INTERVIEW WITH JOHN SMITH OF FILMZILLA

Filmzilla closed in May of 2013.  With it, Minneapolis lost a great place.  They had been that rare place that you could wander into without any sense of what you wanted and leave pleased.  It was a video store for cinephiles and the casual movie watcher.  They had some of everything.  Their catalogue spanned all genres and I was always impressed by the stuff I would find.  
Their staff was extremely knowledgable and warm, and you could tell they loved movies. They weren't my neighborhood video store (which is Movies on 35th Street), but I loved being in there.   I met John Smith during their closing sale and he was generous enough to share some of his thoughts on it all with me.  It is great to see his picks for movies. Categorized and organized, it is a poignant view of what we're losing.  

ASV: Where are you from?  How did you end up getting interested in movies?   What was your childhood like?  Were your parents interested in film?

JS: I grew up in Minneapolis. Single mother, Younger brother and television as a babysitter. I fell in love with comic books and monster movies really young and my mother was real good about taking us to saturday matinees. Lots of Godzilla and anything animated. She took me to a double feature of the original King Kong and Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast when I was 8 or 9. that kind of opened the doors to black and white and subtitles. Also this was happening in a time without infomercials, So there were a lot of movies on television. Prime time we would watch the Clint Eastwood westerns and James Bond Films ands made for tv stuff like Bad Ronald and Trilogy of Terror and during the day on the indie station they would play Matt Helm movies and stuff like Equinox and Two Lane Blacktop.
Then Star Wars came out when I was 9. I was obsessed with it and got the toys and comics and any magazines that featured SW characters on the the cover. This led to mags like Starlog and Famous Monsters and finding out about more movies.
My grandparents lived in Detroit and I visited every summer. This led to my aunt taking me to the Drive-in 2-3 times a week and seeing the Corman stuff. I started getting heavily into music after seeing The Kids Are Alright and getting all the music mags which had movie stuff that was different than Starlog.
Then cable hit Minneapolis and shows like Night Flight would show weird movie stuff like Warhols Frankenstein and Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains. The Uptown theatre was showing great stuff.
When home video hit in the 80's Northern Lights record store had a small selection of tapes and the clerks would make us rent stuff Like the Monkees "Head" and the Russ Meyers films.
That's pretty much how My movie tastes were formed.

ASV: How did you get involved with Filmzilla? How long were you affiliated with it?

JS: I had worked at Discount Video in the early 90's they had a great collection. I quit there to work at the First Avenue nightclub and was out of the movie scene for 10 years, only seeing films that people were raving about (Clerks, Tarantino) or mainstream stuff at the Skyway.
In 2003 I was looking for a second job and a friend told me to go to Nicollet Village Video. I went, checked out the catalog and asked for a job. I stayed for a month shy of 10 years.

ASV: What is Filmzilla? How did it get started? (Used to be Village Video, etc...) How long was it around? How did it work originally? (was it a membership? etc...) Did that change through the years?

JS: NVV was a indie store. ID and credit card got you a account. New releases $3.50 overnight, catalog 4 for $5 for 4 days. Prices stayed the same tip they closed.

Chris Becker had the philosophy of just get everything so the selection was incredible. He opened it in 1996 and everyone told him that video stores were over.  The store was in a gay neighborhood so he ordered all the GLBT titles he could get. He pretty much ordered every foreign title he could. For a big hollywood release Blockbuster would get 70-100 copies, he would get 6. so the new release wall had hundreds of titles. 

ASV: How would you describe the heyday of the Video Store?

JS: Weekend nights were like a bar scene, people's big plans have fizzled out or couples doing a night in. lines lasted until close, We would get in 70 -100 titles a week!  It didn't really slow down until 2008. 2009 I think is when the numbers started dropping.

ASV: Can you talk about a favorite memory at the store?

JS: Guy with a straight face asks how to rewind a dvd.

ASV: Who was a favorite customer?  Why?

JS: There were 5 pre-teen girls unrelated to each other who HATED disney princess movies and Twilight crap but loved Batman or Star Wars. Mostly Batman. So I would steer them to the good comic book properties Like Batman Animated or the Justice League Unlimited.
There were guys who liked to play stump the clerk, not realizing none of us really cared. 
There were a lot of nice customers. and a lot more pricks who wanted to yell for 15 rather than pay a $2 late fee.

ASV: What were some of your Staff Picks through the years? How about if you could do one now? & in what circumstance would you recommend people watch it?  (food, place, types of people)

JS: Off the top of my head.
This assumes I don't have to recommend the obvious (Citizen Kane and the rest of the canon) and fairly mainstream. 

Pre 60's
His Girl Friday
Kiss Me Deadly
any of the Ida Lupino directed noirs
Bad Seed
Night of the Hunter
almost any Preston Sturgess
Girl Can't Help It/Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter
Peeping Tom
He Walked by Night
Shack out on101

60s
Lolita
Lord Love a Duck
Faster Pussycat Kill Kill/ Mudhoney
Head (Monkees)
Wild Angels
Sergio Leone Trilogy ( I'm stunned at how may people won't watch these because a. western or b. Clint Eastwood

70s
Prime Cut
Mean Streets
Two Lane Blacktop
Vanishing Point/ Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry/ Race With the Devil.
Rock and Roll High School
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
The Exorcist
Halloween and all the good imitations.
Drunken Master

80s
Caddyshack
Blade Runner
Repo Man
The Loveless
Near Dark
The Hitcher
A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon


Misc
Waitress
Motel
Brick
Submarine
City of Lost Children
Take This Waltz
10 Inch Hero
Bandslam
Adventureland
Archer (tv)
The Wire (tv)

ASV: How did Filmzilla manage to hang on as long as it did? 

JS: Catalog. Buying everything we could when the money was coming in helped a lot. When the store moved the demand shifted from movies to new TV shows and kid stuff, and random college kids looking for "The Room" or "Troll 2".

ASV: What do you think caused Filmzilla to have to close it's doors?  What about video stores in general? 

JS: When the store moved, our porn customers didn't follow, and the Filmzilla customers really cared about new releases that red box didn't have. The average customer was 53 years old. Young people are not going to video stores.

ASV: Do you see anyway that a video store could survive today?

JS: Cinema Revolution tried the Curated Collection and didn't survive. no. I don't think so. I see downloads and streaming getting better in the next 5 years.

ASV: What is your plan from here on?

JS: I'm still at First Ave and I'm going back to school.

ASV: Best of luck, John.

-J. Moret

Review: LIONMAN (aka Asian Adam)

Directed by Natuck Baitan (also spelled Natuk Baytan)
1975
Bootleg DVD from Trash Palace

Baytan seems to be a shlockmeister in the same realm of amazing as Bruno Mattei.  Releasing as many as four or five films a year throughout the 1970s, his filmography is massive.

Turkey's film industry is best known for it's weird rip-off films (Such as the infamous Turkish Star Wars).  Lionman is different, in that it's an original film.

The Rundown:
Medieval Ottoman Empire(esque) fighting with killer music starts us off.  A bunch of dudes are shot down with bow and arrows.

Some lady is forced to marry old Anton (Grand Moff Tarkin- looking dude with a mustache).  Anton is a bloodthirsty bastard who hates facial hair that covers more than just the upper lip.

The best sword-fight to goofy music in film history ends with a bearded gray dude (Solomon) getting his arms cut off, but his pregnant wife escapes into the forest with Toad from Mario Bros.  She has a child and immediately dies...?  So, Toad does what any good steward of a small baby would do, he takes the baby into the forest and just lays it down somewhere.

Well, lions find the baby and Toad gets all sad that the baby is going to get eaten.  Anton drinks to his victory  and gets with his new wife.

Cut to... ten years later?  The baby is now a boy and pets baby lions while feeding them raw meat.  Toad waits expectantly for someone to be born with the birthmark of the Solomon.

Then, suddenly he's LIONMAN.  He's surprisingly well-shaven and sports a David Hasselhoff haircut.  Imagine a mix of Andre the Giant, Bruce Campbell and Tarzan.  Anyway, he runs up to an antelope and karate chops that bastard, and then he eats his raw flesh.

Having a deep sense of justice, Lionman attack's Anton's men as they try to rape and pillage a small village of gypsies.  He tears a tree out of the ground and then suffocates four of them at the same time with a big branch.  He even kills a dude by pie-facing him.  It's all done to the amazing tune of goofy classical music.

A hot gypsy lady (Solomon's daughter) sets up Anton's son, but Lionman, not knowing the politics of the moment, saves the dude and then throws a bunch of gypsies in the drink.  Solomon's daughter and Lionman fall for each other and then...  she literally stabs him in the back with a huge cleaver before seeing the birthmark of Solomon.

Hulk Fists

From there, the story seems to be pretty obvious, but it's the surprising amount of action, violent surprises, metal hulk gloves, confusing dialogue, scratching people to death, trampoline fight scenes, and ridiculous music that make it so special.

The Evaluation:
Lionman is supremely fun.  It feels a bit like watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail, except that it's a serious action film.  I think the high point for me was the knife fight in the dungeon with the tiny knives.  There is a ton of somersaulting, flipping, and at times you can see the mat on the floor.

There is not a single dull moment.  Right when you think it's about to fade, Lionman uses rings and does some awesome gymnastics fighting while Toad fights off a bunch of evil-doers with a big chain.

The Goods:
I picked up this Trash Palace bootleg DVD at Laurie's Planet of Sound in Chicago.  The quality is about what you'd expect from such a release.  It's definitely taken from a VHS, but the sound and video are good. I will definitely be hunting down more of their bootlegs.

Set You Up:

• This is a good one for friends.  Or, even better, a really awkward date movie.  
• Hummus Tahini with Pita.  Maybe pick up some Efes Pilsner.
• Wear torn silk button-down shirt that is two sizes too large
• Have a blacksmith make you some crazy intense steel lion-gloves

- J. Moret

You can also watch the whole thing on YouTube, in 8 parts:

Free Movie Link: THE OLD DARK HOUSE

Classic monster films tend to divide audiences.  You either love the slow, beautifully shot black and white creature features with subtle hints at gore or you find them tedious and slow. 

Personally, James Whale's THE OLD DARK HOUSE is a favorite.  It's beautifully shot, and the opening is incredibly tense.  The plot has been used again and again, with films like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, etc...  It is one of the few movies where I actually believed that when the group gets stranded, they have no choice but to stay in the closest house they come to. 

From the director of The Invisible Man and more amazingness, watch the full film here:

-J. Moret

INTERVIEW WITH BARRY KRYSHKA OF THE TRYLON MICROCINEMA

Barry Kryshka is the head Repertory Programmer / director of the board of the wonderful Trylon Microcinema and Take-Up Productions.

Trylon is one of the most innovative and interesting movie theaters in the country; a (mostly) volunteer-run, volunteer-programmed non-profit 501(c)3 fifty seat movie theater.  It is placed in south Minneapolis in a tiny space behind Peace Coffee and AVS (Barry's business where he actually makes money).  Programming includes classics and premieres, as well as great outside groups on Wednesdays, such as The Defenders, Sound Unseen and Trash Film Debauchery.  Because of the tiny space and it's non-profit status, they are able to do daring programming like an entire month dedicated to Robert Aldrich.  (Ten Seconds to Hell, which is amazing, would probably never have played anywhere in the city without it.)  It drips with love for cinema.

Barry Kryshka in the Trylon

Below is my conversation with Barry about how he got into film, how he started the Trylon, the future of cinemas, etc...

Box Art: SPPLAT ATTACK!

Collecting physical media is a quickly dying hobby.  Digital media is becoming more overwhelming and prevalent.  Streaming services offer a seemingly unlimited amount of titles.  However, the titles on Netflix and others are pushed at you based on their restricion rights with the hopes of gaining the most profit.  Likewise, the temporary nature and inferior quality of that digital content offers no sense of ownership.  However, not all physical media is better than the box it comes in, ie: the most obvious cash grab for a career on the downward spiral ever made: William Shatner's SPPLAT ATTACK!

The Description on the box:

"Part sci-fi adventure, part Reality TV survival game and part extreme sports, William Shatner takes on a familiar role as commander of Earth's forces in a galactic confrontation fought with real paintball weapons.

Shot on location and involving plots from classic Star Trek episodes like "The Squire Gothos" and "The Gamesters of Triskelion," Spplat Attack provides a window into the true commander and conquer strategies possessed by Shatner, who battles against teams lead by shock jock Mancow and paintball pioneer Tom Kaye."

Holy god.  I am so baffled.  It starts with Shatner trying to land a fan parachute dealy, and he totally gets his leg caught under him.  Maybe the funniest thing I've seen in years.  

This is really a geek paintball instructional video with teams like the Borg, the Klingons, The Federation, etc...  It's done in probably the cheapest, most awkward way possible.  

The plot:

An alien known as Big Giant Head is attacking a paintball course outside Chicago.  Or something.  Then there are rules.  Teams go against each other.  That's about as far as I got before I turned it off.  Don't get me wrong, this was extremely entertaining and hilarious and I am so happy to have seen what I did.  I just know that I would become suicidally depressed if I watched this whole thing by myself.

-J. Moret

If you want to see a quick clip for it: