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eye WEEKLY                                             October 27 1994
Toronto's arts newspaper                      .....free every Thursday
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VIDEO JUNKIE                                              VIDEO JUNKIE

                    BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DULLS
              Into the land of alternative video stores

                                  by
                              GEMMA FILES


Recently, a friend of mine tried to describe his childish pleasure when
they came out with a Fisher Price Viewmaster that could project images
onto a wall. He had a series of stills from a Bugs Bunny cartoon and
had taped the audio track off a TV broadcast. Through painstaking
study, he managed to memorize all the lines, music and sound effects,
then invited friends over and performed for them, filling in the gaps
between images with his version of Bugs and Yosemite Sam.

But this kind of magic is strictly a thing of the past now, a remnant
of a world on the cusp of video technology -- back when the only place
you could see a film was either in the theatre or on TV, and when
videos weren't available for anything but rent (since owning one could
cost you up to $130). These days, kids just pop their favorite tapes in
and watch them 'til they're ragged. There's no mystery left to lose --
except the mystery of choice.

In a world crammed with multiple copies of Jurassic Park, Naked Gun 33
1/3 and Beethoven's 2nd, where only the "blockbusters" are deemed
worthy of preservation and availability, having an equitable range of
options has become the last video frontier. It lets consumers preserve
the basic right to turn their living rooms into whatever they want --
be it art-house, drive-in, porno den or any hybrid thereof.

Which is where Toronto's alternate video stores come in.

Take Suspect Video And Culture, still clinging tenaciously to the
tourist- friendly underbelly of Mirvish Village. Founded some years
back, by ex-film students Luis Ceriz and Merrill Shapiro, primarily for
the purpose of "buying and renting stuff we've always wanted to see,"
Suspect remains a twisted little labor of love whose typical Top 10
rentals list pits the expected (Schindler's List, Belle Epoque) against
the mainstreamly unthinkable (Japanese animation, Italian splatter and
the collected works of Traci Lords). Not to mention retaining its
status as the single best English-speaking outlet for Hong Kong films
in the downtown core.

Similar kudos goes to After Dark Video (with its stated roster of "Cult
- Foreign - Horror - B' s - Indies - Art - Classics - Docu's - VCRs -
Games"), Academy Movie Rentals (first in obscure U.S., British and
foreign titles) and the Video Annex (thus called because it used to be
in the Annex, otherwise known as the Bathurst/Bloor area, and now ...
isn't).

Due to the devoted and inventive management of store owner Marco
Disipio, Video Annex members can literally access the best of all
possible worlds, as new titles arrive weekly in almost every category.
The store also carries an amazing selection of posters (a very faithful
Italian one for Taxi Driver, an extremely unfaithful German one -- with
Eddie Murphy giving the audience the finger -- for 48 Hours), books and
memorabilia; if you ever had an urge to pick up Bridget Fonda's
mug-shots from Point Of No Return along with your daily video fix, then
this is the place to do it.

But hey, say you're feeling patriotic -- perhaps a more difficult task
than it might seem, in a country where even our big-budget films
usually go simultaneously straight-to-video and a badly publicized week
at the Uptown Backstage (vide, The Dark and The Club and any other
recent homegrown release). ReVue Video, as befits a store specializing
in the "experimental" side of things, has the best selection of
worthwhile Canadiana in town next to the NFB. Do yourself (and your
country) a favor and check it out.

And if you feel equally like going straight to the source for your Hong
Kong films, New World Bookstore Co. is a good place to start. Don't be
put off by the fact that it looks like a Chinese language bookstore.
Walk boldly up to those binders of the counter, and you'll find them
full of video jackets from a fertile selection of tapes just ripe for
the ordering. Remember, though, a credit card deposit, or $20 cash
deposit per film, is usually expected.

So what are you waiting for? Exercise your right to choose, oh ye couch
potatoes of Toronto -- before it gets all loose and flabby, just like
the rest of you.

Or before somebody takes it away, while you're too engrossed in an
endless morass of pap to even notice.


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                     WHERE THEY ARE AND WHAT TO RENT


*** SUSPECT VIDEO AND CULTURE (605 Markham, next to Honest Ed's;
LUV-MORG) -- Black Devil Doll From Hell (1984, directed, written and
produced by Chester T. Turner) was shot on video and scored on a
Hammond organ, starring a cast of unknowns, three exteriors, two
interiors and a dreadlocked ventriloquist's dummy with a five-foot-long
tongue. For optimum effect, follow up with The Adventures Of Jesus
(available on a compilation tape of experimental animation), a
straight-faced retelling of the Gospel according to Fisher Price, with
He-Man, Master of the Universe, as Jesus Christ and Mr. Potato Head as
the Devil. 

*** AFTER DARK VIDEO (1043 Bathurst Ave, 533-7500) -- Daughters Of
Darkness (dir. Harry Kumel, 1971), an existentially elegant cross
between Don't Look Now and any given Hammer vampire flick, brings a
newly married couple to an empty Bruges hotel whose sole occupant turns
out to be legendary "Countess Dracula" Erzebet Bathori (Delphine
Seyrig). Look for the Countess' dry response to the question of how
she's managed to stay so well-preserved: "Diet, and lots of sleep."

*** ACADEMY MOVIE RENTALS (217 Davenport Rd., 929-3478) -- Delusion
(dir. Carl Copaert, '90) pits a crooked computer company executive with
a briefcase full of embezzled cash against Vegas showgirl Jennifer
Rubin, her killer-for-hire boyfriend (Kyle Secor), a Death Valley
highway and the beyond-cool music of Barry Adamson. Tight, taut, dark
and eerily empty as the Nevada desert itself.

*** VIDEO ANNEX (435 Yonge St, at College, 593-0661) -- Long before
breaking through with Zentropa (or Europa, as it was then known), Lars
von Trier and company produced The Element Of Crime, a
hyper-minimalist, post-Holocaust noir told from the (hypnotized!) point
of view of an amnesiac detective in the process of recuperating from
his last case. Strange beyond belief.

*** REVUE VIDEO (353 Danforth Ave, 778-5776) -- The Big Crimewave (dir.
John Paisz, '87) If you think Barton Fink was the last word on writer's
block, then just watch this. Paizs' '50s-inspired dementia comes close
to beating the Coens' big-budget pyrotechnics hands down for sheer
wilful weirdness. Shamefully neglected.

*** NEW WORLD BOOKSTORE CO. (442 Dundas St. W., 977-6029) -- The East
Is Red/Swordsman 3 (dir. Tsui Hark, '91) stars Brigitte Lin as Asia the
Invincible, a gender-bending Kung Fu master who returns from years of
voluntary retirement/pretense of death, only to find he/she has
involuntarily become a cult figurehead, symbol of revolution and living
god. Dismemberment, embroidery needle fu, extreme sexiness and heresy
galore ensues!


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