Review: Video Violence (1987)
(aka Video Violence … When Renting is Not Enough)
Directed by: Gary P. Cohen
Starring: Gary Schwartz, Chick Kaplan
Written by: Gary P. Cohen, Paul Kaye
Music by: Gordon Ovsiew
Country: United States
Not currently available on physical media
IMDb
Gary P. Cohen’s ode to VHS-spun sanguine malevolence may have been shot on video, but it’s so close to actual filmmaking competence that you can almost sniff the acetate. This flick, about new-to-town husband-and-wife video store owners who notice their neighbors are way too horny for violent movies, is easily one of the most sturdily composed trash-horror products of its creatively though sometimes self-destructively gonzo era of homemade gutter-gore.
This ain’t Friedkin or Kubrick or whatever, but there is honest-to-goodness, swear-to-Jumpin’-Jesus real acting occurring onscreen here. It’s feasible that nearly the entire cast could have gotten a second acting gig after this (though I have not confirmed this occurred). Lines are delivered in ways reminiscent of human speech constructions. Characters in the same frame actually talk to, instead of obtusely past, each other. I’m fairly certain there are multiple camera angles and there’s genuine coverage. Real filmmaking shit, man. There aren’t any errant boom mics (but their familiar creeping shadows are missed forlornly). The screenplay may have been written before the record button was pressed, and over a timeframe longer than the habitual consumption of two stale, stained mugs of Folgers. But now we’re getting wild in our accusations.
Gordon Ovsiew’s Casio-gothic score immediate gives you the motherfuckin’ creeps and sustains a thick, sexy eeriness. Combined with reasonably well-landed story beats and reveals, and the actors emoting in ways familiar to the amygdala, there’s something here that cautiously approaches suspense and awkwardly asks it on a date. The climax is a deviously fun nugget of EC-styled shenanigans, if kind of sudden. All in all, this edges awfully close to “professional.”
But Cohen and co. may have gotten a tad ahead of themselves in their greedy pursuit of legitimate movie-making. There is a lopsided obsession with solving its mysteries over paying off the lovingly lurid antics promised by its box art, title, and pedigree. There is violence, and characters even say “video violence” out loud a few times just ‘cause, but it’s mostly reserved for the last 20 minutes. The snuff films portrayed throughout, that at-times exhaustingly play out in real time, are pretty docile. It’s not until our ponytailed hero stumbles across the esoteric, unsettling SOV-film-within-an-SOV-film, The Vampire Takes a Bride, that Video Violence gets truly violent. But rest assured, committed cravers of carnage, it does get there eventually. The savage payoff is mostly worth it; no matter how mundane this movie threatens to be, and it gets awfully serious about its threats on occasion, it never sinks to the immeasurable fathoms of tedium common to these types of projects.
By the time Cohen’s debut film hit the streets (and hit them hard — this is purportedly the most widely distributed video horror movie in history), the ess-oh-vee plague of bargain-bin blasphemy was ubiquitous, and he had learned from so many of the follies already committed by the scene’s heralds. This is what transpires when the unchecked creativity of the VHS era meets a modicum of filmmaking fluency.
Overall rating: 8 out of 10
