Video Nasties (Basket Case/Maniac (1980)/Last House On The Left/Umbrella Entertainment Region 0/PAL DVD Import Set)

 

Picture: C+/C/C     Sound: C/C+/C+     Extras: C-/C+/C+     Films: C-/C/C+

 

 

PLEASE NOTE: This DVD set can only be operated on machines capable of playing back DVDs that can handle Region Zero/0, PAL format software, and can be ordered from our friends at Umbrella Entertainment at the website address provided at the end of the review.

 

 

Unlike the U.S. market, the U.K. & Australian markets are such that if a film is considered too shocking or graphic, it can be banned and those films gain the name Video Nasties.  Sometimes, that can kill a career, even if the film is brilliant, as was the case with Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom in 1960 or pulled by the director as Stanley Kubrick did with A Clockwork Orange in 1971.  At this point in time, it becomes a good marketing tool.

 

Umbrella Entertainment has collected three such titles with such a reputation.  Basket Case is about twins, one of whom is so physically mutilated that it is mad, in a basket and kills.  The other brother carrying him around is not playing with the full deck either.  Unfortunately, it always played like It’s Alive-lite without any kind of solid script and is a curio at best.

 

Maniac is the still-controversial starring role for character actor Joe Spinell as a killer who is on a rampage and gets more and more murderous as he kills more and more people.  A true product of the 1970s, it was a controversial hit then and despite having little else to offer than coming across as a sort of Taxi Driver knock off, has some memorable moments, good directing, good acting and a wacky ending that shows they did not really know how to end the film.

 

Then there is the oldest of the films, The Last House On The Left, the 1972 independent hit that put Wes Craven on the map and was two years ahead of Tobe Hooper’s original Texas Chain Saw Massacre as the big “based-on-a-true-story” hit as two young ladies look for drugs and get torture, rape and death instead.  Inspired by the Manson fiasco, it is not the outright torture porn fests we see now and has some semblance of a story, but is still graphic by today’s standards.  Craven has not turned out to be the genius this film set him up to be except for hardcore fans, but what was supposedly a upending of the Peace Generation by the dark side of people and horror seems proto-fascist today.  If it had been better, Hooper’s film would not be as imitated today.

 

The widescreen 1.85 X 1 image on all three films are on the soft side, with the older the film, the softer than they should be.  All need new HD transfers, but are watchable thanks to the PAL format itself.  All are also Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono, though the mono could sound better in all cases if clean up work was done.

 

Extras on all three discs include audio commentaries for each respective film, stills and respective original theatrical trailers.  Case adds outtakes, behind-the-scenes footage, radio interview, TV spots and trailers for other such product.  Maniac adds radio interview with Lustig, TV spots and the very good Joe Spinell Story.  Left adds an interview featurette, scoring featurette, TV and radio spots.  Too bad the great teaser trailer with its shaky optical printing is not available.

 

 

As noted above, you can order this import Video Nasties DVD set exclusively from Umbrella at:

 

http://www.umbrellaent.com.au/

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo