**Video Store Afternoons: Down Twisted and Bloodsucking Pharaohs in Pittsburgh**

There’s a particular kind of afternoon that only exists in the dim hum of a video store—when the sun is too bright outside, reality too sharp-edged, and the only escape is a plastic clamshell promising something lurid, something strange. You don’t browse with purpose. You let the covers talk. The weird ones whisper the loudest.  

That’s how you end up with *Down Twisted* (1987) and *Bloodsucking Pharaohs in Pittsburgh* (1991) in your hands. Two very different beasts, but each a product of that era when rental shelves were cluttered with neon-drenched crime, sweat-slick pulp, and zero-budget splatter that felt like a bootleg transmission from an alternate dimension.  

*Down Twisted*—a classic case of *wait, why don’t more people talk about this?* Directed by Albert Pyun, the patron saint of straight-to-video oddities, it’s a loopy neon-noir that throws Carey Lowell into a conspiracy so convoluted it barely matters, as long as it keeps moving. And oh, does it move. Gunfights in crumbling alleys, jungle intrigue, smoke-cloaked bars where everyone seems like they’ve double-crossed someone else five minutes ago. It’s like someone chewed up *Romancing the Stone* and spit it out onto the grimier side of the ‘80s. It doesn’t just run on style—it bleeds it.  

Then there’s *Bloodsuckimg Pharaohs in Pittsburgh*, which is what happens when you take a cheapo ‘90s direct-to-video horror movie, shake it until its organs fall out, and film what’s left. The title promises something unholy, and it delivers in its own trash-buried way. Gore that’s both rubbery and unsettling. A detective story that plays like someone lost half the script and filled in the blanks with nightmares. The kind of movie you find on a battered VHS with a Suncoast Video sticker still clinging for dear life.  

Two films, two moods. *Down Twisted* for when you want style-first, logic-second adventure with a side of neon sleaze. *Bloodsucking Pharaohs in Pittsburgh* when you want to dive headfirst into the muck and let it stick to your soul.  

Video store afternoons—gone now, but sometimes, if you squint in the right dim light, you can still feel them.