While I've been away, a lot has happened and I haven't had the time (or the energy) to keep the Rebellion running at a level where it is truly a Norse to be reckoned with.
I may never have been at that level...but this has been a new low. It's been a year since I've watched a genuine official Video Nasty.
Part of this is due to the constraints of life: I have been working full-time, whereas I was unemployed when we began - and it's no coincidence that my youngest child just turned 1.
But part of this is not due to such mundane events. I'll fess up: I've kind of been stalling. I have been stymied by Expose, James Kenelm Clarke's 1976 sex thriller starring Udo Kier and Fiona Richmond. As the only Nasty to actually come from Great Britain, it was rarely seen elsewhere. A cut R-rated American VHS is available (the US title is The House On Straw Hill), but that is not my quarry. My eyes have been searching for the Intervision release, the banned UK tape that landed on the DPP list of prosecutable films. And such a tape is:
A - is not likely to be sitting in a book or video shop in Southern California,
and
B - would most likely cost many hundreds of pounds if I were able to locate one.
But just the other day, I saw this!
The House On Straw Hill
The bottom dropped from my stomach. My pulse accelerated. It was too good to be true! But true it is. A BluRay/DVD combo R1 release done with the involvement of director Clarke that claims to be sourced from the uncut print. This is news that makes me happier than it has any right to. I'm betting this film is a cut above most of the others (has, in fact, been ranked as the best film of the bunch by someone who has seen them all), and only its' scarcity has kept it from being more appreciated.
There are a few other films (Human Experiments, The Slayer) that will be difficult to locate, but a whole lot less impossible. There are a few films that need better releases (Evilspeak, Toxic Zombies), but what is out there is acceptable for my purposes. I've felt like there's been someone standing in front of me saying "Red light...red light..." for a long time, and now they've finally turned their back so I can progress to the next phase.
And the next phase is what it will certainly be. Once I view the next Nasty (most likely Dario Argento's Inferno, see previous post), I will have seen a third of the list...and then some, since there are some films (The Evil Dead and Cannibal Holocaust to name a sampling) that I've already seen but not yet covered here. I think it's time to do a little research and release the brake. But I'll check my blind spots first. Because my name's Justin. JustinCase.
