Plastic Nightmare

During the early years of the VHS boom movie lovers were suddenly able to access hundreds of films they had always wanted to see but weren’t available on TV or had never played movie houses in their town. Many were titles they had only read or heard about from fellow movie buffs. So it is no wonder that VHS became the dominant format in the home entertainment industry for awhile. I certainly credit VHS with introducing me to countless B-movies, forgotten Hollywood pictures and genre films but also introducing me to movies from outside the U.S., especially those from Canada. Among some of my favorites are Circle of Power aka Brainwash aka Naked Weekend (1981), a disturbing drama about a corporate retreat weekend for employees led by a dominatrix-like motivator (Yvette Mimieux); Siege aka Self Defense (1983), in which a small group of people are trapped in an apartment and attacked by crazed vigilantes; Family Viewing (1987), Atom Egoyan’s hypnotic drama about alienation; and Tales from the Gimli Hospital (1988), Guy Maddin’s bizarre debut feature. These were all surprising revelations to me but the one that still haunts me is Pin aka Pin: A Plastic Nightmare (1988).

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Al Adamson’s Kiddie Flick

He was the man behind such softcore sleazefests as Girls for Rent (1974), The Naughty Stewardesses (1975) and Cinderella 2000 (1977). He was also the schlockmeister responsible for exploitation classics such as Satan’s Sadists (1969), Five Bloody Graves (1970) and the seriously deranged Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971). He would be the last person you’d expect to make a child-friendly movie but that’s exactly what he attempted with Carnival Magic, which was completed in 1981 but not released until 1983. The film is almost tame enough for a six year old kid but also a terrifically weird and strange experience for older audiences who have seen any of Adamson’s previous work. He’s marching to the beat of a different drummer here and that drummer just happens to be a talking chimpaneze named Alexander the Great. Continue reading