BY TODD GARBARINI
Vinegar
Syndrome is the name of a phenomenon that occurs in motion picture film when
reels of film are poorly stored in hot and humid conditions. The hallmarks of
this unfortunate and inevitable fate to motion picture film consist of physical
degradation of celluloid precipitated by the film development process and
indifferent/poor film storage – such as film stored on rusted metal reels – all
resulting in film bearing the faint or strong smell of vinegar. The film can
become very brittle, suffer from shrinkage and/or take on a contorted shape
making it nearly impossible to run through a projector. In short, the only way
to arrest the process is to make pristine duplicates of the film’s original
camera negative following the developing stage and store them in
climate-controlled conditions. As one can well imagine, however, this type of
care was rarely if ever instituted by low budget movie studios who saw their
assets (i.e. a finished motion picture feature film) as having a limited shelf
life apart from ancillary markets that rarely included life beyond cable and television
broadcasts and foreign cinema exhibition Alternately, they simply didn’t have
the money or space to store the negatives.
Vinegar
Syndrome is also the name of one of the best film preservation companies
working today, located in Connecticut. Their enormous efforts have rescued many
foreign films and drive-in fan favorites from certain death, offering up a
smorgasbord of primarily obscure titles long forgotten from the age of home
video when feature films were released as-is on videocassette (VHS/Beta) and
videodisc (RCA Capacitance Electronic Disc and Pioneer LaserDisc). With
advances made in digital video restoration, films that have never even seen the
light of day outside of a grindhouse theater on 42nd Street in New
York City or a drive-in theater are now available on DVD/Blu-ray/4K Ultra High
Definition Blu-ray thanks to this amazing company.
Three
recent horror releases that I can safely say never, ever, ever come up
in conversation when suggesting the best horror films to watch in the month of
October include director-credited Claudio Lattanzi’s strangely titled slasher Zombie
5: Killing Birds (1987), Robert Hughes’s straight-to-video
killer-in-the-woods homage Memorial Valley Massacre (1988), and Rubén
Galindo, Jr.’s Grave Robbers (1989). None of these films won any awards
in the acting department, but they are all worth noting for a variety of
reasons.
"ZOMBIE
5: KILLING BIRDS"
Zombie
5: Killing Birds,
originally given the equally strange title of Killing Birds: Raptors, begins
promisingly enough before it slows to a craw (sorry, crawl) and interminably
meanders to a sudden and abrupt ending. Filmed in Thibodaux, LA in August 1987,
the plot is schematic and uninspired, light years from the best examples offered
from other Italian thrillers, most notably the giallo genre which the
film seems to be influenced by: Dario Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal
Plumage (1970), Profondo Rosso (1975) and Tenebre (1982) are
among the finest examples to date. However, Killing Birds is by no means
a giallo thriller, and its lack of an interesting cinematic visual style
makes it suffer in the end. Birds concerns a cuckolded Vietnam veteran (Robert
Vaughn, if you can believe it) who murders his wife and her lover upon
returning from the war in 1967, and spares his infant son only to be blinded by
one of the property’s birds. Twenty years later, a group of college students
who study rare birds aim to put another feather in their cap so-to-speak by studying
the rare birds on display in the vast home. It’s the perfect set up for some
crazy though uninspired mayhem. The best thing about Birds is Lara
Wendel, an actress genre fans will recall as the ill-fated Maria who
unwittingly roams into the killer’s house following an attack by a Doberman
pinscher in Tenebre, among many other Italian thrillers. In actuality,
the film is directed by longtime genre favorite Aristide Massaccesi, known
alternately by the much easier-to-pronounce pseudonym of Joe D’Amato (I love
that name), who had his name removed as he had made multiple films in a short
period of time, a maneuver instituted by industry rules. The new Blu-ray from
Vinegar Syndrome includes the following extras:
The
transfer is done in 2K from the film’s original 35mm negative and looks
beautiful.
The
audio includes both the English language track and the Italian dubbed track.
Talons is the name of the video interview with
director Claudio Lattanzi. In December 1985 he began working with Michele Soavi
on the documentary Dario Argento’s World of Horror which is still, as of
this writing, the best documentary on him yet made. In 1986 he also worked with
director Soavi on StageFright and was introduced to Aristide Massaccesi,
aka Joe D’Amato, and the company of Filmirage. He then discusses the writing
process of the film. This is an unusually in-depth interview which runs nearly
50 minutes.
There is a video interview with sound man
Larry Revene who also has worked as a director of photography that runs about
15 minutes and he provides some interesting tidbits on the making of the film
and how the Italian crew was very particular and had their own food catered.
The
real reason to buy this disc is for the package’s standout audio commentary
with film historian and author Samm Deighan who provides a wealth of knowledge and
information on not just the film but the genre and the people involved in the
making of the film. She knows what she’s talking about and she speaks slowly,
authoritatively and is fascinating to listen to. I have heard some other
commentaries with lots of information that the speakers blow through very
quickly, so it was a pleasure to listen to this commentary which is done at a
much slower pace. Ms. Deighan also provides the commentary to the upcoming
Vinegar Syndrome title I Start Counting – I would recommend buying that
Blu-ray sight-unseen just for her commentary alone. I cannot wait to listen to
that one and I haven’t even seen the movie yet!
There
is also reversible cover artwork and newly translated English subtitles.
There
are also the English and Italian trailers included.
If
you’re a fan of Zombie 5: Killing Birds, this is the edition to own. If
you haven’t seen it and are a fan of the horror genre, pick up this disc for
Samm Deighan’s commentary alone. It’s chock full of great info.
Click here to order from Amazon
"MEMORIAL
VALLEY MASSACRE"
This
flick is truly a curiosity as it was shot in 1988 but it almost feels like 1982
or 1983 and I have never seen that before. Shot for distribution on video, it’s
Jaws set in the woods, with the usual genre tropes of horny dopes on
vacation looking for sex and fun. Even the tagline is shameless: “Just when you
thought it was safe to go back into the tent…†Love that! Directed by Robert C.
Hughes who was responsible for Hunter’s Blood (1986), Zadar! Cow from
Hell (1989) and Down the Drain (1990), Massacre concerns Allen
Sangster, an irresponsible land developer (played with usual gusto by Cameron
Mitchell) in the Jaws Mayor Larry
Vaughn vein who opens a campground to a foolishly unsuspecting public before
it’s ready for prime time. He completely disses a dead dog in a well and a
construction worker who was killed a day earlier. He sounds like the type of
person who would blow off COVID-19 and tell revelers to ditch their masks as
well. Camp foreman George Webster (John Kerry, no relation to the former presidential
wanna-be) spends a great deal of his time trying to perfect his Tom Skerritt
impression while reluctantly being shadowed by Sangster’s son David (Mark
Mears) who hits it off with an attractive girl named Cheryl (Lesa Lee) who
happens to be camping by herself, something that would only happen in a slasher
film or a porno. Their romantic interlude in a tent is humorous and cheesy. An
overprotective couple loses sight of their babied twenty-something son who is
killed by a deranged guy dressed like a caveman, and little by little the partygoers
begin to disappear. This is by no means a straight-up horror film, but rather a
tongue-in-cheek send-up of such genre fare, replete with gore and some nudity. At
one point, David angers his boss, George, who resents having to hire his
boss’s son, to the point that George rips the only pay phone off the wall of
the camp’s office. David channels Jaws’s Chief Brody, “That’s great!
That’s just great!†The murders are inventive and the guy who plays the caveman
(John Caso) is a hoot; he looks like the only white guy missing from Skull
Island. There is a twist about him that you can see coming from a mile away…Even
William Smith, whose IMDB page lists nearly 300 roles going back to The
Ghost of Frankenstein in 1942, makes an appearance!
The
new Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome includes the following extras:
The transfer is scanned and restored in 4k
from its 35mm original negative and looks terrific.
Welcome to Memorial Valley is an
onscreen interview with director Robert C. Hughes that runs roughly 14 minutes.
He describes the film as the story of a feral child, raised by animals. Memorial
Day was the original title of the film as it was one of the holidays
untapped by the horror film market and was ripe for deflowering. A jam in the
Steadicam caused them to lose a lot of footage, which is truly a shame. The
film was shot in the woods of Cold Creek Center in Sylmar, CA.
Ranger Danger is a
humorously titled interview with actor John Kerry regarding his role in the
film and how he came out of the Marine Corps and needed to get a job. He read
for the part and won out over William Smith, to his amazement.
There is also a promotional still gallery and
reversible cover artwork.
The
disc also comes with English subtitles.
I
would have loved a fun commentary by drunken spectators, but alas, there isn’t
one to be found here; you’ll have to create one for yourself.
Click here to order from Amazon
"GRAVE
ROBBERS"
This
Mexican film was originally titled Ladrones de Tumbas and was originally
included on a double feature DVD in 2006 that also featured the same director’s
previous 1985 outing Cemetery of Terror. The opening takes place during
what looks like the Spanish Inquisition time period wherein a group of men are torturing
a heretic (AgustÃn Bernal) on a rack in an effort to rid his body of evil since
he sides with Satan and has attempted to rape a young woman. After renouncing
God, a large rubber axe is somehow buried in his chest. Flash forward to
Fabulous 1989 wherein a group of dim-witted grave robbers (hence the title)
played by Ernesto Laguardia and German Bernal and their equally dim-witted girlfriends
(Erika Buenfil and MarÃa Rebeca) find themselves in the thick of it when they
make the mistake of robbing the body of the Satanist and dislodging the rubber axe
from his chest, thereby awakening his vengeful corpse so that he can spawn the
son of Satan. A police investigator arrives at the scene and the body count
slowly begins to mount amid fake-looking special effects and equally
fake-looking nocturnal sets. The movie within the movie at the Metropol in
Lamberto Bava’s Demons (1985) was more entertaining than Grave
Robbers, and it should be noted that it is best viewed with a group of
friends who are on-board with the silliness factor intact. Despite suffering
from a complete lack of suspense, the performers all come to the table with a
remarkable amount of energy and do manage to look frightened, especially as one
of the men has a hand rip through his chest a la the chestburster in Alien
(1979).
The
new Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome includes the following extras:
A
newly scanned and restored transfer in 4k from the film’s 35mm original
negative.
Unearthing
the Past is an interview
with director Rubén Galindo Jr. which is a fun watch and runs just under 20
minutes. Señor Galindo is fluent in English and has a jovial disposition
recalling the making of this film that was all shot at night over a period of six
to eight weeks.
There
is a feature-length audio commentary track with a group of gentlemen who call
themselves The Hysteria Continues! I was glad that they did this commentary as
I was unfamiliar with their work. I’m thrilled that I was introduced to them as
they have an excellent podcast that can be heard here. They have a lot of fun watching and
remarking/ragging on this film.
There
is also reversible cover artwork.
The
disc also comes with English subtitles.
Click here to order from Amazon
Have
a look at the online catalog at Vinegar Syndrome.com. They are constantly coming out with
amazing new titles that I have been secretly wishing for. This November sees
the release of Don Coscarelli’s 1982 fantasy The Beastmaster on Blu-ray/4K UHD. As this is one of my favorite films
from my teen years, with a superb score by Lee Holdridge and a topless Tanya
Roberts, this is a must see.