication and sheer hard work, despite the most limited of resources. I felt that as long as there are creative folks such as those out there - and I believe there will always be - indie productions will endure wherever the next attempt to kill them off comes from.
A rallying cry for all of us to support independent cinema, whether we're filmmakers or film fans or film reviewers or whatever combinations of those, this may occasionally find itself heading down the odd cul-de-sac and some of the contributions are too brief - I would have loved to hear more from genre stalwart Michael Biehn, for instance - but there's no doubting the fierce passion on display here and the arguments in defence of low-budget cinema and the fair treatment of those who bring us those labours of love can't be denied. It may lack a truly sharp focus in its eagerness to cover as many bases as possible but its intentions are pure.
Having said that, VHS Massacre Too does make a number of salient, not to mention depressing, points about how the odds are stacked against the indies from the get-go. Goalposts shift without warning in terms of revenue from streaming services and how certain films can effectively end up being banned from streaming. Profits mysteriously vanish from movies which have clearly performed well enough to see some small financial restitution for those who toiled for years to get their production out there.
Watch this documentary to be reminded, once more, that you don't know what you've got until it's gone. Appreciate the miracle that you still have indie cinema right now and make sure you support it as much as you can from now on. You don't want to wake up one day and find your choice of viewing is a hundred variations on the same old dull, formulaic tripe.
Also, The Howling VII, anyone? You've got to see this just to find out about that.
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