Let's go back to MacPhil, pretty much as we can, it's gonna be a short, maybe a five minute break between every film as they change over.
Exportation films, there's two schools of thought, there's the exportation of the elements, the base elements, you know, lowest common denominator cells, sex and violence, the lurid nature, and then there was the exportation of the audience itself.
There's a whole lot of low budget movies that really pushed to bones and pushed boundaries in the film world were being screened.
The best exploitation movies, don't make any bones about the fact that they are exploitation films, credits, boobs, blood, in the first five minutes at least.
There's a really cool classic, black-sportation movies and biker movies and really cool revenge movies that were full of exploitation and sex and violence and nasty things that you weren't seeing at a mainstream cinema in America during that time.
There's always been the power to shock and provoke, there's always been a part of film history and I just think that the early experience of Lumiere and Ellison and so forth, you know, it wasn't too long before a woman took her clothes off on camera.
Guns being pointed at someone's face, you know, the entire audience reacting to that. It was like, let's try and titillate the audience straight away.
We need to get in the cinema, we need to clean out everyone's wallet and then get them out and get the next bunch in.
Free $2,000 cash if you should die from fright while watching Women and Bloody Terror and Night of Bloody Horror.
As long as, you know, I don't mind being exploited as long as I get some, you know, lurid matter in the, in the exchange.
You'd get a video nasty, yeah, you'd watch it with a group of friends and you'd end up endlessly quoting all the dialogue, you know.
You'd end up, you know, sort of, there were particular scenes that you loved. There were movies that were kind of like rites of passage for people.
Why is that appealing? Is it just a whole extension of the male, like, smell this? You know, this is awful, smell this.
Who can take the worst possible film?
For me, it starts off, if you're watching in solo, it's massive because if you're getting that film and going, I'm going to show everyone I know this piece of crap and watch their reactions.
That is Cinema Savers. You show me Rotor. I'll show you Lady Terminator. You'll fire back with Black Devil Doll from hell and everyone will suffer.
Everyone will suffer on Black Devil Doll from hell.
I've never seen that one.
Now that you have smelled the fondness of my breath, you may now taste the sweetness of my tongue.
Everyone's like, you know, you're kind of weird, eh, like in those movies. You think there's something wrong.
You know, it's just like, you know, you watch golf, I think that's fucking bizarre, you know.
But if you've seen really good films and you've seen, you know, everything else, you can sort of gauge why aspects of those trash films really appeal to you.
And I don't think if you're not a true cinema fan, you won't appreciate a great trash film.
Well, you know, Grissom's great. I think Tarkovsky's a genius.
But I also think, you know, that Troll 2 is as enjoyable to watch on its own level.
The actual knee-jerk, you know, laughing at something silly on screen, sort of, you get over that and then it's become something deeper and more sublime over the long period of time.
I know why it's really bad rather than, rather than, oh fuck, this is terrible. I know why, but it's terrible.
Anyone who's reviewed films for a while knows there's so few art that if you don't have an appetite for trash, then what's the point of liking films?
Suddenly I just wanted something to switch it off, switch my critical feelings off and just go, wow.
You know, this doesn't make any sense. This doesn't, you know, this isn't coherent. This isn't one way, but hey, it's fucking funny.
That is literally like taking acid for the first time watching something like that.
To be honest with you, we've been experimenting with narcotics. It's much better, same effect, but no hangover. Right there?
I guess what a lot of people perceive as trash today is stuff that's basically unoriginal and generic and derivative.
It's the stuff that's in the middle that's competent, predictable, safe, boring, that is the least relevant, least interesting, least worthwhile type of filmmaking.
Why bother?
Whereas I think a lot of the thing, particularly with back in the 70s, what my guess is considered trashy was unique and unusual.
I mean, that's the thing, there's like different kinds of bad movies, and the thing is like, so with The Determinator and Troll 2, you know, I'm not sitting there like, oh, this is bad, I'm really enjoying it being bad.
It's like, this is astonishing, you know, this is captivating.
A lot of that trash was made, you know, in the 60s and 70s when there's a lot of counter-culture rebellion and social rebellion going on anyway.
The Depraved is a film that had to wait for the permissive 1970s before it could be produced.
About 1988, I think I would have called my first print, and it was Shogun Assassin.
If it comes to, it's like, crack really, if you talk to other film collectors, they're all wackos, and definitely the more I hang out with them, the less I really want to end up being a collector because they're all fucking losers.
I'm slowly, I've got a list of things I need to click, I need to get before I die, so I'm just ticking things off, you know, I find a taking in Pelham 1, 2 and 3, and okay, I got that one, and then, so I'm just going through a list in my head of what I need to do, and I need to see them with an audience on screen, and then I'll be fine to shuffle off.
All right, so we're at breakfast. Okay, this is what people look like after 16 hours of movies.
Awesome, did you say 16 hours of movies?
Oh sorry, movies, right.
Movies, there's only about 20 minutes on side of movies.
Yeah, it was some.
I started just thinking, well, I'm not going to collect them just for personal use, I'm going to show them at any cost, because there's just no point, it's like hoarding stuff, there's no reason unless it's used.
I personally, I grew up watching the Incredibly Strange Film Festival as a teenager, and I'd never seen anything like the movies that they screened there.
The festival was an event, and we always did the foyer up, you know, and we darkened it down and filled it with incense and music and televisions, playing retrospective 60s sci-fi shows, and that's what cinema should be.
It should be an experience from the moment you enter the door to the moment you leave. Now, you know, it's a bit of a cattle experience.
No, it literally died overnight.
I mean, the one great thing that still exists in New Zealand is the 24-hour movie marathon.
It started in the last couple of years of the festival, and it ended up becoming one of the fun things for us, and it was just a fun way to get a lot of prints seen in a short space of time.
And it's just sort of grown from there.
I've gone through six of them, going back to 2007.
I've been since 2005.
I think I've been to about every single one since about 2000.
You know, there's an aspect of that sort of deep culture that bonds, you know, people together pretty quickly, and you've just got so much common ground that you never really have to talk about relationships or anything kind of serious.
The entire cinema full of people that just grove on the same kind of movie.
Yeah, it's just another thing. I mean, when you're in that group and suddenly, like, even like, a title come up, special effects by Ray Harryhaus, and 300 people go, yeah!
They just go, I'm home.
And every single one, I mean, you don't know what it is, so every single one's a total surprise.
It's just parted, basically.
Yeah, in the past we've shown, it's a little dinel-a, invasion of the body snatchers, a bit in-planet break-in.
You know, that one didn't grow down so well.
Ah, the Christine Jorgensen story, that was awesome.
Richard and the Living Dead, Thunderbirds, Team America, World Police, Toys Not the Children, Lovebot to last year, it was great.
And it's really all about movie fans, full movie fans.
These are all people who think spending 24 hours in a movie theater is a good idea.
You very quickly discover it's not the average thing.
The whole 24 hours of a suit have a film that's meant to watch it.
You can't tell me that, you know, a few geese is having a few beers in front of a 42-inch wide plasma TV,
will get any amount of enjoyment watching Switchblade Sisters, as they would, you know, with 500 bloody, you know,
unwashed, the great unwashed, watching it in an old cinema.
No way.
Ultimately, the most pleasure comes from is just, you know, a kick-ass film with the best crowd,
and people really look forward to it, or those who come along really look forward to it each year.
It's kind of an addiction, don't you think?
Like, I went for the first time five years ago, and I can't think about not going again.
It's seriously part of my character.
They're just really nice people that attend, you know, freaks, but very, very nice.
There's one thing I do know for sure.
Whoever did this is weird.
Not just sick, but a real weirdo.
There's not a lot of us, and we tend to cling, I think.
That might be my point.
To me, it's about counterculture, and it's very important to be studied later on, maybe in 20 or 30 years.
I don't know.
There sure as hell is going to be another uprising.
You know, there's more government around now, not less, so, you know, we've got to keep fighting.
You know that time when you find a really good KFC, you know, experience, or you just have the best KFC,
and you know it's the same really, generally, as another KFC meal, but sometimes they just get it just right.
Oh, my God!
It's like that sometimes with the movies.
You're eating trash, you're consuming the trash movie, but sometimes they just get it right.
When I go to work, when I talk to people I know, when I talk to my family, and I try to explain the glory of troll too,
it's just, you know, it's lost in translation, you know.
There's just certain things you intuitively get.
How do you explain love to somebody? How do you explain troll too to somebody?
You know, it's just that easy.
Yeah, pretty much.
It's place and culture.
Well, hopefully, you know, like a unwanted, you know, piece of furniture that someone finds on the side of the road
that ends up being the sweetest thing in their living room down the line.
And to everyone else, it was just a piece of shit.
I'm sure it was such a bad analogy, but it was struck like something like that.
If that analogy was better, that's what I meant, that's how.
Thank you.
