Still from The Soultangler
When VHS first became big in the early 1980s, major film studios didn’t initially release their big films on video. They figured if you could watch stuff at home, people would stop going to the cinema. But the public were desperate for something to watch, which meant that pretty much any old small-time stuff could get released commercially. Amateur weirdos could shoot a 70 minute feature on a consumer camcorder, and it could end up in video stores.
These “shot-on-video” (SOV) horror movies are like a fever dream glimpse into parallel worlds, made by people who thought they were making a masterpiece, but don’t seem to have ever seen an actual film before. Since they had such small releases, many these SOV movies are quickly becoming lost. However, Bleeding Skull Video are dedicating themselves to making these films available again, both digitally and as cool, coloured VHS tapes. DIY-style titles like Cards of Death and The Soultangler aren’t necessarily “good” cinema, but they’re a part of film history.
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Bleeding Skull’s latest project is the unfinished Jungle Trap, filmed in 1990 by porn-director-gone-straight James Bryan – they found the unedited masters are now putting together a final cut, 25 years later. We spoke to Bleeding Skull team-members Joseph A Ziemba, Annie Choi and Zack Carlon about why resurrecting these films is so important.
VICE: Why did you decide you needed to start releasing these films?
Annie Choi: Over the years we’ve discovered some incredible, nutzoid films that hadn’t even been released in the US. Cards of Death was exclusively released in Japan, and The Soultangler was briefly released in Canada and Korea before disappearing completely. So it just seemed logical to track down the filmmakers and release them.
What’s the craziest shot-on-video film you’ve found?
Joe Ziemba: There are so many different variations on “crazy”. Each SOV horror movie is singular on its own terms and for different reasons. The one that burns the biggest hole on the surface of my brain is Nick Millard’s Death Nurse. It’s an anti-movie about geriatric people sitting on couches and a nurse who stabs them. I still can’t tell if it was meant for public consumption.
Still from Cards of Death
Zack Carlon: With the best SOV stuff, you’re dealing with a dividing line: either the ideas of the film are completely alien, or the people who made it approach reality differently than other humans do. People like David “The Rock” Nelson and Carl Sukenick have very unique brains and it’s fascinating to see how they communicate their ideas to others. On the other hand, you have someone like W.G. MacMillan’s Cards of Death. That movie definitely qualifies as bizarre and crazy, but when you talk to MacMillan, he’s composed and professional; a warm, sedate family man. I’d pay good money to be his son.
Aren’t some of them actually pretty boring to sit through?
Annie: Of course there are trash films out there that are snoozefests, containing 100 minutes of people paddling in a canoe. But there are plenty of films that push you to unexpected and sometimes dark places, or have a thousand crazy ideas that pull in a million crazier directions. These are the movies that stick with you long after you turn off the VCR, and the ones that need to preserved.
Still from Jungle Trap
How the hell do you get the rights to these films?
Zack: It’s always either nearly impossible or it’s the easiest thing in the world. Some of the filmmakers have been waiting for their work to be discovered, and have set up Facebook pages to showcase their old movies. Others are ashamed of their early work and try to hide it away. One of the directors whose films we want to release ran away to live in a shack in the middle of a French forest.
Tell me a bit about James Bryan, what’s his backstory?
Joe: Along with Doris Wishman, James Bryan is one of the most important and radical exploitation filmmakers in history. His biggest “hit” is the ultra-violent Don’t Go in the Woods. But he dipped his foot into every genre imaginable, from action to erotic melodrama to experimental counter-culture sexploitation. Bryan is a true independent renegade. His movies reject logic. They’re driven by a level of intelligence and craft that’s rarely seen in such low-budget filmmaking. He’s also an incredibly kind and humble guy.
How did you come across the unfinished Jungle Trap?
Zack: We went to pick up the video masters for Run Coyote Run [which Bleeding Skull also released] from James. He has this massive hangar just filled with the remnants of his life’s work; posters, press books, film prints, etc. And amidst all this stuff, he had the raw, unedited masters for Jungle Trap. Just sitting there for 24 years. He’d transferred them to a DVD for us to watch, and we were astounded by how solid and entertaining the movie is.
What’s it like coming across an unfinished film like this?
Annie: We were speechless. We basically watched the whole thing with our mouths hanging open with puddles of drool at our feet. Here we have an unfinished movie from a filmmaker we respect, a movie that no one has seen except for himself and maybe a few cast and crew members. It’s totally surreal. It’s not edited, but there’s a very rough cut. You hear Bryan’s direction to the actors and you can feel his ambition and passion.
Still from Jungle Trap
Does it feel at all sacrilegious recreating a film from 1990?
Annie: Not at all. We aren’t recreating Jungle Trap; we’re completing it. We are working very closely with Bryan to help him realise his vision. It doesn’t feel like sacrilege; it feels like an honour.
Where do you think the next generation of these films are going to come from? Kids making films on YouTube?
Annie: Digital filmmaking has made things much, much easier for filmmakers, but easy doesn’t necessarily mean good. We love trash film for its innocence, which is a crazy thing to say when so many of these movies involve gore-drenched murder. But there are a lot of risks and ambition behind them – filmmakers who re-mortgaged their homes and went into debt to create a 72-minute hell ride with absolutely no script.
They had no experience and no clue; they were learning as they went along and making do with their extremely limited resources. But we’re seeing a lot of self-awareness today that obliterates the whole experience, an aesthetic that screams, “Hey, look at me! I’m making a movie that’s so bad it’s good!” Exploitation and trash filmmaking came from a specific time and place, which is not the time and place we live in now.
See more at Bleeding Skull and Bleeding Skull Video.
Previously: A Short, NSFW History of Cannibalism on Camera
