Rating: 3.5/5
Hooptober 2.0 | 23/31 | Slasher 3/5
A woman comes into a clothing store to buy some men’s clothes. She isn’t too specific beyond colors, not really knowing sizes. She takes the clothes to try on. The owners chuckle with each other and go to a back compartment. There, they have a monitor set up, observing a video feed from the changing room. The feed runs through a VHS deck, allowing them to record the feed as she removes her shirt. One owner hands the other a baseball glove. He puts on the glove, grabs a baseball bat, and chats her up before hitting her in the head with the bat. He kisses the bloody, unconscious woman before taking the end of the bat to her face.
Cue the sick synth soundtrack.
Steve and Rachel Emory run a video rental place in Frenchtown, New Jersey. The couple moved there from New York a few weeks ago and opened the first VHS rental shop within 15 miles. Though no one has cable or satellite dishes — the town actually forbade them — everyone in town owned a VHS cassette player long before the Emory’s arrived. In a matter of weeks, the shop gained over 300 new members.
Rick, an employee, is putting away tapes from the drop-off bin when he finds a blank cassette. Steve assumes it’s a mistake and sets it aside. Rick begs to watch it, but Steve isn’t interested in whatever these locals consider “entertainment.” He has an idea, though — he only rents out horror and pornography. A customer comes in to rent Pieces, but is reticent to say anything more beyond their club membership number.
Steve relents to Rick, and they put on the blank tape. In it, Rick recognizes the former postmaster who supposedly retired. Here, a man smashes the postmaster’s face in with a hammer and cuts off his limbs. Steve and Rick watch in horror as the men cycle through their toys, laughing as blood shoots everywhere. Steve closes the store and goes to the police. He begs the police chief to come with him, who thinks Steve is full of shit. When they get back to the store, though, Rick is missing. Someone has replaced the tape with home movies.
The film follows Steve over the next couple of days as he tries to figure out what the hell is going on.
Gary Cohen filmed the movie on a VHS recorder and edited it at a local access station in New Jersey. He shopped around, eventually selling distribution rights to Camp Video because they offered to design box art. Cohen claims the entire project cost him $6.
That said, the movie makes an honest effort at being legit. Characters have backstories and motivations, the plot is coherent. The first act, though cheap, is legitimately intriguing.
The special effects are pretty good! Someone’s been reading their copy of Tom Savini’s Grande Illusions.
The procedural elements are clunky, only because it methodically works through its own logic like its Sherlock Holmes going over the evidence. But it’s a pretty absurd concept that the audience picks up on pretty quickly, so you actually want Steve to make some logic leaps and get it already.
This tape was one of the most widely distributed SOV horror films, following in the footsteps of Boardinghouse, Sledgehammer, and the popular Blood Cult. The movie makes an homage to Blood Cult, featuring it prominently on the shelves and having a hilarious encounter in which a customer asks if it had sexual content. Steve tells her no, but that it’s brutally violent. Still, she considers it okay for kids so long as there isn’t sex in it. This exchange came from an actual conversation Cohen had while working at a video store. And I believe it too! My family was like that, and actually mocked my aunt when she told everyone she had the opposite stance.
There’s a guy in one of the homemade videos playing a vampire. He looks like Freddy Mercury or Adam Ant. I had to look it up to make sure it wasn’t.
This film has the bones of a brilliant film, but lacks the budget and acting power to carry it. If you can handle SOV budget, this one is popular for a reason — it’s one of the best SOV horror movies I’ve seen thus far.