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Released by: Garagehouse Pictures
Released on: January, 2016.
Director: Various
Cast: Various
Year: Various
Purchase From Diabolik DVD
The Feature:
Trailers! Some folks just can't get enough of them and if that sounds like you, then do yourself a favor and snag this second release from new kid on the block Garagehouse Pictures - because it's absolutely stacked with over sixty vintage theatrical trailers, most of them pretty rare.
The disc begins not with a formal trailer but with a restricted warning where a pretty cool animated cat appears on screen to warn more sensitive viewers of the delightfully sleazy sites that await them. From there? BOOM! You get punched in the face with a trailer for Deathbed (this is the 1985 film and not to be confused with Death Bed: The Bed That Eats) that is as brief as it is bizarre - thrill to the sight of a pretty girl, in bed, turning into a skeleton! And we're off…
Up next is a fun spot for a double bill of The Hex Machine paired with Lucifer's Curse (which us actually a retitled Who Can Kill A Child?) that features shocks aplenty, some wild clips from each picture and some rather familiar sounding musical stings. The snooze fest that is Dawn Of The Mummy is up next, but based on the trailer you'd think it was a rip-roaring masterpiece of gory, atmospheric horror. Whoever cut this one deserves a high five. 1976's Dark Sunday, which is alternately known as Soldier's Wrath, follows and this trailer is a blast. It's hot, it's violent, it's got Earl Owensby and it looks to mix up elements of hicksploitation and blacksploitation movies with elements of gritty Rolling Thunder style revenge trappings thrown in for good measure. Following this with Sunday In The Country, a crime film which top bills the mighty Earnest Borgnine, seems to make sense as the films has a similar seventies feel and tone.
Moving back to horror movie territory, the trailer for Don't Open Till Christmas sells the movie well using the tried and true combination of sex and violence and by pointing out Caroline Munro's musical appearance in the movie! A wild spot for Savage Weekend follows next, and it too paints a somewhat seedy picture of the movie it's promoting (and rightfully so, as this one is a genuinely seedy movie!). From there, the disc shifts genre gears again, slapping you upside the head with Mean Frank and Crazy Tony, a Eurocrime effort starring Lee Van Cleef and Edwige Fenech that is just as good as it sounds - violence, nudity, car chases and a genuinely rad score make this one worth checking out (there's no DVD out, at least not domestically, but the movie did hit VHS as part of the Sybil Danning's Adventure Video line!). Wacko is up next, an obscure horror parody picture with George Kennedy, Joe Don Baker and yes, a young Andrew Dice Clay. This fits nicely alongside Hysterical, a similar mix of horror and humor that skewers not only horror pictures but other popular genre efforts of the early eighties including the Indiana Jones movies.
Getting a bit more dark and twisted, we head straight on into a promo spot for The Incredible Torture Show, which will be better known to most as Joel Reed's Bloodsucking Freaks! This one leaves very little to the imagination, but just as 'shocking' is what's next, and that's a trailer for the freakishly grisly shockumentary, Mondo Magic (recently released uncut on DVD from Massacre Video). Directed by Alfredo and Angelo Castiglioni, this cash-in on the mondo movie craze of the day takes things to some pretty insane extremes.
Ralph Bakshi's Coonskin gets the spotlight next, and the trailer for this one is actually pretty damn accurate in showing you what the movie has to offer - it's typically confrontational in the way that the best Bakshi movies are, plenty of acerbic humor here along with this trademark visual style. This is followed by a spot for a movie called Fingers in which a young Harvey Keitel plays a musical protégé who, when he isn't tinkling the ivories, works as a collection's agent for the mob. Bill Hinzman's Flesheater, here retitled Revenge Of The Living Zombies, takes us back into horror territory as the trailer plays up his ties to the original Night Of The Living Dead. Up next is a trailer for The Children, the eerie killer kid movie from 1980, which is in turn followed by a bizarre spot for the comedic Dr. Frankenstein On Campus, a bizarre Canuxploitation picture made in 1970 alternately known as Flick. Placing the trailer for Dracula Blows His Cool right up next would seem pretty fitting, as we witness Gianna Garko hamming it up as the titular vampire alongside a gaggle of naked ladies. The Creature From Black Lake follows, and it looks like a blast as it alerts us to the thrills that await us should we choose to watch this film in which Jack Elam and a few others take to the woods to look for Bigfoot! And if you need more goofy, furry monster movie mayhem, sit tight for a trailer for Goliathon, which is actually a retitled version of the Shaw Brothers' classic Mighty Peking Man! The Asian theme continues as we're blasted with the one/two punch of The One-Armed Executioner and Naked Vengeance, two early eighties Filipino trash classics from Bobby Suarez and Cirio Santiago respectively.
From there, again, it's back to horror movie land with a completely screwy trailer for Food Of The Gods II (also known as Gnaw), which really does need to be seen to be believed. Susan George pops up looking quite lovely in the trailer for Fright, a British horror picture that was released on DVD by Anchor Bay way back when they released things like this on a regular basis. Sigh. If thinking back to that label's DVD glory days gets you down, never fear, Lina Romay's sexy song and dance routine in the trailer for Jess Franco's take on Jack The Ripper, which stars the immortally bizarre Klaus Kinski, will put a smile on your face and a bulge in your pants. From here, it's a run of action oriented trailers starting with The Annihilators which sees Gerrit Graham of The Phantom Of The Paradise pop up alongside a few other odd casting choices in which looks like a pretty rad movie about irate Vietnam veterans. Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill follows that, where we see James Mason top bill a cast in a movie that sees some tough dudes going after drug dealers. The Sands Of Kalahari gets its time to shine up next, and if you like Stuart Whitman like you should like Stuart Whitman, it'll scratch that itch for you, even if it comes across as one of the classier movies represented in this collection.
At almost the half way mark, we get a pretty grisly trailer for Lenzi's Man From Deep River under its alternate US title as Sacrifice, followed by the boob-tastic (and much more lighthearted) trailer for a German sex comedy called The Games Schoolgirls Play, which stars a bevy of beauties that don't look a day over thirty. The German theme continues with the trailer for The College Girl Murders (released on DVD, sans trailer, by Dark Sky Films years back), which is a pretty great Edgar Wallace/krimi picture with a cool red-hooded killer. A documentary called Beyond And Back is sandwiched in between that film and 1974's Black Fist, an amazing drive-in style action thriller with a young Philip Michael Thomas in a pre-Miami Vice role. A great spot for Penitentiary II follows, so keep your eyes open for Leon Isaac Kennedy, Ernie Hudson and, yes, even Mr. T long before he went toe to toe with Rocky. After that it's time for a pair of Roman Scavolini films with Dog Tags, a raging Vietnam action film, and then of course the spot for his notorious Nightmare (that really does all it can to sell Tom Savini's involvement in the movie). We get a few more horror titles in a row, as Nightmare is followed by Superstition, Frankenstein 3-D (which is Andy Warhol's Frankenstein a.k.a. Flesh For Frankenstein) starring a completely manic Udo Kier, and then… Homebodies? Didn't see that one coming but that's the joy of a disc like this - surprises aplenty!
Things take a bit of a sci-fi-ish turn when the trailer for The Alpha Incident pops up. George 'Buck' Flower appears here, which is reason enough to take note, and after that we get a great spot for Mutant War, in which Cameron Mitchell was clearly willing to do whatever it took to make his next mortgage payment. Moving right along, the trailer for the amazing The Eliminators plays, this was recently released as part of a Blu-ray double bill by Shout! Factory where it was paired with The Dungeonmaster. Sho Kosugi kicks the shit out of your eyeballs next when the trailer for the Crown International release of 9 Deaths Of The Ninja hits the screen, and if that weren't enough, Angela Mao and George Lazenby (complete with a goofy hat) take on all sorts of bad guys in the trailer for Stoner (a really underrated mix of kung-fu action, international intrigue and sleazy exploitation elements). From there, we head to Italy for the trailer for Next!, which is actually Sergio Martino's The Strange Vice Of Mrs. Wardh under an alternate title (more lovely Edwige Fenech footage here to ogle over) and then a trailer for The Rah Rah Girls which is, in fact, What Have You Don't To Solange? re-cut to look not like the dark and twisted thriller that it is but a cheesy sex comedy! Umberto Lenzi's Paranoia (also known as Orgasmo), starring the lovely Carroll Baker, is up next followed by a spot for a slasher film called Silent Madness and then a trailer for Trick Or Treasts, the Gary Graver film starring David Carradine. If you dig backwoods horror, you'll appreciate the trailer for The Creeper, a retitled release of the Hal Holbrook starring Rituals. After that we get an odd French trailer for Oliver Stone's awesome Seizure, albeit retitled as Tango Macabre followed by yet more Lenzi with a trailer for Ironmaster, starring George Eastman in a goofy barbarian role.
Jean Claude Van Damme appears in the trailer for No Retreat, No Surrender where he plays a Russian out to take down the hero, while in Knights Of The City Leon Isaac Kennedy makes a second appearance in this story about gangsters and aspiring hip hop stars that also stars Kurtis Blow, Smokey Robinson and… The Fat Boys! The Legend Of Frenchie King pairs blonde bombshell Brigitte Bardot with the equally sexy Claudia Cardinale in a goofy, saucy western team up, which contrasts in unexpected ways with the next trailer - The Farmer, which has been pretty much impossible to see since it played theatrically but which looks like a pretty bad ass revenge movie. After that, we get an amazing trailer for Smokey And The Good Time Outlaws, where Jesse Turner aspires to make it as a big time country music star while Slim Pickens, as the cop in question, does everything he can to stop him. It looks absolutely nuts and it's followed by a trailer for Smokey And The Hotwire Gang, which doesn't appear to have much of a connection to the other film and which looks only partially nuts.
The absolute highlight on this collection is the trailer for the screwy low-budget regional horror oddity that is The Demon Lover. The story behind this movie (covered in Demon Lover Diary) is just as interesting as the movie itself but don't miss this trailer - it's got everything you could want: a demon, some lovers, a guy who looks like Dave Mustaine, wonky effects and Gunnar Hansen playing a professor in a turtleneck! There is a super shitty grey market DVD out there from Substance but no proper release available, and that's a damn shame (the movie and the documentary would make for one fantastic double feature).
The disc moves towards its finish with a double feature trailer for Diabolical Wedding and Legend Of Horror and then another double feature trailer for Grave Of The Vampire and Garden Of The Dead. Michael Pataki fans take note, this one is a fantastic exercise in hyperbole and features one of the most unexpected 'warnings' of all time. George Lazenby pops up a second time in the trailer for the Nazi themed Hell Hunters, and then none other than the super fucking awesome Ron Marchini leads the charge in an amazing trailer for Jungle Wolf II: Return Fire, which sees him alongside is Omega Cop co-star, the great Adam West! And last, but very certainly not least, Lee Van Cleef begs to be taught the ways of the white man in the trailer for Captain Apache (the recent Blu-ray release was sadly trailer free) where he appears alongside Stuart Whitman and Carroll Baker. Just as importantly, the trailer does feature snippets of Van Cleef's bizarre crooning over the soundtrack.
And there you have it. You get over two hours of over-hyped and undervalued cinematic insanity with this disc, most of which you're not going to find anywhere else. Get on it now.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Garagehouse Pictures presents Trailer Trauma on Blu-ray in AVC encoded 1080p high definition, each in its own aspect ratio, and generally speaking things look really good here (these were all transferred in 4k from 35mm elements). Expect scratches and print damage throughout but fans of trailer compilations wouldn't have it any other way. The disc is well authored, there are no obvious compression issues to note despite the long running time of the disc, nor are there any traces of noise reduction or edge enhancement here. These trailers look like the marginally beaten up film sourced promo spots that they are, but you'll still notice quite a bit more detail and texture here than you would on a standard definition offering. Quality varies from one spot to the next but overall, yeah, this stuff looks really good on Blu-ray, very film like and appropriately gritty and grainy.
Audio chores are handled by an LPCM Mono track that is on par with the video - it's not quite pristine, but it sounds very good for what it is. The various narrators used on the different trailers are always nice and clear and the levels are properly balanced. The music and effects bits also sound nice and strong. If there's a bit of hiss here and there and the odd pop in the mix, that's okay. There aren't any subtitles provided on the disc.
There aren't any extras on the disc itself, but we do get some slick original cover art by Stephen Romano that features a neat, alternate image on the flip side accompanied a list of the trailers that are contained on the disc. We also get some nice menus (featuring music by Ian Zapczynski) that allow you to either enjoy everything on the disc by way of a 'play all' feature or select an individual trailer.
The Final Word:
Any self-respecting fan of horror, exploitation and trash cinema should consider Trailer Trauma a must own. There's a lot of really obscure stuff on here, very little overlap at all with past trailer compilations made available on Blu-ray and DVD, and that helps this one to stand out from the pack. Add to that the fact that the presentation quality is really solid and this one scores high marks all around. There's a ridiculous amount of fun to be had here, don't miss out.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
