Helter Skelter

Helter Skelter

United States - 1976

Director - Tom Gries

Key Video, 1985, VHS

Run Time -1 hour, 59 minutes
(cut by nearly an hour from its original TV length)

The time honored tradition of Hippy hating was born mere moments after its target. Twinned from the plaid-jacketed, buzz-cut mid-century Company Man, the Hippy was an ideal scapegoat for an isolationist generation. Representing social rebellion, the Hippy also promised an escape from that same stifling society. The Hippy was the repressed desire of a frightened culture. Having spilled itself from the television screens of the nation for nigh on a decade, Vietnam had poisoned the cultural pool and a populace addicted to the visceral lunacy of social breakdown was jonesing for their next fix of televisual carnage. Based on the bestselling book of the same title, this 1976 TV epic was perfect. Written as it was by Vincent Bugliosi, the attorney who prosecuted the case against Manson, Helter Skelter is an exemplary case of spectacular polarizing demonology.

First our competing protagonists, each inseparable from the other for each is a negative image of the other. The Tate/LaBianca victims constitute the America we admire and envy; rich, famous and beautiful socialites, as clean and untouchable as they are unattainable. They are essentially the American Dream promised. Contrast this with Manson and his “Family,” a pack of unwashed, filth encrusted, fatherless maniacs inspired by a group of drug-taking foreign musicians to do the unthinkable: literally and figuratively puncture the barrier between the dream and the nightmare. Manson was the leakage of sin (the fringe, poverty and non-conformity) into the blinding promise of salvation (the center, success, comfort.)

The irony is that, though the film is cloaked in the trappings of secularity and rational legal procedure as the machinations of justice move inexorably onward, the puritanical framework of the whole debacle can’t help but reveal itself with handwringing glee. Consisting of roughly two halves Helter Skelter first uses an appeal to visceral emotion to elicit an endorsement of the preeminence of judiciary law.

The crimes and their lead-up are presented in classic TV true-crime expose fashion complete with time signatures at the bottom of the screen and stern narration provided by that icon of objective justice, the prosecuting attorney. One of the great selling points of the movie was that it was filmed on location at the actual crime scene using actual pieces of evidence as props. Friends of the victims are shown weeping and vomiting at the sight of the dead bodies that litter the yard of the lavishly furnished home. The proximity of the holy artifacts, the imaginary irrational inspires in its audience (both TV and actors) a visceral reaction and a rapturous appeal to the logic of legal justice.

Yet in the second half of the film when it transitions to the trial (again recreated but ‘present tense’)  it is the very idea of justice elicited by the sin/crime that now demands the condemnation of emotion. The crushing normalcy of modern culture is what inspired Charlie and his cohort to ecstatic messianic prophesying. Now that the film has elicited our emotional endorsement of the rational, it uses that rationality to condemn ‘irrational’ emotion.

Ending with the threat of further spectacle, Helter Skelter reminds us that in just two years time (1978) Charlie, and by proxy his transgressive ‘vision’ would be up for parole. Listening to Charlie’s courtroom ranting as delivered by a young Steve Railsback one can’t shake the realization that he’s right, the culture that condemns him is the same one that created him. The world loves to hate a Hippy because s/he is a necessary illusion, a foil for our own normalcy.

Innumerable serial-killer and real-crime films and television programs have come since, but Helter Skelter was exceptional because it kicked down the gate. Hippys were the perfect scapegoat because like Commies, they were easily painted as outsiders, not because of what they were but for what they represented; opting out, rejection of the establishment. In that case Charlie Manson, at least insofar as Television was concerned, was the perfect Hippy. He transformed secular right and wrong into religious good and evil merging marketplace and mythology and making the Puritanical sin and atonement binary commercially palatable to a “secular” mass audience.

I found this flick on that sweet, sweet Key Video box above, but it is available on DVD. This cover is from DVD Covers.

 This VHS sleeve insert and the courtroom image above are on loan from Black Hole Reviews
Top image of George DiCenzo as Vincent Bugliosi and bottom image of shaven Charlie are from The Stuff You Gotta Watch

Cat's Eye

Cat's Eye

United States - 1985

Director - Lewis Teague

Key Video, 1995, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 34 minutes

I know that Key was only the distribution arm of FOX, but I fuckin' love those rainbow striped boxes. They were all glued shut on the top and had flaps glued open on the bottom. The branded video boxes of the early VHS years, when each distributor had their own distinctive design are my absolute favorite. Key and VCII are great ones, as were the old boxes from RCA/Columbia. Paragon was good too but was a little bit of a latecomer as was Charter.
In many ways I wish I had the space to keep all of these boxes around. Then again, I know that I don't want to be tied down my material possessions. Property is confinement, rent is theft!

The Undefeated

The Undefeated

United States - 1969

Director - Andrew V. McLaglen

Key Video, 1988, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 59 minutes

Last Embrace

Last Embrace

United States - 1979

Director - Jonathan Demme

Key Video, 1986, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 41 minutes

Ohhhh, there's one of those sexy Key Video boxes I was talking about last Monday. Nice rainbow pattern and unobtrusive color scheme centered around the red bordered box.

And directed by Roger Corman protege Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs, Rachel Getting Married) no less. This sucker has been sitting on my shelf for about six months, I better get to it. But why does this box make me think of Sylvester Stallone?

Poster from IMPAwards does justice to the original artwork by an artist I do not know.

Sherlock Holmes: The Hound of the Baskervilles

Sherlock Holmes: The Hound of the Baskervilles

United States - 1939

Director - Sidney Lanfield

Key Video, 1988, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 20 minutes

As soon as I saw the Key Video box I was sold. Although Key was just the distribution arm of CBS/FOX, I can't help but love those boxes. Although this 1988 version is different from earlier versions in that it lacks the wonderful rainbow motif, the color scheme is otherwise similarly appealing.

The Park Is Mine

In cooperation with some of the finest movie blogs I know, Lost Video Archive is proud to contribute this post to Kotto Week, an event focusing on the long extensive career of this under appreciated actor. A full list of participants follows this post.

The Park Is Mine

Canada - 1986

Director - Steven Hilliard Stern

Key Video, 1987, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 40 minutes

Tommy Lee’s Mitch is no different than other cinematic Viet-vets of the 80’s. He’s emotionally damaged, bitter and unable to readjust to civilian life and he feels lost in and at odds with the world around him. But the way The Park Is Mine conciliates his trauma with society deviates from the typical ‘Nam Vet storyline in an interesting way and reflects some of the political developments of the period in which it was made. It was around this time that vets successfully won recognition and compensation from the manufacturers of Agent Orange and their own Veterans Administration for the postwar afflictions they were suffering.
The film opens with a shot through the flashing lights atop a police cruiser as it speeds through the streets. This is a theme that will persist throughout the film and ultimately come to define its resolution. For now it serves to anchor the portrayal of Government authority as reactive and ineffectual when the cruiser arrives at a Veteran’s Hospital where a distraught ‘Nam vet promptly leaps to his death.

A short while later at his hotel room, Mitch receives a letter from the jumper, one of his war buddies which explains his frustration with the plight of veterans, the fact that society “doesn’t listen”, and the locations of hundreds of explosive charges and a cache of military equipment hidden in Central Park. The following sequences show Tommy Lee uncovering all the hardware while his friend explains in voiceover. Giving Mitch this internal dialogue places him safely within the established mentally-ill Vietnam Veteran stereotype established by his cinematic predecessors. Having assessed, with his friend’s posthumous help, the extent of his arsenal, and encouraged by that inner voice, Mitch informs the authorities of his intent to take over Central Park on behalf of all ignored and mistreated veterans. Typically, the resolution in veteran movies is for the vet himself to come to terms with his or his friend’s trauma, but here Mitch doesn’t learn to cope, he doesn’t change at all.

It is his confrontation with State authority that is significant here. The sheer volume of gunfire and hardware in the subsequent standoff suggests that Mitch is something more than just a crazy vet. He is not a symbolic attempt to address the issue of collective national guilt for the war as in films like Distant Thunder, but to externalize its legacy exclusively to veterans. It reformulates the veteran as a helpless victim, which inheres the State’s (everyone but the veteran) responsibility for fixing him. The State is not responsible for the problem but is compassionate enough to try and fix it.

The person who mediates this conclusion is Lieutenant Eubanks, played by Yaphet Kotto in a familiar role as competent and capable police officer who conflicts with the hard-headed institutionalism of his superiors. Mitch has delivered an ultimatum demanding that he be left to control the park until a certain time, and his message be delivered to the public. Eubanks’ countermands his superior’s reactionary orders and simply gives Mitch what he wants. His conflict with his superiors and empathy for Mitch suggest an experiential understanding of the latter’s condition. Eubanks knows that one cannot fully break from the parent culture, but to demand and receive acknowledgement within it is a salve, both for the oppressed and forgotten as much as the status quo which needs to tell itself that it has “done enough.” By allowing this wayward child to speak and return to the fold symbolically lets society off the hook without addressing the issue in terms that are actually meaningful for the newly minted “victims”.

It’s important to remember of course that just because this victim identity has been created to serve political needs doesn’t make it true. It reinforces claims of benevolent and superior authority and thrives on the disempowerment of the subject to create their own solutions; “equality” rather than liberation. But we know better, it was through the hard work of blacks themselves that catalyzed the Civil Rights Movement, and it was Vietnam veterans who fought for their rights, and all too often, token “recognition” that undermined those accomplishments. The final scene of The Park Is Mine confirms this as Mitch is being led to a police cruiser in handcuffs. The sympathetic TV reporter who followed Mitch’s escapades in the park says, “You did it” and the movie ends. Did what I ask, what has changed for Mitch except his uniform from camouflage to an orange jumpsuit? Is that a solution?

The Park Is Mine trailer comes courtesy of Rare Retro Trailers at Youtube.



I don't know what this is, a poster maybe? Looks like a cropped VHS box to me.

Well, whatta ya know, a German VHS from Die Filmfreaks

 Spanish VHS sleeve and poster are both from a Spanish language movie forum, Association Arhem.

Visit these other Kotto Week participants:

Monday Nov. 15th

Unflinching Eye - Alien
Raculfright 13's Blogo Trasho - Truck Turner
Tuesday Nov. 16th
Lost Video Archive - Raid on Entebbe
Manchester Morgue - Friday Foster

Wednesday Nov. 17th
Booksteve's Library - Live and Let Die
Thursday Nov. 18th
Mondo 70 - Drum
B Movies and Beyond - The Monkey Hu$tle
Cinema Gonzo - Report to the Commissioner

Friday Nov. 19th
Illogical Contraption - Eye of the Tiger 
Ninja Dixon - Across 110th St.
Lines That Make Things - The A Team (TV episode)
Things That Don't Suck - Blue Collar
Saturday Nov. 20th
Breakfast In the Ruins - Bone
Lost Video Archive -  The Park Is Mine

Prime Cut

Prime Cut

United States - 1972

Director - Michael Ritchie

Sarring - Lee Marvin, Gene Hackman, Sissy Spacek and Angel Tompkins

This vertical format poster from Movieposter.com

Japanese poster from Cinemaisdope.

 

Cinema Retro cover from Cinebeats.

Lobby cards from Slashfilm.com

Key Video Box cover from Criticonline

Classics on Key

The Hustler
United States - 1961
Director - Robert Rossen
Key Video, 1986, VHS
Run Time - 2 hours, 14 minutes

Notorious
United States - 1946
Director - Alfred Hitchcock
Key Video, 1988, VHS
Run Time - 1 hour, 43 minutes

I won't say much about these movies except that both of them are superb. Of course.
Personally of the two I prefer The Hustler because Paul Newman is a brilliant actor particularly at this stage of his life, and because it's subject is far seedier than the high-class world of Notorious. That's not to say Notorious is by any means bad, I just prefer the underbelly.

Really this post is about Key Video, a subsidiary of CBS/Fox. While I don't particularly think that the history of the company is terribly interesting in and of itself, I do find the intentional differentiation of the home video company from the parent studio to be interesting.
In the early days of home video this happened frequently as the middlemen who sprang up to deliver product to retail stores had to basically talk the studios into going along with the whole home video thing in the first place. When the studios realized there were huge profits being made, they bought out these distributors. In the case of CBS/Fox, the distributor was Magnetic Video, basically the midwife to the birth of home video.
What I find interesting about these old Key boxes is their lack of artistic skill. Both boxes, but The Hustler in particular appears to be designed primarily for product recognition more than anything else. The spine in particular, the title is difficult to read superimposed over the stripes and is not aligned in the same place because of the barcode. The Notorious box is much better, oh what a difference two years can make.

The Vindicator

 Sad cropped box

The Vindicator

Canada/United States - 1984

Director - Jean Claude Lord

Key Video, 1986, VHS
Run Time - 1 hour, 32 minutes

Every scientific research lab has a snitch. You know, some punk who gets whiny and raises all kinds of stupid ethical objections and threatens to go to the cops or the press as soon as his coworkers start conducting some cutting edge sketchy research. In this case the head honcho of the lab, Dr. White, is designing genetically modified homicidal chimps whose readiness to kill he verifies like a ten -year-old, by poking them with sticks until they tear themselves to bloody pieces with rage.

Carl, the lab whiner threatens disclosure when White cuts his research budget and steals his chimps. Carl demands answers, and his innovative boss decides to give them to him by incinerating Carl in a giant dangerously “defective” kiln.

Carl’s pregnant new-age-synthesizer-playing wife thinks she is burying his corpse, but in an ironic twist of fortune for the high minded and cautious Carl, his crispy corpse has been kept alive in a nutrient solution to forward the very morally reprehensible research he sought to end.

White and his cronies soon attach Carl’s carcass to a cyborg-body with the very same automatic homicidal defense reflex programming they’ve been giving the chimps, which wouldn’t be a problem except that White’s technique for hypothesis verification is perhaps somewhat too provocative.

After Carl’s cyborg body, temporarily clothed in a gold foil Power Ranger suit is fired up, he flees the lab to feel sorry for himself and be alone with his feelings. Along the way the suit, and one hopes his temerity, is burned off, and there’s some vindication in store for ol’ Carl and his crusty scorched muscly robot body.


While trying to brace his wife for the inevitable infeasibility of homicidal cyborg domestic bliss, he reveals to her the gross pickled body within his metal exoskeleton and it seems for a moment that there may be some madness to his methods. Sadly, Carl’s version of vengeance is hand in glove with his programmed passive aggression and he repeatedly runs away and waits for his killflex to be provoked by White and his goons before killing them.


But let’s face facts here, Carl’s very existence proves that these experiments are vital and more work must be done creating an army of amoral murderborgs susceptible to provocative prodding. Thank god White has been saving each one of Carl’s vindicated victims for new cyborgs. What!? Once again Carl’s stupid bleeding-heart pacifism just pushed me over the line.

 UK clamshell insert from Dawn of the Dave.

 

This gorgeous Japanese sleeve comes courtesy of Miyaji at Japanese VHS Hell