Category Archives: SOV

APRIL MOVIE THON 4: Feeders (1996)

Posted on by

April 24: Polonia Bros — Whether alone or with his brother John, Mark Polonia has made so many movies. Pick one off this list.

John and Mark Polonia and Jon McBride made this movie for $500 and it has more heart in it than anywhere near its budget will tell you.

Derek (McBride) and Bennett (John Polonia) are driving through Pennsylvania — home of the Polonias — and have no idea that a small UFO just landed and ate a park ranger. Even when they’re on a date with Michelle (Melissa Torpy) and Donna (Maria Russo) — the daughter of the now digested man — they have no clue. Then they hit a man with their car, and before he dies, he keeps telling them about little men.

By the end of this movie, most of this small town has been chewed on, Bennett has been cloned by aliens and — spoiler — Derek kills the wrong one before multiple UFOs descend.

Say what you will about the puppet aliens in this, but this movie was distributed by Blockbuster Video shortly after the release of Independence Day. It was the most popular independent release of the year and has had two sequels, Feeders 2: Slay Bells and Feeders 3: The Final Meal. Keep in mind this was made by teenagers with a video camera.

You can watch this on Tubi.

APRIL MOVIE THON 4: Things (1993)

Posted on by

April 5: Visual Vengeance Day — Write about a movie released by Visual Vengeance. Here’s a list to help you find a movie.

No, not that Things.

This Things has had so many sequels — I watched Things II before it — and it’s an anthology film of two stories and a wraparound which is directed by Eugene James (Sorority House Vampires) and written by Mike Bowler (Hell Spa, Fatal Images). A woman (Kinder Hunt) catches her husband Jack (in a hotel room, sleeping with his mistress Jane (Maegen). She ties her to a chair and decides that she’s going to tell her two stories before she kills her, but ends up keeping her in a garage with all of the other old mistresses. Some are alive, and many are dead, and how do they keep them all fed?

The first of those stories is “The Box,” directed and written by Dennis Devine (Dead Girls). It’s the story of a small town run by a mayor and his corrupt officials, who are upset that women are moving there to start a den of sin and sleeping with the menfolk. There’s also a slug creature who lives in a box, and many of the area’s men are obsessed with one of the girls, Tulip (Kathleen O’Donnel).

The other tale is “The Thing in a Jar,” which was directed by Jay Woelfel (Asylum of Darkness, Beyond Dream’s Door) and written by Steve Jarvis (Amazon Warrior).

Woefel said, “Things was my first feature as a director in LA (about half of a feature). I didn’t know that part of my job was to help re-unite a group of people who had started to make a film and then stopped. As the new kid on the project, I was someone who could excite the rest to finish what had seemingly ended badly.

My episode in the anthology is about a woman who has really violent dreams in which her seemingly lovely husband does increasingly horrible things to her. My marching orders from producer Dave Sterling were to include some nudity and make it really violent.

The film’s structure is a largely comical wraparound story and two actual stories within that. It seems like a workable anthology structure that could be used more.

It was a wild film in many ways, including the monster in my episode, which is a melted-together slimy hodgepodge of eyes, hands, and teeth. But not in the way that meant it was shot on film; this time, it was videotaped. This seemingly modest film was re-released several times and spawned two sequels.

Julia (Courtney Lercara) is in a horrible marriage with Leon (Owen Rutledge) — he tells her that all she has to do in her life is “eat, sleep and fuck” — and learns that he wants her dead. This gets gory as it goes on and feels like an EC Comics story, along with plenty of SOV gore and all the sound problems you expect from the genre. If it bothers you, you’re watching the wrong movies.

Keep an eye out for Jeff Burr (director of Puppet Master 4 and 5) and special effects artist Mike Tristano in this.

Things isn’t as delirious as the Canadian one, but it’s filled with video-era charms. It’s short, sweet and filled with so much grue—and bad accents—that you can’t help but love it.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Zombie Rampage (1992)

Posted on by

Todd Sheets forever.

Back in 1992, it didn’t seem like zombies would be coming back from their graves. They weren’t mainstream. It was left to gut crunching gore lovers like Sheets to make low budget tributes to the films they loved. This starts with two gangs — Sheets leads one — fighting in the streets of Kansas City, leaving bodies everywhere. Most gangs would regroup and get better guns. One of these ones gets an occult book, conducts a ritual and all hell breaks loose.

As Glenn would sing, “Yea, evil is as evil does.”

Tommy (Dave Byerly) and Dave (Erin Kehr) barely make it to a bar, years before the Winchester served the same purpose, holed up with their girlfriends while the dead are alive outside the doors. Sheets has said for people to turn this movie off, but look, when everyone is drinking in a bar and a stolen song from The Beyond plays, I stick around. I mean, this starts with a fist fight set to a “Spirit In the Sky” cover and once, I had a girl from Lawrence, KS write out all the lyrics to that song and mail it to me as part of our long distance romance. I wondered if that means anything, like if Norman Greenbaum was from Kansas, but no. Sometimes life makes no sense.

More on Sheets hating this, thanks to IMDB: “It took a year and a half because I was held hostage by an insane cameraman (who thought he was in charge and always wanted more money), a local bar owner named Lonzo who was supposed to be funding the film but disappeared and a cast of well meaning local theater students who went away for the holidays and some of them didn’t come back! Some left because they were tired of being held up for 3 or 4 hours by the jerk cameraman every time we were supposed to shoot. I was left with 68% of a once good script and I finished it the only way I knew. It was my first film. It was NOT shot on VHS — but on 3/4 inch video and Betacam like the TV stations of the time used. It was a horrible experience and I almost never made another film.”

Sheets would make better movies, but look, if you come up with a movie indebted to Mattei, Fulci and Romero, I’m going to love it. Every review I read calling this sloppy and amateurish, well, fine. But did it entertain you? Nobody wants to talk about that, they just want to be high and mighty, cooler than the films they talk about.

If you’re wondering, does this seem like a movie that Visual Vengeance would put out? Well, the trailers are on their latest Blu-rays and it comes from Decrepit Crypt of Nightmares, which also has Suburban Sasquatch amongst its fifty movies for one low price. Some would say you’d overpaid, but I’m the kind of viewer to drop big money on this set if I ever find it.

Maligno (1986)

Posted on by

Made by a teenage Joe Zaso, this movie was exactly what I was looking for: a SOV Giallo that’s “Phenomena meets Eyes of Laura Mars by way of an ABC Afterschool Special.” Made in the director’s teen years — he was 15 — it finds Susan Galligan (Karen Komornik) starting at a new school by the name of Hartcourt Academy, a dark and foreboding place — shots from the outside look very Tanz Akademie — that has already claimed the lives of several schoolgirls. Much like an Argento Giallo, Susan is also psychic, which means that she can see things before they happen, leading her to become the detective in this and discover who the killer is.

Between the drone music on the soundtrack, the toughness of the girls with NYC accents and the soft VHS quality, this was a dream odyssey into Joe’s teenage mind. I had the chance to ask him some questions about the making of this film and I’m so excited to share them with you.

B and S About Movies: Joe, I have a million questions.

Joe Zaso: It’s Argento’s Greatest Hits as told by a 15-year-old? If you took a shot for every Argento nod, you’d be bombed within the first 2 minutes.

B and S: I’m amazed you had access to all of these Argento films in 1986 and at such a young age. All we had in my hometown was the VHS of Creepers.

Joe: I had just seen Creepers on video before I made this.

B and S: Had you seen Suspiria before you made Maligno?

Joe: Yep. Donald Farmer from Splatter Times sent me a bootleg VHS of Suspiria (the R-rated version) filmed off a screen and a decent UK screener of Tenebre. I had also seen Deep Red shredded on Channel 9’s Fright Night. Plus, I had just seen Demons in a theater the same weekend that Poltergeist II opened, just before I started shooting.

I was going to do a third horror anthology as well as a very ambitious zombie movie (monsters from VHS rentals come to life) in Horrormax. But after seeing Creepers, I was in LOVE!

B and S: This feels like a slasher made by someone who has just had their mind opened by Italian movies.

Joe: I was into slasher movies and Romero. H.G. Lewis and Argento sparked it. As you can gather, it’s a hodge podge of so many Argentos. It’s my favorite of all my 80s movies, because it probably works the best and isn’t too incoherent or over-ambitious.

It basically foreshadowed the Giallo being my favorite movie type to make.

B and S: It’s a wood-paneled New York Giallo!

Joe: All the music came from Pennsylvania. Tim Frey and Richard Han, who was from New Castle. He was a penpal who almost got me a role as a zombie in Day of the Dead over Thanksgiving weekend.

B and S: I love the accents.

Joe: “Yeahhhh, Mawww. I know. It’s rainin’ really hoddd.”

B and S: It’s just amazing that at 15, you made a full Giallo.

Joe: It was my calling.

Thanks, as always, to Joe. You can check out a past interview with him and reviews of some of his other films, like Screambook, Screambook II and It’s Only a Movie. You can watch this on YouTube or order it as part of the Lost In the 80s: The Joe Zaso Collection from Terror Vision.

UNSUNG HORRORS HORROR GIVES BACK 2024: The Mummy’s Dungeon (1993)

Posted on by

Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: Viewers Choice

Has my love for bootleg mummy movies gone too far?

Rameses Karis (Sal Longo) is definitely one of those guys who would be in a camera club in the 1950s, paying gorgeous women to take photos while he’s surrounded by other socially awkward men. Yet it’s 1993, so he is able to invite all manner of models to his house where he takes perverted snaps of them and then uses their bodies and blood to fuel the mummy (Dave Castiglione) that is sleeping the sleep of death in his basement. Or, in his words, “I need virgin’s blood to revive the ancient warriors and put Egypt back on the map.” That’s why he’s paying girls of loose morals to come over and strip down for him and his camera.

There’s no nudity, which makes this feel even pervier — the True Detective magazine effect that I have mentioned before — and it’s the same thing over and over (and over), as the cameraman takes photos, spies on the women undressed, sends in the mummy, they faint and then they kill the woman and drain her blood. Repetition is a major part of comedy but it is even more a major element of a fetish, even one where someone wants to see women faint and get their blood drank by a bandage-wrapped undead Egyptian.

This was released by I.D.S. Productions/WAVE Productions, and yes that last company should let you know that this is totally non-porn porn. I both want to meet and don’t wish to ever know the person who jerks off to this and there’s no way I’m shaking their hand or even fist bumping them to say hello.

The women include Marlene (Michelle Caporaletti, Hung Jury), Marilyn (Cristie Clark, Curse of the Swamp Creature 2), Susan (Terri Lewandowski, Wayne’s mother in Santa Claws) and Dawn (Dawn Lewis).

Rameses made the mistake of killing Kris (Amanda Madison, Red Lips), so her twin sister Jean (also played by Amanda Madison) hunts him down. She’s nearly killed by a mummy before a policewoman (Clancy McCauley, The Kind of Meat That You Can’t Buy at the Store) and Jay (Aven Warren, who did makeup for many movies like this) shoot the shutterbug sadist and pours Egyptian water on the mummy. Roll the rasterized credits.

I’m not going to say that this was good but it’s definitely a movie that I can watch and get a vibe out of. It’s just drone, the same thing over and over, a mummy looking like he got all his makeup at Spencer’s at best and lots of bad photo sessions and alright blood drinking. It’s calming, as I’m anxious now trying to get a job and I’m not telling anyone in my interviews that to find my zen I sit and watch films where dime store wrapped cadavers munch down on vacant eyed women and yes, some dudes jerk off to it, but I use it to get high.

I mean, I want a job.

You can watch this on YouTube.

UNSUNG HORRORS HORROR GIVES BACK 2024: Blood Frenzy (1987)

Posted on by

Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: In Memoriam

The pedigree of this movie: It was based on a story Ray Dennis Steckler called “Warning – No Trespassing”, scripted by Ted Newsom (Time Tracers, Evil Spawn) and directed and produced by Hal Freeman, who made his money from adult movies like Sex Rink, Radio K-KUM and the Caught from Behind Series. He wanted to go mainstream, so he paid for this movie all by himself.

There was a reason for that. In 1983, as the conservative Reagan White House and Attorney Edwin Meese started cracking down on porn, raiding the set of Freeman’s Caught from Behind 2. He was convicted of five counts of pandering but was given probation. This took years to resolve, up until 1988. Freeman died a year later, but the case that the religious right brought against him ended up legalizing pornography and eliminating any grey area. Then again, Roe v. Wade was a thing at one point too.

Freeman’s Hollywood Video started a mainstream Hollywood Family Video and this was the first release. It begins with psychologist Dr. Barbara Shelley (Wendy MacDonald) bringing her patients to the desert to try her confrontation therapy and get them to function as a group.

Those patients are Vietnam vet Rick Carlson (Tony Montero), who is dealing with flashbacks; the sex-addicted Cassie (Lisa Savage); Crawford (John Clark), who is an alcoholic; Jean (Monica Silveria) who resists any attempt to be touched; Dory (Lisa Loring, who was Wednesday Addams and by this point was married to porn star Jerry Butler and doing makeup on adult sets as Maxine Factor; she also co-wrote Traci’s Big Trick, an adult film about exactly how Traci Lords made movies as an underage teen), a former fashion model and lesbian who hates everyone and the hateful Dave (Hank Garrett, the foreman inspired by Paul Kersey in Death Wish).

Why does the doctor think she can control six mentally ill people in the middle of nowhere with no help? The first session ends up with Dave and Rick fighting each other and by the next day, their RV is ruined, the radio doesn’t have a microphone, all of their food is ruined and Dave is dead. One by one, they find a jack in the box and are killed.

This was late to the slasher cycle and even though it’s shot on video, this has some great gore and the last few moments really go for it. Speaking of going hard, Lisa Loring is a force of nature in this. RIP — she died last year — but she’s screaming every line and ends up scoring one of the women in a scene that cuts before any sapphic action, making you wonder if this really was directed by a man who went to jail for the sins of the adult industry.

There was one other Hollywood Family release. Earthquake Survival, which was written by Newsom and Brinke Stevens. It was directed by Freeman — who signed a certificate you could be proud of if you watched this — and hosted by Shelley Duval. It was sold exclusively at Sav-On stores in California.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Sources:

The Bloody Pit of Horror: Blood Frenzy

UNSUNG HORRORS HORROR GIVES BACK 2024: Darkness (1993)

Posted on by

Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: Vampires

There are so many vampire movies that you may almost think that everything has been said about bloodsuckers and you may be right. And then you watch Darkness and realize that no one has even scratched the surface of what can be done with vampires since this was made in 1993.

Made by Leif Jonker for $5,000 or so in Wichita, Kansas, this movie does more with its time and budget than pretty much any 90s horror film did with millions. Working with effects artist Gary Miller, who also plays the vampire hunter Tobe, it’s as if this movie wondered, “Can we blow things up and have so much blood that it feels like your TV screen is leaking?”

From the moment a terrified person runs into a convenience store and tries to explain that everyone is going to die until a conclusion that has numerous bodies festering with blood, pustules and grue before exploding in a plasma soaked storm, this is like when Slayer did Reign In Blood from start to finish live, as it never slows down by battering you with non-stop scenes of carnage. Jonker started this when he was 17 and when he came back to it years later, he had the kind of crew working with him that would sell their blood to make it happen.

Tobe meets up with some teens who use shotguns, chainsaws, Holy Water, drills whatever it takes to destroy Liven (Randall Aviks) and the plague that he has brought to this small town. I’ve read some reviews that say, “This has no story” and you know, what movie did these guys watch? This is lo-fi gloriousness on the grandest of scales, well, as grand as five grand can be.

When I thought about the plague that would end humanity as a teenager, it wasn’t me sitting in my house and people arguing about wearing a mask. It was bloody skeletons screaming in the sun, 7-11s filled with blood and hot metal girls in Iron Maiden shirts trying to kill me. I wanted the end times to feel like a Dio album cover or, well, Darkness.

This is metal as fuck! It made me so happy that I was cheering. I almost cried I loved it so much. Really, why did I take so long to watch this? It’s like a film crawled inside my head, ate most of my brain, used the blood and fluids inside my skull to fill a gravity bong, laced it with PCP and then made something for me to watch while I succumbed to the bloody abyss.

UNSUNG HORRORS HORROR GIVES BACK 2024: Hell Spa (1992)

Posted on by

Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: 1990s

If Killer Workout and Death Spa weren’t enough for you, Hell Spa is a shot on video 1990s film (shot in 1992, released in 1992) that has the best line I’ve heard in a long time: “There’s someone out there and they stole my beans!”

A woman is stalked and killed, at which point we see a computer monitor that tells us that her children, Maggie (Betsy Ryan) and Marcia (Heidi Gross) have to also be murdered so that they’re aren’t any loose ends.

Mr. Ex (Ron Waldron) is such a strange character. He buys into mom and pop shops by giving people their fondest dreams, then begins to kill their customers and finally the owners, like a combination of Needful Things and Blockbuster to your favorite local video store in the actual 1990s that no one remembers, feeding nostalgia into a beast that destroyed the actual stores that kept interesting movies on the shelf. Mr. Ex is something like a vampire or Man In Black or demon and the movie never really explains his plan of buying auto parts stores and gyms. It’s an odd Satanic business plan, but it seems like he’s getting somewhere with it.

The Hell Spa is owned by Rona Benson (Deirdre West), an older woman who is losing ground to a corporate gym that destroys every small workout place in its way. Mr. Ex shows up and offers an interesting plan. He will save her beloved gym, make her look young again and she can sign people up at her gym for free and lose weight, as long as they sign up for life. Plan Ex, as it’s called, is on all the scales in the form of stickers, which seems kind of budget for someone who is either a monster from another dimension or some higher form of demon, but who am I to tell Mr. Ex how to do what he does.

Catherine Clark (Lisa Bawdon) is the editor of a local newspaper that no one likes other than to write letters telling her how bad the paper is. She learns about the spa when her friends, yes that would be Maggie and Marcia, go missing. There’s a whirlwind of plot, as Mr. Ex buys out one of her reporters, Doyle Shakespeare (Leonna Small), by giving her the mental illusion that her sick mother is better, all while Catherine falls for hunky but kind of dumb — or so he appears — computer guru Ken Brock (Raymond Storti). But then Mr. Ex takes those two pieces off the board and even cuts the finger off — he didn’t lose enough weight — of the owner of the print shop that the newspaper comes out of, Roque Jarvis (Augie Blunt), Catherine becomes in deep with the conspiracy that is swirling about her city.

Mike Bowler, who directed this, also was behind Things (not the Canadian one) and its sequel, as well as writing Fatal Images. The co-writer of this was Dennis Devine, who has been making movies since Fatal Images like Dead Girls, Things II, Vamps In the City and so many more. In fact, if you liked the theme from Dead Girls, good news. You’re going to hear it again.

“God made a fatal error when he gave men free will,” says Mr. Ex at one point, just after he’s show Catherine that large computers from another time and place — their computing power would fit into your phone these days — are behind his empire. Then, he giallo kills the other writer by stabbing her right in the brain.

This just gets wild, as there’s an underground lair filled with computers, as if this has become a Halloween 3 cover movie, except that it’s really about how Walmarts and Dollar Generals stripmined small towns across America, putting up stores every two minutes, until anything unique or special has been torn away while taking what they need, whether that’s money or blood or souls.

Those are some big ideas for a microbudget shot on video horror movie — and maybe I’m filling in the holes with my own concepts as I savored this — but you have to love a bad guy who says things like “I am the dark in every man’s soul” before describing how he will use sin to unite the entire world.

Also: This movie is way longer than it should be, yet I wanted it to last like another hour. You might find that it drags, but I could live in the world of Hell Spa for some time.

In 2000, Bowler took footage from this and made Club Dead, which is almost the same movie but now it has Tommy Kirk as a cop. This is a move that I can’t help but applaud. He should have remade it with little bursts of footage every few years, like a Satanic small business Star Wars prequel.

You can watch this on YouTube.

VISUAL VENGEANCE BLU RAY RELEASE: The Wrong Door (1990)

Posted on by

Ted Farrell (Matt Felmlee) loves a mystery. As a college student and singing telegram actor, he goes from creating an audio thriller into one of his own, as a gorgeous woman named Jennifer (Loreal Steiner) ends up near death in his car. Soon, her last boyfriend Jeff (Jeff Tatum) and his friend Vic (Chris Hall) are stalking him. Can he stay one step ahead?

Directed by the team of James Groetsch, Shawn Korby and Bill Weiss, this is a suspenseful story that is anything but a student film, even if it’s one made by students. Shot on Super 8, it seems to never stop moving or to get boring, always keeping the viewer guessing what happens next.

Plus, seeing as how it’s a movie about someone who tells stories with sound, it has plenty of audio design that moves the tale forward. Here’s to another great find by Visual Vengeance, who have perhaps their most ambitious animated menu to date and, as always, hours of extras.

 

A very rare regional horror thriller from the late 1980s video store era, The Wrong Door enjoys its first time ever on disc and a brand new 2K transfer from the original Super 8 elements.

This Visual Vengeance blu ray has a brand new director-supervised 2K transfer from original Super 8 film elements with extras that include two commentary tracks, one with directors Bill Weiss and Shawn Korby and a second with director James Groetsch and producer John Schonebaum. There’s also a new documentary Men Make Movie, If Not Million$, interviews with Groetsch, Korby, Weiess and actor Matt Felmlee; an interview with Chris Gore; an alternate director’s cut; two Super 8 shorts, Raiders of the Lost Bark and The Pizza Man, an episode of The Gale Whiteman Show; the original unedited Muther Video VHS intros; an image gallery; trailers; storyboards; a limited edition slipcase and door hanger; a reversible sleeve with original VHS art and a “stick your own” VHS sticker set.

You can get this from MVD.

FANTASTIC FEST 2023: Blonde Death (1984)

Posted on by

Fantastic Fest 2023 is from September 21 to 28 and has so many movies that I can’t wait to see. You can learn more about this movie and when it is playing here.

Teenage Mother may have been 9 months of trouble, but Tammy the teenage timebomb is eighteen years of bottled-up frustration about to explode.

Vern (Dave Shuey) and Clorette (Linda Miller) have moved Tammy (Sara Lee Wade, who was a set dresser from Friday the 13th: A New Beginning and Return of the Living Dead and worked in props on Lady In White and was also in Darkroom) from Mississippi to California and now that she’s off the farm, she’s never going back.

But despite the Baptist veneer, maybe Vern’s a little turned on when he spanks Tammy. Why else would he let her wear mommy’s high heels and walk all over his face? Mother isn’t much better, giving forced enemas to her daughter as punishment. Is it any wonder that when Tammy meets Link (Jack Catalano) she goes all Mallory Knox?

The two of them are in and out of bed when they’re not killing everyone in their way and oh yeah, staying away from one-eyed obsessed girlfriends and prison boyfriends and dead bodies stinking up the joint. These two make anything a party.

After all, Tammy says, “By the fourth day, Burt was starting to stink pretty bad. But we even turned disposal of his body into a fun-packed afternoon.”

References to Richard Gere being a coprophagy fantasy object, a last girlfriend who stood up on the rollercoaster and lost her head and an audacious final beat that was filmed — with no permit, come on, this is a $2000 SOV blast to your brain — inside the Magic Kingdom.

The James Dillinger who made this was really James Robert Baker, who left a “stifling, Republican Southern Californian household” to explore speed, booze, art and his hidden homosexuality as his father sent a private detective on his tail. He ended up going to UCLA for film and made two movies, the one we’re talking about and Mouse Klub Konfidential, which tells the story of a Mouseketeer who becomes a gay bondage pornographer and came so close to celebrating Nazism that the 1976 San Francisco LGBT Film Festival was scandalized and may have caused Michael Medved to abandon his dream of film making and instead become a film critic or whatever the fuck he is.

After five years of writing scripts, he was already burned out on Hollywood and started writing novels like Adrenaline, in which two lovers on the run battle homophobia and the oppression of gays in a Republican-dominated America; Fuel-Injected Dreams, which is about Phil Spector; Boy Wonder, the oral history of Shark Trager, who was born in the back seat at a drive-in movie and became a filmmaker and Tim and Pete, in which the lead characters deal with the AIDS crisis by planning to kill Reagan. That book was so controversial that he was labeled “The Last Angry Gay Man” and he couldn’t find anyone to publish his later books.

Baker ended up killing himself with carbon monoxide in his car, just like two of the characters in this movie — spoiler warning — which is a tragedy. After his demise, he became better known and Testosterone became a movie in 2003.

This gets compared to John Waters a lot but I think that’s because it’s the easiest comparison to make. People really talk like this, this kind of filthy explosion of violent noise and you can hear the need to be heard in every word. Now, you may have to strain to hear it, as the video quality is, well, shot on video in 1984 but you should lean in as close as you can.