What I'm Watching: Rewind This!

I'm avoiding watching my next big review movie, hiding from the snow, and there's nothing on the telly save for Olympics, so I thought I am long LONG overdue for a WIW!

I don't do a lot of documentaries in my life, choosing rather to read about events than watch people talk about them, so for me to pick one up and watch it, is saying something.  Mostly about me, but also about the subject matter.

And Rewind This! is pretty much perfect subject matter for me.  The documentary covers the advent of the videotape, the rise of videotape culture, video stores, the direct to video market (And you BET Full Moon and Charles Band are in this!),  and how it all came crashing down.

This is one of my favourite documentaries I've ever seen.  All these fans, showing their love, the personal nostalgia, insights into the industry, and even a few disenting voices about how terrible video was, made this a REAL treat for me.

I don't really have a lot to say about the documentary itself, besides that it pretty much gave the perfect look at the whole boom of the VHS in the 80s, and how we've lost a little something since it went away.  Progress is progress, and necessary, but something got left behind when that particular avenue crumbled.

That was probably one of the best bits of the movie, the reasoning for how all this weird stuff came out in the 80s, as studios rushed to fill shelves from their catalog, grabbing any old thing that might make a few bucks, and less of that has come out on DVD as they go for the purely marketable stuff, and even LESS on Blu-Ray now, with the studios exerting more and more control on just what they'll 'allow' us to see, and that truly is a shame.

(And fortunately there's places like Scream! Factory sneaking out some of those lost gems every month!)

But yeah, this was an amazing documentary on an incredible period in home entertainment, one that is especially important to myself as I am sure you can tell.  I had so many fond memories of watching really terrible horror movies with bad tracking on overwatched tapes with my friends, welling up inside me while watching this.

If you have ANY nostalgia for the video tape, or the 80s, or Blockbuster, or anything on this site, you NEED to watch this documentary.  I cannot recommend it enough.  And the best part about the DVD, is just HOW much extra footage they packed into it.  SO much deleted from interviews, and bonus stuff, it's like another two hour long documentary ON TOP of the 90 minutes they already gave you!

Trisk is a love letter to trashy horror movies, and this documentary is even more so a love letter to the VHS and the 80s.

J

What I'm Watching: Best Worst Movie

So, right after watching Troll 2, I watched the documentary made almost 15 years after the fact that took a look at the strange cult following the movie has aquired, where the cast is now, and a little behind the scenes.

This is such a fascinating story.  It really centers around the actor who played the father in the movie, who's real career is as a dentist.  Not surprisingly, his acting career was mostly unknown, until the weird popularity of Troll 2 took off in the 21st century.

He's just as baffled by the popularity as I am, but he goes along with it, is swept up in the whole craziness of the fandom, going to showings, having a blast, getting annoyed at convention appearances (With some seriously scathing commentary that is both true and a little infurating to me), and eventually he tires of it and goes back home to his dentistry practice.

There's more to it than that, but the rise and fall of his interest in the fandom (He still has it, don't get me wrong, but even he says the joke wears thin after awhile), is a great throughline to follow this movie.  It gives you an in on all kinds of things, and just works as a way to explore the weird movie known as Troll 2.

The best stuff here, for me, is the behind the scenes stuff.  Finding out just what the hell went wrong with this movie, and how much of it WAS DELIBERATE is just mind blowing.  The director thinking his little movie was a serious project, and is more or less exactly what he wanted, and spends a lot of his appearance in BWM *defending* Troll 2 is crazy.

I'm not a big documentary guy, but this was good to watch, and packed with even more footage on the DVD going even more behind the scenes of the making of Troll 2.  It manages to have a decent story to it and be more than just "And this happened, then this, and this".  If you're a fan of Troll 2, or if you can't stand the movie and want to see what the hell went wrong, this is worth a look.

J