My favorites are the Driver's Ed and Christian scare films.

If the Chrisian scare films are from the 80's those are especially fun. They are more like having a therapy session now since I lived it during that time. Satanic Panic was very real and prevalent at the time.

We watched a driver's ed film on reel to reel when I was in high school called Blood On The Highway. I should look it up and rewatch it eventually, but damn, it made me sick to my stomach when I watched it at 15.

My only memory of it was a cop taking a baseball bat or billy club to a windshield and trying to pry out the guy who went through it...or something like that. My brain has probably left some stuff out and filled some stuff in at this point since I was so traumatized.

There’s a fantastic 2003 documentary called HELL’S HIGHWAY: THE TRUE STORY OF THE HIGHWAY SAFETY FILMS, which dives deep into the driver’s ed scare films and the era which produced them. I’m pretty sure clips from the BLOOD ON THE HIGHWAY film you mention are in it . . . and worse! Kino did a great two-disc DVD release for it at the time, which is still in print and packed with several of the original films.I’d love to see a Blu-ray version, but I suspect the sheer volume of ‘as is’ scare film footage used in both the doc and bonus features probably isn’t worth restoring or rescanning at higher resolution for what would still be a niche release.

The documentary is, frankly, riveting and repulsive (in the right way) in equal measure. To say these films were fucked up is a huge understatement, especially when you think that they were shown in classrooms. Different times, but they truly were the scariest of all the scare films. The doc also examines key figures and organizations behind the films, their agendas, and some rather unsavoury things they got up to outside of these films:

Trailer:


Full Doc:


These films always remind me of a scene in the reasonably funny 1985 comedy MOVING VIOLATIONS with Bill Murray’s brother John in the lead role. Sadistic cop James Keach shows the traffic offenders a faux scare film called BLOOD FLOWS RED ON THE HIGHWAY.

Dammit Brian T, you always end up costing me money! But I mean that in a good way.

And you can score the films by the band Blotto and their song (I'm not making this up) "My Baby's the Star of a Driver's Ed Movie"

I just finished watching Corpse Mania, and...geez, a complete and total knockout. Hopefully there's plenty more Shaw in UHD to come.

Man, now I am having high school flashbacks of those Drivers Ed and Sex Ed films. The fact that any person ever got behind the wheel of a car or had sex ever again is a miracle. I just remember one still of some dude's junk that had some kind of STD and it looked like something out a Cronenberg film.

The VSA looks to be Corey Yuen's Women On The Run.

Nice. I’m totally sure they decided to release it based on the brief discussion in this very thread back in January (below). That’s influence, baby!

I'm back at work and just made my first Vinegar Syndrome website purchase in more than a year. I've got Navy Seals, Sidekicks, and "Through the Looking Glass" off of Melusine so I'm pretty excited.

And based on that January conversation, if that's the Black Friday VSA, I'm breaking a self-imposed rule of waiting till it goes on sale. That one will be in the cart on Thanksgiving night.

THE KEEP it is, albeit the version that’s always been available. I wonder if they at least fixed the audio.

And WOMEN ON THE RUN, as predicted earlier.




- - - - -

Some $10 items on the ‘Going Extinct’ section:
https://vinegarsyndrome.com/collecti...negar-syndrome

A few VSA titles (ex. Undeclared War, Whatever It Takes) are very close to selling out.

Went with The Keep, Sliver, and Perfect Strangers.

Working through THE KEEP tonight. Nice set of interviews, particularly with the actor who played the creature and the make-up guy. The producer is an animated Noo Yawk guy who wouldn’t be out of place in Goodfellas. He mentioned that it’s only been in the last eight years or so that people have turned up regularly asking him about the film, including apparently remaking it which he kinda slips in there. I’ve never read the book but I understand it’s quite good, and while remaking this particular movie is probably pointless – despite its cult status – I do think a new adaptation of the book probably wouldn’t be dragged at all by the existence of a forty year old film, and considering the author (who’s also interviewed on the disc) was disappointed in how things turned out back then I’m sure he’d be cool with a new version actually doing his work justice. It might even work as a limited series. The producer doesn’t actually expand on his comment about a remake, though, so it could amount to nothing.

The film also has a disclaimer at the front:

So we get what we get. I was hoping they might have at least cleared up some of the more unintelligible dialogue bits, but it seems that wasn’t possible.

Hmm the audio portion was my biggest concern. Given that’s not fixed, gives me pause.

Nice to see the Keep get released but unfortunately as a movie it is very poor film overall and I was bored with it despite the cool creature design. Just a Michael Mann oddity.

If they release the work print or some other cut I would be interested but not as it is currently. I know supposedly all other footage is gone.

Well I missed out on buying my first VSU as Southern Comfort is now sold out. I know of a few online retailers that might have it or buy it off of ebay. I'm missing DARYL, Southern Comfort, and Congo.

I'm sure they could argue that it worked for Dune (my personal feelings about the merits of the remake against the original notwithstanding).

The subtitles help in some regard. The 2020 DVD had none, and even when I cranked volume there were some passages I just couldn’t make out. Of course, the subs don’t make the film any less incoherent overall, and that’s a forever flaw.

THE KEEP, as is, is still a slow mess. I’ve never been a fan, to be honest, and this set only moves the needle slightly because of the excellent visual presentation (which was good on the DVD, too) and the interviews. It’s a beautiful film to look at, and I can see myself doing that once in a blue moon, but it’s just a misbegotten relic now. I’ve heard conflicting things about the footage being missing – and a couple of the interview subjects independently acknowledge Mann’s three-hour workprint or whatever it was – but he’s in his 80’s now so even if he had the footage in his garage, I’m sure he’d have little interest in revisiting the whole debacle. It would’ve been cool if he’d participated in this set somehow, but that was unlikely from the outset I’m sure.


That film actually comes up in the commentary for this one, albeit in a different context: he points out that Jurgen Prochnow was finally starting his crossover to Hollywood films after the acclaim of DAS BOOT and ended up starring in two high-profile, big budget, sci-flops in a row based on well-regarded books. Looking at his IMDb, it appears it took a few more years until BEVERLY HILLS COP II actually gave him his ‘international’ career in full. Too bad they couldn’t have got an interview with him for the set, as he’s still one of the best components of the film.

When The Keep sold out, I shrugged off missing it. It's a fascinating bad movie, but a bad movie all the same. I don't really need to own it.

But then it came back in stock and FOMO got the best of me. I ordered a copy last night. Sigh...

Sucker!

Just kidding.

I have fallen prey to the same in the past!

This is what happened to me. I was fine with missing out cause I have the Australian dvd from a few years ago, but I also wanted Looking for Mr. Goodbar and Cannibal the Musical and when it came back in stock I ordered them all. But at least I can get rid of that old Troma dvd of Cannibal that is like 25 years old.

Yeah, I also ordered The Tenant and Southern Comfort - both movies I like, but wouldn't normally have an urgent need to own.

My last-minute grabs were EAST END HUSTLE (which was noted here as getting low in quantity, although now that I bought it, it will turn up for $10 or $15 in the January sale of course) and a couple of going-extinct schlock titles: SORORITY SLAUGHTER and RED SPIRIT LAKE, both of which will undoubtedly be likewise cheaper in one of the next sales. Sigh.

Partner Month is up now, with some new titles. I’d like the AGFA TRIPLE FRIGHTMARE VOL. II, but I guess I’ll have to watch the numbers. The first one still isn’t sold out after years, but this one, naturally, seems to be moving faster.

Also very keen on MAYBE IT’S LOVE. Looks like Kani is the first boutique label to release an important, contemporary-set, non-martial arts/action Shaw Brothers movie, and one directed by one of a precious few female directors working in Hong Kong at the time. Really hoping Kani (or some company) releases her followup Shaw film MY NAME AIN’T SUZIE from 1985.

Also, it looks like HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS was the big slipcover sellout of this batch.

New stuff on the main page:

https://vinegarsyndrome.com/

Several titles are still on sale at various discounts, plus some have been added that weren’t in the BF deals. Order stacking is still enabled, btw:

vinegarsyndrome.com/collections/december-partners-only-discounted-products

Just finished the WOMEN ON THE RUN edition today. That one never fails to entertain, and it will be nice to eventually unload my old DVD (which I remembered was a DVD only after spending an hour or so hunting through stacks of VCDs and not finding it ).

One little irksome thing, though: one of the heroines in this (Farini Cheung) is a Hong Kong cop; her duplicitous (and married) boyfriend, who forces the women to go, umm, on the run, is also a cop. He’s played by co-director David Lai in what I believe is his only acting role. The other co-director, Corey Yuen, plays his ‘good guy’ rival on the police force. The commentator on the disc states that the bad cop is played by an actor named Wai-Tak Wong. This is also what IMDb says, which is apparently as far as the research went. Wong is in the film, as another character, and is given ‘special guest star’ credit in the closing scroll for whatever reason. Right beneath that is the rest of the cast listed in order of importance, with David Lai and Corey Yuen right at the top (the leading ladies are credited at the beginning).

If you watch the interview with Lai commissioned for the disc, you’ll see it’s obviously him in the film, too. He’s aged well, and at 72 looks like he’s in his mid-50’s. Nice interview, but a missed opportunity to ask him about his role.

There’s also a solid interview with line producer Shan Tam and production manager Michael Parker, a Vancouver couple who worked on the Canadian portion of this and a few other HK films shot out there, and also produced various films for years after that. These are the kind of interviews that always get me wondering about what other items a particular company might have on the backburner, because these two worked on other pictures loosely tied to this one.

WOMEN ON THE RUN was primarily produced by Joe Siu International, which also made the Moon Lee + Yukari Oshima action picture MISSION OF JUSTICE, the Tony Leung Ka-Fai + Carol Cheng + Moon Lee action-comedy TO CATCH A THIEF, the Carol Cheng thriller MURDER, and the Tony Leung KF + Rosamund Kwan cop thriller TOUCH OF EVIL. None of these are as cool as WOMEN ON THE RUN, but they might work as US or UK Blu-rays if they were priced more reasonably and not so over-packaged with fancy boxes and posters and stuff.

The other, lesser-promoted production company (credited only on the original poster to my knowledge) was actor Andy Lau’s Teamwork Production House Ltd., which was behind a bunch of Lau’s 90’s movies, including Sammo Hung’s MOON WARRIORS, Jeff Lau’s DAYS OF TOMORROW, Gordon Chan’s GAMEBOY KIDS, Fruit Chan’s non-Lau-starring indies LONGEST SUMMER and MADE IN HONG KONG (the latter already out from a couple of labels), and both SAVIOR OF THE SOUL movies (the second of which Shan Tam and Michael Parker worked on), and a few others.

The SAVIOR movies and MOON WARRIORS in particular have followings and are known entities as far as HK cinema goes, so it would be nice to think that the licensing of WOMEN came as part of a package that included these three as well as some of the others mentioned. I won’t hold my breath, of course.

Also, Samm Deighan’s video essay on the HK Girls with Guns genre has clips from several titles already available (YES MADAM, RIGHTING WRONGS, SHE SHOOTS STRAIGHT, etc), but also includes scenes from ANGEL (1987) with Moon Lee and BRAVE YOUNG GIRLS (1999) with Yukari Oshima. You could fill a couple of boxed sets with the cool action pictures these two made together and apart. I doubt the clippage in the featurette means anything, but it’s nice to think they’re on VS’s radar.