Lifeforce Pulled from Release... Again

It pains me to report that Tobe Hooper's totally nutty '80s cult space vampire flick Lifeforce has received another blow for a possible NZ home video release. Triton had this movie on their DVD schedule a couple years ago but it was yanked, and now the Blu-ray, which was due to come out last week from Shock, has suffered a similar fate. Shock cited "rating issues" as the reason. Other Blu-rays from the same Cinema Cult line were also withdrawn, including City of the Living Dead, Lisa and the Devil/House of Exorcism and Vampyres. Bummer news for genre fans.... anywho here's the Lifeforce trailer to remind you of its awesomeness:

R.I.P. Bill Barounis

The name Bill Barounis may not mean much to a lot of people reading this, but for anyone who's into lost Turkish genre films - or weird world cinema in general - Bill was King. Sadly I just found out that Bill, who started the one-man-company Onar Films to make available some of the rarest Turkish movies ever, passed away over a week ago (yep, I'm falling way behind on my Google Reader updates...). From dipping in and out of discussion forums, I'd been aware that he was battling cancer for a couple of years now, and that he recently had a bad stroke. It didn't look good, but it still comes as a shock to find out that he's actually gone.

I first dealt with Bill some years ago when he was selling tapes on eBay under the name deathland. I bought a few things off him (still have J.P. Simon's Supersonic Man gathering dust somewhere), and he was a great guy to deal with, but I mostly liked to check back on his items-for-sale to see what kind of oddities he was selling - and the crazy prices they would go for. These were super-rare, original, often bootlegged Greek pre-records of horrors, gialli, superhero films that were highly sought after in the collectors' market.

Onar Films was a godsend to fans of these films. Because of the rarity of these films, and the lack of decent sources, these prints generally look less-than-stellar (HD snobs need not apply), but they were the best he could find and he packed the DVDs with many neat extra features. Plus they were all subtitled. Have a peek at the opening minutes of Casus Kiran (Spy Smasher) just to get an idea what they're like:

I tried to pick up almost everything he put out, and it's a real bummer that Onar will cease to exist now that he's no longer around. We're talking the preservation and distribution of movies that an industry had zero interest in archiving or caring for. There's no cushy vault somewhere housing a mint print of 3 Dev Adam. These aren't films that'll likely get released in New Zealand. One can only hope someone else will continue the legacy that Bill left behind, and do it with same kind of dedication that could only come from someone who did it solely for the love of these films.

Liquid Television is Online!

Not sure how many of you out there remember MTV's Liquid Television from the '90s, but it's one of my fondest adolescent TV memories and I've just discovered that a sizable collection of shorts from the show are now available to watch online! Featuring heaps of wild, seriously screwed-up cartoons (some like Beavis and Butthead and Aeon Flux would later achieve cult status), it's a one-of-a-kind programme that I'd religiously set the VCR to record weekly when it aired on TV3 late at night. I've never seen anything like it, with that kind of anarchic creative freedom, on TV again. Browse the archives here.

Cult Classic Trailer: They Call Her Cleopatra Wong

Holy shit. Maybe we should just call October "Filipino Action Comes to Fatso" Month! Not only is For Your Height Only/Impossible Kid and Machete Maidens Unleashed! coming from Vendetta Films, now we have Bobby A. Suarez's They Call Her Cleopatra Wong and The One-Armed Executioner due from Magna Pacific!! Both films were released last year as a double feature disc by Dark Sky Films in the US, but are coming out separately here, and what's interesting, and possible cause for excitement, is that Aussie retail site DVD Orchard lists Cleopatra Wong as being a "16x9 Enhanced Transfer"... the Dark Sky DVD used a full-screen master, and in all likelihood, the version we'll be getting will be the same one, but here's hoping someone's dug up a nice scope print for this and it's not just a data error on DVD Orchard's part. As for the film itself, I have a soft spot for it because (1) it sports one of the catchiest titles around, and (2) that poster art.... goddamn, it's one of the best ever. Plus there are nuns with shotguns in it, long before any of that post-modern nonsense like Machete and this.

Notes:

• There seems to be THREE Cleopatra Wong-related films: The Bionic Boy, They Call Her Cleopatra Wong, and Dynamite Johnson (aka Return of the Bionic Boy). The latter is a favourite of mine, and if memory serves me correctly was the first VHS Vortex column I wrote for Real Groove a few years ago. Sadly, both Bionic Boy films are still unavailable on DVD (at least not officially anyway).
•  A little background on Cleopatra Wong herself, Marrie Lee.