Budget Label Bargain Bin DVDs

Here's an update to a post from the original Mise-en-scene Crypt blog. The original publication date was: 07/24/2006 11:37:20. This was an examination of the video quality to be found on certain "PD" (wink wink nudge nudge) budget labels and asked the question: Are budget DVDs a bane or boon?

It's a question that's still very pertinent today as the budget labels have moved on to producing "multi movie" packs that cram anywhere from 10 to 20 to 100 or more movies onto a bare minimum of flipper discs. What's the big deal?

If you are like me you like movies. I wouldn't necessarily say I like all the movies I have on DVD, nor would I want every movie I've seen over the years on DVD, but when I buy a DVD I expect to actually be able to SEE the movie. Movies are meant to deliver on one important need, an escape from the dull routine of everyday life. Sort of like going to a mall. They are entertainment. Sure you never know going in what a movie has in store until you see it, but that's half the fun. Same with some of the DVDs released by certain budget labels. However the bargain bin holds treasures as well as junk. You can look at what's in the bargain bin but there's one problem with it, no matter what's in there you're buying blind.

Bargain bins are like Outlet or "Dollar" stores. Sadly not every mall has them but most video retailers do. Sure you often have a love-hate relationship with them, but there's almost always something chuckle worthy to be found in a bargain bin. (And I don't mean dump bins where some stores treat DVDs like garbage and just throw them into a mass heap like a farmer tossing slop to pigs.) On rare occasion you may find something interesting, like DVDs of old cult favorites and half-forgotten movies you may never have heard of. Savvy shoppers get to know labels as not all bargain bin labels take care to secure decent looking source prints. But that's a risk you sometimes have to take.

For instance I found my original DVD copies of Lady Frankenstein, Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman, Web of the Spider, Deep Red, Horror Express, and other movies too numerous to list here in video stores bargain sections. However Bargain Bin DVDs are like last years fashion. Nothing wrong with them, per se, just a bit questionable sometimes. Too, when you get that item home you find out it doesn't fit quite right, wont play properly, or wasn't at all what the packaging advertised. This happened with a 4-movie pack purchased out of a bargain bin. What a surprise it turned out to be!

Don't get me wrong the price was too good to pass up, so I've only got my self to blame. Yet one has to wonder what people thought that bought this set when it was first released and going for full price. But I am getting ahead of myself. The DVD set in question was..

Bad Boys of the West

DVD Type: 4-movie pack (2 double sided DVDs)

Label: Brentwood

Cost: $3.99

The Movies - Disc One Side A: Vendetta

This is an extremely grainy version of Poncho Villa sourced from VHS with its original title crudely replaced by a still image insert. In all honesty I actually stood in the store and read the write-up and said to myself, "This sounds like Poncho Villa!" yet bought it anyway. Caveat emptor indeed! Funny thing is the sound track is louder on this DVD than my WS version, which isn't to say it's better, rather the person responsible for the re-dub work just cranked up the volume.

Disc One Side B: A Town Called Hell

[NOTE: I'M SEARCHING MY CDs TO SEE IF I KEPT A BACK-UP OF THE BELOW IMAGE.]

There was a feature on certain consumer grade analogue video editors that allowed you to zoom in or out to reframe the picture during dubbing. One assumes this was intended to allow creative minded home video editors to play around with SFX. Alas too many dubbers had no real clue how to properly utilize this feature thus they usually ended up with improperly framed and severely overscanned dubs. You see a lot of this in PD (wink wink nudge nudge) type releases taken from broadcast television where the dubber was trying to hide onscreen logos or create a faux letterbox effect. Alas Westerns seem to be plagued by this more than any other genre, witness this video, which was obviously sourced from such a dub.

Disc Two Side A: Hunt the Man Down

Another cheap looking retitling job, this time for "Bad Man's River". As if you are going to fool anyone. The song playing during the intro repeats the title in chorus several times over. How Brentwood slipped through the cracks with this one boggles the mind. To add insult to injury whatever source was used is dark, murky, and so poorly filtered through whatever cheap analog video processor the garage dubbers used as to render the movie virtually black and white.

Disc Two Side B: Deathwork

Yes, you guessed it, this is yet another retitled western. This time it's "Captain Apache". How can I be certain? Because the song that plays during the intro has a chorus that repeats the original title over and over. However it's hard to tell if the colors are murky or if the guy operating the dubbing machine was colorblind. It also doesn't help that the contrast was turned too far up (when viewed on screen there's a bright haze in evidence throughout that the thumbnails don't really show that well). Obviously sourced from an amateurish dub job.

One is moved to ask what Brentwood was thinking when they released this box set, alas; the likely answer is they weren't thinking so much as laughing all the way to the bank. After all these are "PD" titles. So any money they made on these sets was gravy.

Then there were DVDs like this..

Metropolis

DVD Type: single sided DVD (bare bones)

Label: Front Row Entertainment

Cost: $2.99

To be blunt this DVD is a heinous example of hideous video that is excruciating to watch. Alas, believe it or not, I've actually seen worse. This DVD, at least, is well authored with no intrusive compression artifacts though the picture does have an odd curvature that might lead the imaginative to wonder if someone didn't use a camcorder to record it off a TV screen. Alas the source appears to be a copy of the print PBS stations used to broadcast during the eighties, which was not very good to begin with, thus making the video herein barely tolerable.

A Few Observations

Metropolis is one of many Public Domain titles that have been making the rounds on budget label video in dark and murky, washed out and blurry, barely viewable prints of questionable provenance for years. If there was no other version of it available one could argue that such companies are providing a service given difficult circumstances. Alas there not only is another much better version available it's a restoration print!

True it costs roughly six to seven times as much as the average bargain bin fare, and this is an black and white movie, which means the average consumer is likely to balk at the price tag. It's also a rare DVD in comparison to these mass produced low-end DVDs. But for the movie buff this premium edition is the way to go, even if it takes a big hit to the wallet. More importantly the picture quality will be a marked improvement.

Which is not to say every budget label release is bad. True, picture quality varies wildly, but then so does the quality of the movies themselves. Over the years I've even purchased a few such titles that turned out to be letterboxed. Alas these are few and far between. Usually what you have on these ultra cheap DVDs are full screen versions of movies, often over scanned, and seldom with any extras.

Then there are the multi-movie sets like Bad Boys of the West. I don't know what it is about budget labels and their multi-movie packs but they seem to think they can hide video prints of dubious origin on these and no one will notice. One assumes this is either done blatantly or out of a willful ignorance breed from the desire to make a quick buck. After all if one doesn't look at their source prints all that closely they can, like a good politician who tells his staff not to bother him with details, claim plausible ignorance.

Yet, and yet, there are so many titles that haven't ever appeared on DVD, even DVDs of questionable provenance, that one has to accede to the fact greed, alone, isn't the single driving force here. Sure there's the questionable (and often hard to find) DVDs released with alternate titles. Movies like Female Space Invaders (Star Crash) but there's also a ton of movies that, while not available (officially) in R1, have been released elsewhere. Premium editions exist of movies like Twins of Evil, The Humanoid, Star Crash, the Ator movies, and many other marginal genre titles. Alas, infuriatingly, not in R1! Which leaves gray market merchants and DVDs with alternate FS versions taken from dubious sources.

If these budget labels really were pirates they'd be ripping and re-burning these titles left and right. That they aren't would seem to indicate the state of video rights is just as murky, blurry, and shadowy as the movies these companies release to DVD. Mores the pity for cinephiles and movie buffs who've been waiting for years on end for that certain title to receive a proper DVD release.

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[Anatomy of a bad DVD] Virgin Terror

Poster Tag: Sweet sixteen ... they'll lose more than just their lives.

DVD Cover Blurb: Terror runs wild at the girls academy!

Theatrical/Video Run Time: U.S. 85 minutes; Italy 92 minutes

DVD Run Time: 81 minutes (movie)

Year: 1978

Country: Italy/ West Germany

Cast: Fabio Testi, Christine Kaufmann, Ivan Desny, Jack Taylor, Fausta Avelli, Bruno Alessandro, Caroline Ohrner, Silvia Aguilar, Taida Urruzola, Helga Liné, et al.

Director: Alberto Negrin.

AKA: Enigma Rosso/ Enigma Rojo/ Orgie des Todes/ Das Phantom im Mädchenpensionat/ Tráfico de menores/ Yön terrori/ Red Rings of Fear/ Rings of Fear/ Trauma/ Virgin Killer

With special thanks to everyone at the Latarnia Forums for their input.

Virgin Terror is a giallo, this being the name given to Italian pulp crime/mystery stories published between the 1930s and 1960s, but which has become a movie genre unto itself. Giallos are hard boiled crime movies that do not shy away from depictions of gratuitous sex or violence, all while throwing red herrings at the audience to keep them guessing. This genre is considered by some to be the apex of exploitation filmmaking with its voyeur raincoat wearing killers who stalk young women (often spying on them in the altogether) and bizarre plot twists that force the protagonists to think outside the box in their desperate efforts to solve surreal, often hideous, sex crimes perpetrated against nubile young women.

I was recently out looking for bargains, as you do, and having discovered that a Goodwill store stocks new items, including DVDs, I decided to stop by. Long story short they stock the type of DVDs that you find at flea markets; only they sell them cheaper. These are DVDs purchased in bulk wholesale lots so you never really know what you might find. It's like a treasure hunt. Usually I don't find anything so imagine my surprise when I found a DVD called "Virgin Terror" whose jacket blurb said.

"A detective investigating the murder of a teenage girl begins to focus his suspicions on the three girlfriends of the victim, who call themselves "The Inseperables""

Not very informative but it sounded interesting. I was reticent as I noticed this was a Passion Productions/Miracle Pictures (scan down) release but, it was Goodwill and only about 2 bucks, so I figured since it was for charity why not?

Mistake!

According to the IMDB this is an Italian/ West German co-production from 1978 originally titled Enigma rosso. The movie begins interestingly enough with the scene of a body being dumped into (what looked to me) like the sea, a body that's soon after discovered washed up on a river bank. Apparently this was the body of a 16 year old girl from an exclusive boarding school. Her young body had been mutilated and sexually violated. But who could have done such a thing and, more importantly, why?

Thus the stage is set for a good old fashioned murder mystery. From what I've watched the movie itself seems to be a fairly decent crime story. Sadly there's one problem. The video. It. .

Alexander the Great's Ghost the Video! It's Frigging Awful!

This has obviously been sourced from a dub of a dub that's been edited on consumer grade VHS decks. There's a bit of speckling (not quite snow), the kind you get when you are recording through cheap coax cables accompanied by intrusive blips that appear as white or black streaks in addition to random white specks. Overall a very poor quality video.

As if that's not bad enough the picture is too dark during the night/ indoor scenes, extremely washed out and hazy during the day scenes, and it's a hack job where even the best edits are readily apparent. .

And the worst edits are pulsating eyesores. .

The segment from which I excised the above, when viewed frame by frame, appears to have been a segment the video hacker was trying to edit out scenes of brutality/nudity while attempting to recycle footage to at least pad the segment out. Certain sections even have a moire pattern! All of which is proof positive this is the end product of a terrible hack job.

So what has been edited out? Having read reviews for the movie the edits cut out some very significant elements of the plot that appear in flashback as pertains to some sort of an orgy. What's left is not just a incoherent mess it's amateurish editing of the lowest caliber.

However it does appear the dub job might have been done using a signal booster as the picture is otherwise relatively stable. Not that it matters much as there's ample compression artifacting in evidence. For instance the video suffers from a double shot of blockiness. First, the block artifacting from being an analog tape source. Second, the block artifacting that's somewhat similar to what you get on a VCD. In other words this is a video that's made the rounds in it's journey to DVD.

How far has it come? Well there's a company logo- "Lettuce Entertain You"- which I initially thought said Lettuce Entertainment, that's how bad the video is, which I have been informed was a Canadian outfit that put out ultra cheap VHS. We're talking video quality that's scraping the bottom of the barrel.

However I'd say this video started life as a recording off either foreign broadcast TV or cable, probably recordr speakers with this kind of shite product.

Also noticeable, as already mentioned, are the edits. I can not stress how badly they were done. The first occurs during the intro. It's hard to say for sure what's going on here but it seems like an attempt to either cut in a new title or cut out something. It's very easy to detect because it's 1) a jump cut, and; 2) the music abruptly changes. As the music is instrumental through out I am guessing whoever did the editing was either tone deaf or just didn't care. But between the visual and audio distortions that occur during edits this is an appalling mess.

Oh, and my favorite, according to VLC media player this DVD runs 2 hours 17 minutes and 6 seconds. How is that possible?

Well, as I said, this is a dub of a dub. The credits roll and fade to black at roughly the 1 hour 21 minute 10 second mark, making for a total actual run time of 81 minutes. And those missing minutes are not because this was sourced from a PAL conversion.

How do we know this? Aside from the numerous snips made here and there the most telling is when the girls at the elite girls boarding school are running into the showers. I am assuming you see them remove their clothes as I found **warning link may be NSFW** this review **warning link may be NSFW** with a screen cap of part of the missing scenery. Sadly the itchy finger of the demented editor leaves us with a series of jump cuts apparently designed to remove as much nudity as possible. Which is baffling because they couldn't get it all since one of the characters has to stumble over to another stall and there is flashes of nudity later in the movie, and really isn't nudity what make most gialli cult favorites?

The point being this is a very obvious and poorly done hack job. There's significant visual and audio distortion, the latter very noticable due to music suddenly skipping stanzas et al. This video is a terrible mangling of what makes a giallo, or any movie for that matter, worth watching as the edits utterly ruin the flow of the movie. Worse, the sound is so bad you can't really hear anything half the time. Thus I would not recommend this DVD to any save the curious. Consider yourself duely warned.

And what's on the rest of the DVD? Believe it or not GREEN SCREEN. Which lasts for a short bit then turns into a test pattern with a gray streak running through the middle of the screen, which goes on for several minutes before the screen goes black. In other words it looks like someone put a VHS tape in a player hooked up to a DVD recorder, hit play, started recording, then left. However the fact that whoever did the DVD authoring didn't even put any effort into editing the video, opting instead to just rip the DVDr and burn it as is, is mind-boggling. That anyone could release such shoddy product if un-effing believable, yet here it is!

Caveat emptor indeed.

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Copyright © C. Demetrius Morgan

[The above was originally posted in April 2007 to the orignal Mise-en-scene Crypt blog.]

The MPAA - Part of the Problem?

If you were born any time before the 1980s you've probably noticed that contemporary movies have lost something. Call it heart, soul, or just plain competence in filmmaking in general but I, for one, don't think the blame is all on the shoulders of directors or even the studio executives who, let's be honest, are just looking to make a quick buck. Part of the blame has to be laid squarely at the feet of those who claim to be the threshold guardians watching out for us, or rather our children. I, of course, am referring to the MPAA.

Ratings on movies are something we all take for granted. In the United States movie ratings are applied by the mysterious organization known as the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) cum MPA (Motion Picture Association). Very little is known about this organization. They are shrouded in mystery. Ask the average person what the MPAA is and what it does they will instantly offer a vague answer about ratings, an answer that may assume quite a lot, yet virtually nothing is known of who does what or how; much less what guiding standards are employed.

If you go to the MPAA website you will find the following: "The movie ratings system is a voluntary system operated by the MPAA and the National Association of Theater Owners (NATO). The ratings are given by a board of parents who comprise the Classification and Rating Administration (CARA). CARA?s Board members view each film and, after a group discussion, vote on its rating. The ratings are intended to provide parents with advance information so they can decide for themselves which films are appropriate for viewing by their own children. The Board uses the same criteria as any parent making a judgment ? theme, language, violence, nudity, sex and drug use are among content areas considered in the decision-making process."

CARA? NATO? Voluntary?

The ratings are hardly voluntary. We all know that. It's one of those "facts" we've picked up in life. If ever you doubt the validity of the above statement ask yourself when (if ever) was the last time you saw a movie, in a movie theater, that didn't have a rating. There's also something foul about claiming the ratings system exists as an aide for parents. That's just nonsense. People have brains. Can they not judge for themselves what is suitable for their own offspring? Has our society become so infantile that we need to be coddled?

More to the point if the purpose of the MPAA rating system really was to signify what is "appropriate for viewing by their [parents] own children" then why is the rating system not limited to a single certificate, perhaps something like CS (Child Safe)? The statement makes no sense, and with good reason, the ratings are not about child safety. The MPAA and it's ratings are about content control. The ratings are broken down into categories that correlate to the major market demographics. In a word the MPAA ratings are about money, in two words they're about making money. Or, to phrase a sentence: The MPAA ratings system is about aiding studios in better marketing movies to target demographics.

The MPAA, according to information on their site, claims: "A motion picture is evaluated in its entirety. The raters who view the entire completed motion picture will determine the most important factors that parents consider when deciding whether to allow their children to view that motion picture"

Again with the children. Have you ever noticed that when politicians or corporations want people to accept something that would otherwise stir heated debate and controversy they fall back to the bulwark of "but it's for the children". But is it really?

No.

If ever you doubt this simply ask yourself when the last time you heard about the MPAA refusing a movie certification was. Certainly we can all agree that torture porn movies like HOSTEL or SAW are most certainly not acceptable viewing for children of any age. Yet such movies not only received a certificate, thus stamping them with the approval of the MPAA as movies okay to watch, but they received an R-rating. R ratings do not exclude all those not yet of age, this means the MPAA says these movies are okay for older teens. Really? Some would argue that violence begets violence. Over the years politicians and certain activist groups have been quick to blame violence in movies and video games for an increase in real world violence. All this while expressions of love and sexuality, that singular sacrament of transcendent human expression performed in praise and exultation of life, are deemed offensive. So how strange it is to find that an group claiming to be the self-anointed guardians of. .

Actually just what is the MPAA really about? They claim that their "raters attempt, as much as possible, to mirror the views of a contemporary cross-section of parents in the country," but many critics of the organization find this hard to believe. A quick read through the information on the MPAA site reveals they have carefully avoided using words like "morals" or "ethics" when discussing what they do. It's always some vague neutral wording like "views" or "factors" never a discussion or mention of specific ideology.

Worse, the MPAA doesn't even have any set content standards. They claim: "Thus, you may notice, for example, that as the concerns of parents about teen drug use or sexual activity increase, motion pictures which contain elements of illicit drug abuse or strong sexual content will be assigned a higher rating, reflecting the views of American parents." This is, one assumes, supposed to make the system more flexible and thus more easy to adapt to the times and shifting mores. Yet the mores of whom? Christians? Muslims? Mormons? Atheists? Wiccans? Aliens from Zeta Riticuli? Trolls? Elves?

Such statements proliferate on the MPAA web site and they are very disingenuous. Worse the ratings themselves, despite the long winded synopsis you will find on the MPAA site, are vague and nebulous to the point of meaninglessness.

If what is "R" today would have been "PG" ten or twenty years ago then the rating system is not just flawed it's meaningless. Every community has its own standards. If the MPAA doesn't have the backbone to put a codified set of standards into use then how can any parent truly use these amorphous and ever changing ratings as a guide? If what was "PG" ten years ago would be branded "R" today because the MPAA suddenly decided actors smoking cigarettes or drinking alcohol or wearing skirts that are too short are not acceptable then they have failed epically.

What, then, is the MPAA's true agenda?

While the MPAA's true agenda may not be as blatant as the message of an self-hating moron holding up a neon colored sign proclaiming "Save the Planet, Kill Yourself" their continued rubber stamping of movies filled with a panorama of amoral violence in which humanity is debased, murder is carried out with wonton glee, morals are shat upon, and audiences get to see blood spatter across the screen as naïve innocents are tortured and their flesh eviscerated in grotesqueries of carnival sideshow malice speak volumes of the MPAA's true character; or lack thereof. So long as the MPAA refuses to set standards they are, at best, corporate shills. At worst they're feeding the cycle of anti-humanism and anti-intellectualism in their push to turn audiences into obedient consumers of mediocrity.

Of course I could be totally wrong. Then again if we can't call out and blame the self-anointed guardians of what is supposed to be acceptable in movies for their downward spiral then who should be blamed? The President? Little Green Men from Mars? Hugh Hefner?

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Copyright © C. Demetrius Morgan

Erotica vs. Porn

Erotica. Porn. What's the difference? Is there a difference?

Erotica are works of art- be they literary or visual (sculpture, photography, et al)- that are designed to stimulate and arouse the senses. Some erotica is presented as social commentary; some erotica is presented merely for the aesthetic value, yet all erotica is an expression of a time and place. The erotic is expressive of cultural mores, thus erotica is often best understood when viewed from the basis of its originating cultural context.

Yet the erotic crosses all genres and is one of the few art forms that truly transcend cultural boundaries. It is sensual and provocative, vibrant and visceral, a feast for the eyes that stirs the passions and ignites irascible debate. Alas the typical dictionary definition of erotica is terse and uninformative for that which arouses sexual desire is as diverse as are the likes and dislikes of individual moviegoers. Differences made even more distinct when viewed from the POV of gender.

In the minds of some there is perceived to exist a thin to non-existent line between erotica and pornography. This is an erroneous misconception. There are very clear boundaries it's just that where those boundaries may be drawn depends largely on cultural context. Every society has mandated mores, including taboos related to sex and sexuality. Alas the result is that, while the line between erotica and pornography clearly does exist, it's a vague mist shrouded boundary whose borders shift and change with the eye of the beholder.

Over time social standards shift. Thus the taboos of one generation may no longer apply to the next. A prime example being that modern women wear pants. This is not out of the ordinary. Yet, barely a century ago, this would not have been considered acceptable attire for a "proper" lady. Too, proper beach attire for men and women a century ago was quite altogether different than what is permissible today just as discussion of such a topic as erotica might have considered improper for "polite" society.

At it's most simplistic erotica pushes against the boundaries of cultural mores. It walks the fine line between taboos, while taking care not to trample over them. Which is not to say it treats the subject matter with kid gloves, far from it. Indeed erotica often contains a veil of social commentary.

Then there is pornography. Pornography is, or has become, nothing more than a checklist of graphic sex acts. Sex acts that often trample over mores and taboos. There is, too often, very little art or artistry to porno movies. In fact most "porn" barely qualifies as cinema, much less erotica. Yet we all know, instinctively, the difference between the two; right?

Consider this pic, recently posted in a thread about "Hot Babes" at the Latarnia forums:

There is something about that image. It has a subtle subtext that is at once tantalizing yet disturbing. The image is charged with moody eroticism that's hauntingly mesmerizing. In some ways it reminds me of the Kekko Kamen movies, if they weren't done with tongue planted so firmly in cheek. But is it porn or erotica?

Here is another pic from the same thread:

The above screen cap is said to be from the remake of the movie Flower and Snake. I have not seen the movie. According to wikipedia the original movie was "a Japanese soft-core S/M film" and one of the comments at IMDB calls it the "greatest film ever made featuring extreme bondage and ballroom dancing". It should also be noted that "crucified women" is also an niche fetish, a very niche fetish, one I first became aware of back when Xena: Warrior Princess was still on the air. Google the term. You may be as surprised and shocked as I was.

However everything and anything can be turned into a fetish. There exist sites dedicated to scenes of actresses being carried, actresses smoking, actresses bare feet, actresses appearing in a scene with only one shoe on &tc. The list goes on and on. In this instance the nature of erotica is highly subjective.

Porn is blatant. It's in your face. It leaves very little to the imagination. In most mainstream movies the erotic is a very delicate balance of mood and setting, even the lighting and camera angle will be considered long and hard prior to ever shooting a single frame, to say nothing of the story. Conversely the only experience the pornographer needs in today's world is, all too sadly, knowing how to turn on a camcorder. The result being sex divorced of sense or sensuality. It is a clinical approach to sexuality that is, in a word, boring.

Erotica stimulates the imagination of the audience. It takes the viewer to the threshold of that which is taboo, yet never quite crosses over.

Erotica is about subtlety and subtext. However movies are meant to entertain, be they erotic or pornographic, and if they do not entertain the audience then they are wastes of celluloid and/or video tape. Some critics bash movies just for the fun of it while others languish over every word trying to honestly appraise a movie. But the bottom line is a movie is supposed to entertain. Considering how prolific the porn industry is one has to assume they are keeping their target audience well entertained. But is that enough?

No other aspect of filmmaking relies so heavily on a proper balance of mise-en-scene than establishing the proper atmosphere for the erotic. For instance a photo of a nude woman is not in and of itself erotic. Much depends on how the woman is posed, what the background is, and whether or not she is totally nude or partially clad, to say nothing of what it is she is wearing. In short nudity is not synonymous with titillation.

Alas that is a fact that many low budget directors either do not understand, never learned in film school, or fail to grasp. Then so, too, have many self-anointed guardians of "moral values" over the years. A fine example of this can be found in Not Another Teen Movie, where the foreign exchange student character appears nude. While this is a good jibe at the perceived differences between American and European sensibilities regarding nudity there is nothing erotic about her scenes. The actress is merely nude.

The mise-en-scene is that sense of atmosphere that makes movies memorable. Erotica is all about the mise-en-scene, or rather it's about achieving a sensual mood within the scene. You can see effective scene composition that establishes an atmosphere of sensuality in movies such as Dracula, Sirens, Lolita, throughout the entirety of Pleasantville and even in television series like Xena: Warrior Princess and BURN NOTICE. Of course there is that fine line between erotic and salacious which makes movies like Emmanuelle, The Perils of Gwendoline, and The Story of O memorable as much for their atmosphere as the controversy surrounding them.

Then there is the knee-jerk over reactions of the self-annointed "moral majority" like those who run the MPAA who, in their zeal to squash all sensuality and representations of sexuality in films, have become a rubber stamp for amoral violence. .

But that's a discussion for another day.

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Copyright © C. Demetrius Morgan

Anatomy of a Bad Dub

This article, while originally posted several years ago, is (sadly) still very relevant today. For when you have searched high and low for that hard to find movie there may be no recourse but to turn to "collector's video", especially if you want to see that movie again before you die. If you don't know what "collector's video" is it's that gray market DVDr product. There used to be a clear cut line between legit DVD releases, meaning the factory produced silver backed DVDs, and homemade product burned onto recordable media. Sadly, since this article was originally published, that line has blurred to insiginifigance as certain studios have opened their own "stores" to sell DVDRs.

Why?

The sad truth is studios will often "sit on product", meaning they squirrel movies away in their vaults waiting for their set licensing fees to be met by third party DVD labels. Alas the studios, and rights holders, often demand such ridiculously high fees for their film's use and video rights that, hard as it is to believe, there's never more than a fraction of the total number of movies ever made in "official" video releases.

Worse, many of these forgotten films suffer from the ravages of time due to the very type of film stock used. Movies have even been lost due to neglect while left sitting on a shelf. Some forever because they were never released to video in any form. But this no longer need be the case.

Back in the Jurassic era, when behemoth monsters known as laserdiscs still wandered the Earth, there was really only one feasible option for cult movie aficionados to acquire rare and hard to find movies. Collector's tapes. If ever there was a Golden Age of gray market video future historians will likely agree it would begin with the mass production of the VCR. It is, after all, what made "collector's video" accessible to a wider audience.

Of course there was a thriving home video market prior to VHS. Alas we take it for granted that VHS was the first entertainment system for home movies. And, no, I am not talking about Betamax. For years before video equipment became accessible to the general public there were other, often very expensive, video formats. But before even that, in the distant Precambrian era, there was 8mm and 16mm film.

In this day and age of instant gratification where pictures can be downloaded from a camera and printed on demand we take it for granted that film, once upon a time, actually meant film; as in celluloid. We forget that because we live in a time where digital cameras are ubiquitous, movies are 90% CGI SFX, and most movies come into our homes thanks to a satellite dish. We forget that, once upon a time not that long ago, things were very different. We have forgotten there ever was a time that cell-phones and videogames didn't exist! Try to imagine that. It's very difficult, isn't it?

Worse, we've forgotten that home video was once seen not only as threat to films but was reviled by the film industry. Bored conspiracy theorists of the future will undoubtedly claim this is why so many early’ve forgotten. .

Quality.

We take it for granted that video should be crisp, clear, and vibrant. Not only was this not always the case but, once upon a time, video collector's were willing to put up with a lot worse.

The above is a still from a factory prerecord, recorded in SP mode, of Mines of Kilimanjaro. This is one of the older VHS tapes in my collection. Notice how fuzzy and full of grain the picture is, how it lacks definition, and now compare it to a screen cap from one of the last movies I ever purchased on VHS:

That is a scene from early in the movie Masque of the Red Death. By DVD standards that picture seems a bit fuzzy. However that tape, which proclaimed on the cover that it was 'digitally remastered', was actually a marked improvement over the video quality on older tapes like the one mentioned above.

Now you have a general idea of the range of quality that existed on VHS prerecords. Many, if not all, of the so-called "collectors" DVDRs are likely taken from similar tape sources. Some vendors will try to give grades of quality from "A" to "D" alas they are mostly in this for the money, meaning there is no real way to tell what the picture quality is until you sit down to watch a "collectors video" and by then it may be too late.

Behold Exhibit-A :

1. Poorly done, and very fake, Letterbox effect. Probably done to cover up dub bar streaks.

2. What appears as extreme blurry grain on VHS becomes pronounced interlacing artifacting on the screencap. (From DVD-R.)

3. Evidence of dub stretch marks that the poorly executed Letterbox effect failed to cover up.

That, friends, is F- quality video. Of course it wasn't listed as such. This is the sort of garbage opportunistic gray market vendors looking to make a quick buck heartily fob off on us unsuspecting consumers. If you're lucky you might even get a cheap case with a color label produced on a laser printer. Alas you'll rarely be that lucky.

Another factor to consider is price. Most of the gray market vendors are selling their wares for premium DVD prices. That's just ludicrous. The studios are doing the same but, and you have to consider this, the studios are far more likely to stand behind their product than some anonymous basement dwelling re-burner. The studio product is also likely to be of better quality and come with a case and artwork. In the current economic times these are all matters for consideration before placing an order. Be sure you know what you're getting and that you're dealing with a reputable vendor.

Caveat Emptor.

Copyright © C. Demetrius Morgan

Mise-en-Scene Crypt is about Movies.

We all have our favorites, and perhaps a preferred genre, be it romance or horror, science fiction or fantasy, gore or exploitation, or some slipstream flavor between. Studios spend millions every year on movies. Some are released with much hype only to sizzle at the box office while others, like the savages of some prehistoric era, disappear into the dust never to be seen or heard from again. One truism of filmmaking has been that for every blockbuster there is at least a dozen low budget, often independent, knock-offs rushed into production in a effort to cash in on the fickle, and ever so short, interest of audiences. Yet there is a class of film that few talk about. For there are epics and then there are anti-epics. Gor and Outlaw of Gor are prime examples of anti-epics.When the original Mise-en-scene Crypt launched the tone was set from the start by briefly discussing these classic anti-epics. And, now with the demise of the old Mise-en-scene Crypt, let us return to where it all began.

In short the movies are about professor John Cabot, a magic ring (that it's never clear how came into his possession), and Cabot's cross-dimension adventures on counter Earth. A desolate desert world where men are men and women are nubile, scantily clad, and love to wear hats. It's the sort of pulp fiction world that would have appealed to the chauvinistic male fantasies of a time before feminism, a time when women couldn't yet vote and (so those chauvanistic males thought) knew their place; which was wherever men told them it was.

Sound good so far?

It might have been but, sadly, it is not. The Gor movies are universally reviled as, if you're being kind, wastes of celluloid; cinematic abortions if you're not. These are the kind of movies that probably inspired the likes of Uwe Boll to go into filmmaking. Movie making may seem like a bloody feeding frenzy as producers make mad grabs for that piece of the market pie that will gain them acclaim, but is money truly the sole driving force behind movies?

Saying it is seems shallow, but to deny money is the driving influence of studios would be equally ludicrous. It may baffle us, because we all know that if all someone wants is to make a quick buck there are far better ways to do it. Like, say, investing in a manure farm. Farmers will always need fertilizer after all. And if that's all you're going to end up making anyway. . .

But I digress.

It all started with John Norman's "Tarnsman of Gor" (1966) and the series of novels which followed. This strange, and often controversial, sub-genre of fantasy exists in a black hole nexus of moral ambiguity. Gorean Fantasy is typified by the ideal that men are men and women exist solely to be submissively in service to them.

In other words it's the sort of backdrop that seems custom designed for low budget exploitation filmmakers. Add to this the popularity and cult status the novels have acquired over the years and it's a no-brainer that these novels were ripe for the picking. Alas even a "sure thing" can be ruined in incompetent hands, which seems to be the best way to sum up how the Gor properties were handled.

To be blunt in the world of Gor women are portrayed as submissive chattels whose role in Gorean society is essentially that of eager sex slave. This premise alone is a exploitation filmmakers wet dream. Alas neither the producers or director seemed to grasp the fantasy vision of John Norman, or perhaps they were just not comfortable with it, either way they pissed away a golden opportunity to create an enduring cult classic on par with The Perils of Gwendoline or the infamous nazisploitation Ilsa trilogy.

Curiously producer, director, and general b-movie glutton Roger Corman has presented visions of Gorean Fantasy in his Deathstalker movies that are far better than what the Gor movies presents. While the Gor movies do have scantily clad females and dancing girls there's no nudity, no sex scenes, no bondage, no slave girls or hint of Norman's novels to be found therein. Which some may count as a small blessing. However to fans of novels that get less than stellar adaptations this is yet another in a long line of disappointments. It's easy to bemoan the "suits", meaning studio executives, equate them with loan sharks high on the smell of money who seek to mine popular trends in a effort to make a quick buck while never once delving deeper into the problem; much less caring about the "audience" beyond how to get their money. It's silly to do so ye, when novels like Gor get turned into PG rated pablum, they're perhaps the easy targets at whom to vent.

Expect a lot of venting in the blog. Some of it good, some of it bad, most of it will be clearly labelled as a "rant" but sometimes a few barbs may loosed in reviews. And that's what this blog will mostly be about. Reviews of movies, movies like Gor and Outlaw of Gor and Deathstalker and all kinds of rarefied b-movies. Sometimes my comments may be critical. For instance the excerpts I've read of the Gor novels aren't grand examples of the literary tradition. I've no qualms in pointing such facts out. Nor do I have a problem noted that, while it is understandable, if not logical, why changes were made to the core story what the producers created in their attempt to appeal to the mainstream the end result falls flat. You just can't expect to take a property with a niche cult following, and a cult following in the BDSM community at that, and do what they did here and expect anything other than an Uwe Boll quality tax write off. But I wont bore you further. Expect to see fresh reviews of Gor and Outlaw of Gor appear here soon. Until then thanks for visiting!

#End of Line

Copyright © C. Demetrius Morgan