Join us at #DukeFest 2015 for our VHS Night on Monday 29 June at Phoenix Artist Club – one of the highlights of the night is the return of The Great VHS Experiment, where you’ll get to pick what we play on the screen as we explore our pile of mysterious tapes, here’s a small sample of the tapes we’ll have on the night!
Just finshed watching the 1988 USA/Hong Kong produced action film Heroes Three, which is a fun cultural mix up, the main story is alright and it’s a good watch with plenty of fight action, but it’s all the strange stuff that pops up through the film that really caught my eye. Here’s a breakdown of some of the odder parts, starting with the very striking video art work:
Then the weirdness starts, our two heroes are on shoreleave from the Navy in Hong Kong when they confronted out of nowhere by a finger clicking mask wearing violent gang!
Next up they’re saved by the third man character, a local private investigator by the name of Hoartio Lim, one of the many things interesting about Horatio is that his office is packed with high tech futuristic hardware, including his very own Berzerk arcade cabinet!
Even the sign outside his office uses a futuristic font.
Later on the video game theme continues as they head to the Play City arcade to play Tempest.
Axes also play a big part in the film, even a frogman assassin carries an axe underwater.
While mostly being in English language there’s a few scenes here and there that feature subtitles, but not just any subtitles, these have to be the biggest subtitles I’ve ever seen.
So that’s a brief guide to the weirder parts of Heroes Three, it’s a fun watch it you can track it down, but it’s all the strange asides that make it really interesting.
Please note this month we’re on a TUESDAY night – Tuesday 26 May.
It’s that time of the year again – yes, May – when we celebrate our very own Evrim’s birthday by handing him the reins of the night for the evening. But in true Duke fashion we’ve decided to give it a twist this year: a surprise, RARE feature that we’ll all watch for the first time as a treat.
On the night we’ll be screening the super obscure 1982 film: The Neighbourhood. Why are we watching this? Well firstly we’d never heard of it before, or even seen the sleeve on our travels but it looks and sounds so good. Secondly there’s not one second of this film available to watch online, it’s not on YouTube and you won’t find it anywhere else. Thirdly and probably most fun, the only reviews of the film that we can find online are two entries on iMDB, both of which are written by students of the film’s director Bob Jones, who now teaches film and seems to screen The Neighbourhood as part of his course.
And remember, who haven’t watched this film so we’ll be going into the evening as blind as you’ll be, so come along and take a chance with us, it could be amazing!
But that’s not all: there will be trailer trash designed to blow your eyeballs, Evrim will be bringing one of his favourite shorts of the year as a present for the audience, our quiz will feature more amazing gifts and much, much more. There might even be some news about DukeFest 2015…
Now here’s something I didn’t even know existed until the last, here’s the never seen before, live action TV pilot to Clerks:
Is it any good and worth watching? To be honest no, it’s deeply unfunny and a pale shadow of what the film was. But on the other hand it’s totally worth seeing out of curiosity just to see how unfunny it is, plus the best thing is that there are several scenes set inside a mid-nineties video store!
The Duke Mitchell Film Club 