Buddy Giovinazzo's "No Way Home"

I know it's going to seem odd saying this right after my previous post about VHS, but it's really unbelievable how many films never managed to see a DVD release.

I can think of plenty of reasons why a film would not make it on to a digital format (music licensing, questionable rights ownership, etc.), there are also a handful of films that were released on VHS during the early days of DVD that have never made it to DVD, and probably never will due to the rise of BluRay and instant streaming services.

One example of a film which has never seen the light of a five-inch platter in the US is "Combat Shock" director Buddy Giovinazzo's film "No Way Home." Artisan Entertainment released the film on VHS in 1997, but never managed to release the film on DVD.

The godawful VHS artwork for Artisan Entertainment's release of "No Way Home.

Even more insulting to this fact is that the VHS edition of "No Way Home" that I own opens the film with an advertisement for Live Entertainment's first wave of DVD releases.  (I was hoping someone had posted this fantastically '90s looking promo clip on YouTube, but I couldn't find it.)
 
According to an interview I conducted with Giovinazzo in September 2009 for my college newspaper, The Daily Athenaeum, "No Way Home" was produced under the Live Entertainment studio and right as the film was being completed, they were bought out by Artisan.  Here's an excerpt from that interview that didn't make it into the article (which was appropriate, since it was focusing on his film "Life is Hot in Cracktown"):

"'No Way Home' was made by a company called Live Entertainment and during the post-production, Live was sold to another company called Artisan.  The people at Artisan didn't want to make the film, but they had to finish it because they had so much money put into it, but they didn't want to release it.  So there's nobody at these companies that really likes the film, so I don't know if it will ever come out." - Buddy Giovinazzo, Sept. 14th, 2009

Buddy Giovinazzo's brief cameo in "No Way Home."

Though the film was a big hit in Germany, it didn't make a very big splash in the US and has since vanished into obscurity.  In fact, as Giovinazzo notes, not a soul at Artisan wanted to make the film and the VHS release was probably only created to fulfill contract obligations.  Artisan was bought out by Lionsgate a few years ago, which probably makes things even worse for the fate of this film.  However, it's success overseas allowed Buddy to find work directing television productions in Germany, where he currently resides.


Giovinazzo: "I couldn't get any work in America, so I thought I would just come here and live for a little bit... and then 'No Way Home' was really successful here and people really liked [it].  Then it just happened where I got these offers [for German television directing work]... and I was happy here.  I love the city... it's a beautiful city, so I felt really at home here.  It was just luck. 'No Way Home' in America did nothing.  It was not a successful film financially and because of that I couldn't get work for a real long time."

So, pretty much, the film is in a permanent state of limbo because there's probably not a soul at Lionsgate who really even knows the film exists.  I've rarely even seen much mention of it when referring to Giovinazzo's other films - which is a shame, because it truly is a fantastic film that echoes the same tone as "Combat Shock" in a well-plotted and paced family drama.

After being released from a six year prison sentence for attempted robbery, Joey (Tim Roth) asks his brother Tommy (James Russo) for a place to stay until he can manage to get back on his feet.  Tommy is living in their childhood home with his beautiful wife, Lorraine (Deborah Kara Unger).

When Joey first arrives, Lorraine is clearly bothered, but she soon forms a friendship as she learns that he is genuinely a good person who wants to obey his parole rules.  Unfortunately, Tommy is also selling marijuana out of their house, which would put Joey back in jail if his parole officer should ever check in on him.

Despite being urged to quit dealing drugs for Joey's sake, Tommy doesn't stop.  As it turns out, he's been lying to Lorraine about his financial situation.  He's deep in debt with his marijuana supplier and their home is near foreclosure.  As the heat builds on Tommy, he is quick to find the easy way out, but as a result sets off a chain reaction of violence and the resurrection of family secrets.

"No Way Home" was Giovinazzo's second film and has a much more polished feel and look than his other films.  While "Combat Shock" and "Life is Hot in Cracktown" are fantastic films, they also contain some intense content that will probably turn off some audiences.  On the other hand, "No Way Home" is as accessible as any mainstream film, but is still shows a strong resemblance to the rest of Giovinazzo's catalog.

In fact, there's even a scene that in "No Way Home" where Russo sneaks to grab a gun while a group of thugs search through his wife's jewelry.  It feels incredibly similar to the scene in "Combat Shock" where Frankie pulls a revolver on Paco and his gang while they search through the purse he had just nabbed.

But what really makes "No Way Home" such a good film is the script, which is very finely crafted.  Several story elements are left vague for the majority of the film, but when they are finally revealed, it is done seamlessly with the plot.

It's just a great drama with a well-plotted script with fantastic performances, and that's why it's so unfortunate that it's been banished to the analog oblivion in here in Region 1.  However, if you have a region-free player, there is an out-of-print Region 2 DVD from the UK that can be purchased used and also a German DVD that is also Region 2.

Or you can just suck it up and pick up the VHS release.  It's watchable, but a film as good as "No Way Home" really deserves a good home on DVD.

The (Extended) Death of VHS: An overly sentimental tribute to mom-and-pop video stores

It might come as a surprise to everyone that even though I'm a rabid film fan, I don't own a high-definition television or a BluRay player.  Even more shocking is that I probably own about the same amount of DVDs as I do VHS tapes and I still buy VHS quite often.

It's not that I have a problem with watching movies in HD or that I'm some kind of weird VHS purist, I'm just poor and prefer my movies in quantity not quality.  When DVD was putting the final nails into VHS's coffin, I was still buying videos more than I was buying DVDs.  I was buying DVDs, too, but it's hard to pass up a movie you want to see for $2 or less.  I remember being exposed to some of my favorite indie films (including "Stevie" and "Happiness") by picking them up on a whim when the local Video Warehouse (R.I.P.) were liquidating their VHS.

I also became very happy when I moved to Morgantown for college and discovered Vintage Video and Games had an awesome deal for VHS trades: they would trade a tape-for-a-tape.  Meaning, you could bring a VHS movie in and trade it for a different movie.  It was almost like renting, but you wouldn't get penalized for keeping the tape.

My VHS buying-and-trading at Vintage really hit it's peak when a friend of mine was throwing out an entire box of VHS tapes and his VCR by putting them on his porch in a box with "free" written on it.  He told me that if no one had taken them by trash day, they were all going in the garbage.  In fact, he prefaced the decision with the blunt statement, "VHS is garbage."  I actually felt somewhat offended by that sentiment.

I couldn't let him do it, though.  Like a manic PETA enthusiast at the dog pound, I scooped up the whole box and kept a select few titles for myself, then took the rest to Vintage for a trade-in.  From that one box of tapes, I was able to snag countless out-of-print movies, including Mark Romanek's "Static," John Waters' "Multiple Maniacs," and I even found the exact rental copy of John G. Avildsen's "Joe" that I used to rent from Grand Slam Video in high school.  Hell, I even still have a pretty decent sized box of unwatched tapes that have accumulated.  While I would also buy a few movies and then started to trade other stuff I had bought and didn't want anymore, the Vintage Video and Games VHS trade system was the best thing that happened to cheap VHS since the liquidation of rental stores.

The copy of "Joe" that I used to rent from Grand Slam Video.  Take note that the spine label is for a totally different video store.  That's because Grand Slam most likely bought their stock from video stores that had closed down after the death of the home video boom in the 1980s.

But, I'm pretty sure the real official end of VHS might finally be coming.  In other words, I'm finally starting to come to terms with the fact that it's been dead for years.
Vintage has finally decided to get rid of their VHS stock, now offering five tapes for $1.  It's a great deal, but it also means that my days of ludicrously inexpensive lo-fi video entertainment has finally come to an end.  As I made a splurge to pick up five movies, I realized this may be the last time I get to buy a huge stack of VHS tapes from a mom-and-pop video store and I started to get even more sentimental about the video format.

Maybe it's time to change the vanity phone number as well.

Unfortunately, the title selection was pretty slim, but I did get to grab a copy of "The Squeeze" starring Michael Keaton.  I never saw the movie and don't have much of a desire to, but it brought back memories of the shock laughter my friends and I shared after finding it on the rental shelf shortly after 9/11.

Something tells me that they'll be designing a new cover if this ever comes out on DVD and BluRay.

Considering the fact that we're now two home video formats past VHS (three if you count video-on-demand), I guess it's way past time for me to start declaring the death of the format.  But watching movies on VHS was an important part of my development as a film fan and while I now have a ton of movies I could watch instantly on Netflix, it's never going to match the charm of grabbing a stack of VHS tapes for a couple of dollars from a mom-and-pop video store.

Back when I was renting from Grand Slam Video in high school, they had a deal on old VHS releases: three movies for $2 or seven movies for $5.  Single old releases were only 69 cents, so the real savings were actually marginal. The store was full of the back catalogs of video stores that had closed after the '80s home video boom, so it was common to rent a movie and find the tape covered in stickers of a completely different video store (some were local, some were from other states).  Even weirder was that the store really didn't have much organization.

Walls were covered with tapes that were haphazardly organized by genre, but it was really pretty much "Horror" in one spot and "Everything Else" scattered on the remaining shelves.  But the lack of organization made for interesting movie choices, as I'd usually find myself just grabbing something at random just to get the right amount of rentals for the discount.  I really attribute a lot of my eclectic taste to renting videos at Grand Slam, because I was renting classics alongside horror movies, schlocky b-movies and mainstream movies.  A typical triple feature from Grand Slam could be something like this: "Class of Nuke 'Em High," "Network," and "Forbidden Zone."

Of course, they didn't care too much about quality.  I can remember not watching a copy of "Better Off Dead" I rented there because the back of the VHS appeared to be held together by part of an old adhesive bandage.  I kid you not.  But when you're paying less than 75 cents for a movie rental, it was hard to complain.

Several years ago, they liquidated their entire VHS stock and now only rent DVDs.  I haven't been back since, so I have no clue whether they've embraced BluRay or not.  It's amazing they're even still around, but hopefully they can keep fighting the good fight, since they are literally the last indie video rental store in my hometown.

Regardless, I'm saddened that my retail experience with VHS movies has officially come to an end.  It's up to yard sales, flea markets, and thrift stores to fill the void now.

Look out Internet, here comes another blog.

That's right everybody.  I've resisted for quite some time, but I'm finally getting the itch to start writing about movies again.  It's been a few months since I was forced to resign from my position as film critic at the WVU student newspaper The Daily Athenaeum and on to the illustrious job market with my Bachelor of Science degree in Journalism (with a focus in Visual Communications and New Media).

Three months into my college life, I'm still working for minimum wage at a movie theater, writing mundane freelance articles, and struggling to find financing for my own film projects (including my webseries, 2 Dudes and a Sweet Prince).

So in my free time, I'm going to start posting reviews of random movies I happen to enjoy (mostly obscure or underrated films) and also reviews of movies I have recently discovered (again, probably mostly obscure or underrated films).

We were just recently able to raise funds for a consumer-level HD camera (the Canon HF M300) for the next season of "2 Dudes," so I hope to post a couple blogs about what it's like working with consumer-level cameras for production.  I made my first film, Raising the Stakes, with a $500 Canon MiniDV camera and I'm curious to see how much further that money goes in terms of quality nowadays.

I'm probably also going to start randomly posting things I've noticed about recent movies or funny happenings at my job at The Warner Theatre in Morgantown, WV.  You probably know us as "five-dollar theater" or "the theater that serves beer."  (We don't actually serve beer, though.  That's a vicious rumor.)

So keep your eyes peeled to this site in the next couple weeks and I'll hopefully keep you entertained with this thing.  Look out Internet, here comes another film blog.