Video Violence

Ian West4.0

Video Violence was shot in Frenchtown, New Jersey, a small rural community on the banks of the Delaware river that borders Pennsylvania. I currently live about 25 minutes or so from there, but A few summers back while on a day trip with some friends, we took a wrong turn and happened to to end up in Frenchtown, my first trip there, where I started to freak out because of this movie and tell everyone about it enthusiastically None of my friends knew what the hell I was talking about, nor did they care, but there was no way I wasn’t going to stop so I sabotaged the entire day because of Video Violence. We ended up eating at a cool cafe and hitting up all the antique stores in town where I eventually found…. a Video Violence vhs tape buried under piles of junk. Then we got blackout drunk and I ate a convienance store hot dog at 3AM.ACCIDENTAL DAY TRIP: SUCCESSFULThis is a primo slice of cult SOV horror about blood drunk snuff movie loving weirdos directed by a guy who ran a video store. The second one is cool but I love this movie, and some neckbeard chode on a dvd talk website years ago wrote that this movie is “a big, fat, hairy, parasite-infested and pus laden set of sores on anyone who believed that this pair of productions had any meaningful motion picture merit whatsoever". Clearly he never got lost in Frenchtown New Jersey and it sounds like he has A LOT of experience with pus filled sores, cuz this movie rules!

Elric Kane3.0

Officially my favorite video store gag in a movie: A yokel enters and asks for “That chainsaw movie” and the video store clerk goes to the horror section and gets him PIECES. Pure Gold.

c h r i s4.0

“Where’s the blood and guts, huh?”I’ll consider this top-tier regional drenched in synth drone SOV master-trash and a super ode to the days of horror rentals, late fees, and eye-catching movie covers. any horror obsessed human that spent their youth walking the aisles of their local video store will feel that sense of nostalgia and that rush of finding the next best violent filth to watch in the dark behind their parents back. Usually, with SOV flicks I’m left questioning my sanity by the end of it—looking at you brain melter Boardinghouse—but something about Video Violence kept my brain in full form and my sanity in check, it all feels a little too normal, a truly meta piece of work, basically hinting at the accurate tagline “Could this happen at your video store?”when homemade snuff films are returned on blank tapes at a new video store, the owner becomes obsessed with finding out if their real or not and IT’S AMAZING. The no-budget gory bits, the abundance of SOV-film-within-an-SOV-films, and crazed townsfolk tomfoolery is exceptional but their need for blood and guts instead of comedies is the pinnacle of our horror obsessed minds… just a ton of nasty fun. this is my Videodrome.side note: I guess it’s time to watch Blood Cult.