Discarded I's: October 2023

Both originally made for a Australian horror series called fright, both written and directed by Terry Bourke.

Satan bless the documentary not quite Hollywood. It opened a world of Australian genre cinema to a generation raised on video store oddity, and it hit right as special edition blu rays were replacing dvds.

This double feature from Terry Bourke features two segments originally made for Australian TV. Night of Horror, with its backwoods rural attack on a young blonde woman, prefigures the Texas Chainsaw,Massacre by two years. Itt is also a exercise in visual storytelling, it has no dialogue.

Inn of the damned is considered the first Australian horror western, taking place in 1890 and concerning a husband and wife who own an inn, who slaughter there victims as revenge for the death of there children.

Both movies feature excellent transfers and a wealth of extras, and are a great entry point into Australian Genre pictures of the late 20th century.

Oc and stings, 1987. Directed by Robert Altman and based on characters from national lampoon. A deconstruction of the then popular teen sex comedy that savagely satirizes capitalist America and has been wildly misunderstood.

Altman got started in the 50s, but really came up in the Hedonistic yet Anarchic 60s and 70s, and his style, bathed in pot smoke and a constantly roving camera and overlapping dialogue, helped define 70s Cinema. By the 80s, the Hedonistic tendencies remained, but the anarchic spirit was replaced by a cozy consumer conformity.

Adapting two sociopathic teen characters from national lampoon, Altman assembled a stellar cast for this vicious deconstruction of the then popular teen comedy. Basically a series of vignettes with the ritual anti-heros waging war against the schwab family, a prototypical mutant American family of the Reagan era. Too bad audiences didn't get the joke, as this movie has been savaged by the main stream and cult film heads alike. Hopefully this Blu Ray by Radiance films helps to recontextualize OC & Stiggs as what it really is, A fascinating one off from a truly one of a kind director.