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America's Deadliest Home Video

(1992) Danny Partridge grew up to make a video death trip which predates the more celebrated "Man Bites Dog" by two full years. Writer/director Jack Perez drops Danny Bonaduce into Middle American nowhere. There he gets snared by a pack of petty thugs who start showing off for his camcorder. In between cookouts and stakeouts, they stage group therapy BS-fests for posterity - until they pull one heist too many.
feature length, Color, new lower price: $29.95.

Baby Doll

(1956) Only Elia Kazan could remake the 1942 cheap thrill, "Child Bride" and get away with calling it art, thanks to Tennessee Williams. Karl Malden's sugar daddy has all the charm of a Homer Simpson bendable, and Eli Wallach debuts as a Sicilian Quilty. Both are hellbent for Carroll Baker and her cutoff jammies (hence the name). Once condemned by the Legion of Decency, now just rated R.
114 min., B/W, $19.98

Blood Orgy of the Leather Girls

Video's answer to "A Confederacy of Dunces," which the director's brother has made available to the public. Filmmaker Meredith Lucas ended her life in despair when she could not secure distribution for this magnum opus. A Jewish schoolgirl with a Hitler complex launches an offensive against the male of the species, with gory results. Relentlessly sardonic. Best scene involves suction cup darts and bare skin - oops.
featurette, Color, $19.98

Death King, The (Der Todesking)

Seven deaths in seven days, thanks to a chain letter device and a bad case of the Peter Handke blues. Better known for those gory Nekro pics, for a change of pace director Jorg Buttgereit offered us his take on "Peeping Tom," "Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS" and those slimy Visconti nazi movies they make you sit through in film school. Best twist: they fit the script girl in a rig and made her the bad guy, on a whim.
80 min., Color, German with English subtitl es, $29.95

Deranged

(1974) Even those who pan the film must show respect to the lead actor, Roberts Blossom, who succeeds in portraying a completely hollow man without trying to inject pop psych tripe or cheap bids for pathos. Everyone knows the story, considering how many films have been based on the 1950s Gein case. Yet this version, while it does have its share of guignol setpieces, is most disturbing particularly when the action is at its most ordinary.
Color, uncut and fully restored in stereo letterboxed format, plus bonus documentary: "Ed Gein: American Maniac" on one tape for $39.95

Desperate Teenage Lovedolls

(1984) A cheap trash remake of "The Cool Ones," sans the sappy love interest, unless you'd prefer a quickie remake of "Ladies and Gentleman, The Fabulous Stains," sans Laura Dern and friends. Classic line: "Thanks for killing my mom!" If that wasn't bad enough, they made a sequel: "Lovedolls Superstars" (1986) - Shock Cinema's Steve Puchalski says, "Imagine Crispin Glover stuck in the middle of Billy Jack's Freedom School..." Well, maybe only he could, but that should at least give you a hint of what's in store.
appx. 55 min., Color, $29.95 apiece

Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill!

(1965) Now Steve knows he's not crazy, since the reviewer for London's Time Out magazine claims this drive-in dramarama predates "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" by a decade, as well. Tura Satana is the most arresting figure; a black-clad high priestess of a girlgang. Latter-day feminist hero Russ Meyer's melange of hot rods, keylit backsides and heavy eye makeup only frames his most favorite body parts - of course!
83 min., B/W, $79.95

Freaks

(1932) It took a long time for the corporate entity which first commissioned this Tod Browning tale to admit it was ever made. Yet its reputation survived the intervening decades, and it is well-deserved. The sordid plotline of greed and revenge merely serves to highlight allegorical themes of compassion and self-respect, as embodied by the real-life cast of special people. The last, long, rainy night is the worst.
65 min., B/W, $19.98

Night Nurse

(1931) Both Barbara Stanwyck and Clark Gable play against type in this pre-Code, black-comedy thriller. Barb is the nurse who tries to save two kids from their so-called loved ones, and Clark is the creepy chauffer who stands in her way. Maltin gives it three stars. Part of the MGM "Forbidden Hollywood" series; check out the box cover - catfight alert!
72 min., B/W, $19.98

Queen Kelly

(1928) Erich von Stroheim was a 500-pound gorilla of the silent era, whose expensive directorial tastes ran to realistic drooling and period underwear. Gloria Swanson originally financed this potboiler of a convent girl and her salacious undoing. Then she supposedly pulled the plug, after she discovered an actor had been expressly told to spit on her during a scene. The truncated results were a mess at first. Whispers were heard for years about lost foota ge involving the crew, some prostitutes and a live donkey; but only some leftovers dug up in Africa have been spliced into the newest restoration.
100 min., B/W, silent with musical soundtrack, includes rediscovered footage, $39.95

Right Side of My Brain, The

(1984) Richard Kern put Lydia Lunch through her paces, or vice versa as the case may be. A string of vignettes promise sordid violence and poetic imagery, with a little armpit-licking thrown in for good measure. On a sextuple feature with "You Killed Me First," "The Manhattan Love Suicides," "Death Valley 69," "Nazi" and "Submit to Me."
Six films on one tape, total time 90 min., B/W, $29.95

Robot Monster in 3-D

(1953) This movie was so bad they couldn't figure out what to call it, so it went by two other names before it found camp fame as "Robot Monster." A guy in a bad gorilla suit threatens mankind with his laugh-riot "calcinator" death ray. As one line in the movie goes, "Boy, was that a dream - or was it?" Just in case you can actually hoodwink a date into watching this stinker with you, the folks at Rhino were nice enough to include two pairs of free 3-D glasses with every box.
63 min., B/W, $12.95

Smell of Honey, A Swallow of Brine, A

(1964) The great cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs worked under another name when he lensed this portrait of a baby bitch on wheels. Honey in this case takes the form of an ever-so-slightly pudgy young tease, who tosses off briny comeback lines at her lesbian roommate and various would-be romeos, to everyone's frustration. Best bit: one lothario's daydream turns nightmarish.
featurette, B/W, $24.95

Tetsuo: The Iron Man

(1990) Bio-Mecha-Godzilla takes shock therapy. Don't sweat the subtitles, they're superfluous. Besides, you can't take your eyes off this pixillated human anime for a split second! A young man tries to face the day on a bad jag; but when he cracks one leg with a pipe and the dang thing fuses into his body, he takes off on the kind of metamorphosis Kafka's roach would have died for. O ver the top violence, where the women rape as good as they get; in the same opulent 5-color box you may have seen, now at a price you can afford.
67 min., B/W, Japanese with English subtitles, $19.98
Looking for "Tribulation 99"?

Wild Angels, The

(1966) Roger Corman claims this was the grand-daddy of all biker films. It's no "Easy Rider" by a long shot. Yet it does bring back the flavor of more innocent times, when Hunter Thompson was quizzing bikers around San Francisco for their reactions to a recent screening of Kenneth Anger's "Scorpio Rising" (some grimy thumbs-up). Stars Peter Fonda and the Venice, CA chapter of Hell's Angels join Nancy Sinatra and her boots.
93 min., Color, Rated PG, digitally remastered, $14.98

Witchcraft Through The Ages (Haxan)

(1921/1967) Perhaps the first "mondo" styled docudrama of them all, loosely based on the Inquisitions of the late Medieval period. The Surrealists just loved it to bits, at least because it was banned for scatological tableaux and Hieronymus Bosch-derived violence. Maybe they also got a kick out of seeing the Swedish director, Benjamin Christensen, who dolled himself up in a devil outfit and put a few moves on the lead actress. This is not a full restoration, but a drug era re-release starring the vocal talents and bracing wit of William S. Burroughs.
85 min., B/W, edited silent footage with music and narrative soundtrack, $29.98

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Why are we missing John Waters? He's just too cheerful for his own good!
Gone but not forgotten:

"The Silencer," an 85-minute nostalgia trip from a few years back, for those who just missed the good Bond flicks. Instead of Sean Connery smoothing his tux, we get to see Lynnette Walden pack away the bad guys without falling out of her halter top. Thi s could have been a schlockathon. Instead, director/co-writer Amy Goldstein made it a punch-drunk and sometimes emotionally powerful "La Femme Nikita Does Los Angeles." With Carole Pope doing her best Shirley Bassey impression. This tape is now in lega l purgatory; but you may be able to rent it, if you can find a shop that didn't weed out its B-movies to make room for all those extra copies of "Jurassic Park."

The ultimate ripoff artists invented "four-walling" after they couldn't find any distri butors for their hokey biblical pseudo-exposes...by renting movie houses for showings, one by one! For an update on that production company, go "In Search of Sun International Pictures."

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