Okay, I am beginning the very long process of mapping out the trip we will be taking this summer to finish getting the interviews for our documentary (Adjust Your Tracking). The black dot is where we will be starting, which is Erie, PA, and the line is the states we will be crossing through (not exact). What I need from everyone is either comments or messages about, a.) people who have passion for VHS, have huge or cool collections, own/owned a video store or company, etc. that want to be interviewed, b.) people we would be able to stay with if we need to, c.) places that we need to check out, such as theaters that have to do with VHS, video stores that still rent, or video stores that are closing, d.) recommendations for people that we should get in contact with (people who used to work for video companies, video store owners, collectors, bootleggers, directors, people with tons of tapes, etc). Now, if you live in the Michigan, Conneticut, or Massachusetts area, we may work something out to come see you. And finally, we will be in the New York area at least twice this summer, and the Ohio area again in October for Cinema Wasteland. The days we will be gone will be mid-to-late July (most likely July 11th-28th). Please help us out and make this the best possible movie it can be. If you know someone cool that we must interview, PLEASE tell us. We want to get everyone involved and we also want to capture some INSANE collections, too. Thanks! I’ll be posting this more over the next few weeks.

Also, less than a week left on the Kickstarter. Please donate if you haven’t. We don’t want to run out of gas in the middle of the dirty south!! http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1860100961/adjust-your-tracking-the-untold-story-of-the-vhs-c

- Dan

By Dan Kinem



This is one of those reviews where I am writing solely to warn those unsuspecting fools out there who might want to see this movie like I did. Had I not been doing a review for this sorry excuse for a movie I would have shut it off after the first five minutes. Why you ask? THIS IS NOT A FUCKING MOVIE. Sure, it’s advertised as one, but what you get is nothing more than a poorly read audio book.



This VHS had been on my wishlist for a while, mostly because it was a shot-on-video horror movie released by Vestron. Vestron really fucked me with this one, but I’ll talk shit on them later. Ghost Stories: Graveyard Thriller is just what the title says, it is stories told in a poorly constructed graveyard courtesy of your local Halloween store. The camera creeps in on a man telling a story about a crazy doctor who does experiments on people. After the first cut I figured it was going to cut away to visualize the story he was telling, similar to nearly all the most popular anthology films, but no, this terrible local theater actor just kept rambling. How much imagination did they really think their audience possessed? My eyes immediately began drifting to other things in the room and I could barely focus on these stories.

The first story is basically an “Island of Doctor Moreau” clone, in which some mad scientist does experiments on people and animals. The only slight twist is he somehow has a woman and a rat have sex which creates a half-rat/half-human named Billy and, after a fight, he and his mother end up dying and are buried in the cemetery together.



The second story is around the time I realized literally this whole thing would consist of people telling stories. Nothing else would happen. The camera would hold on an actor as they talked… A woman tells the story about how she fell in love with some guy named Mr. Fox and he turned out to be a crazed killer who hung girls from meathooks. There is a host who occasionally chimes in with terrible jokes, and after this story he said, “That Mr. Fox had more girls’ clothes than your downtown Macy’s. She had quite a yard sale.”



The next story is told by one of the ugliest hags ever to grace the screen. It was all about how she caught a fever that made her look dead, so they buried her, and she had to dig her way out. This is probably where I lost all my patience. They could have at least got voice actors to do these parts, but instead they got some of the worst the local theater had to offer and forced them to do 1800s-style southern accents. Every person does an accent straight out of the Civil War, yet it clearly takes place in the modern day. You see tombstones that have modern dates, they reference someone playing music in a band on the radio, etc.


^The only truly terrifying thing in the whole movie.

Next story the host takes the reins and tells the dumbest one of them all. It’s all about how he had to team up with Frankenstein (yes, he calls Frankenstein’s Monster simply Frankenstein) to fight a sphinx monster, Dracula, Godzilla (??), Jack the Ripper, Jeykll and Hyde. I guess they win (he doesn’t really talk about how they won, other than that they ripped the heart out of Godzilla…), but Frankenstein gets hurt, because he has to give him a hanky and pick up his bolts. A second later a werewolf comes and kills both him and Frankenstein. I’m not lying to you, that was seriously a story in this “movie.”

Finally, there is the story of a woman who accidentally killed her husband. She summoned some witch who grants her three wishes and the second one caused his death, so for the third wish, she wants to bring him back from the dead. She succeeds but he is a zombie. The end. After a whopping 56 minutes this pile of shit ended.



I cannot reiterate this enough: this was not even a movie. The back of the box says it was too scary for TV, which I assume means this was going to be some public access TV special but was denied, but that still doesn’t explain why in the fuck Vestron would pick this up for video release! Vestron is one of the most highly regarded companies in terms of quality releases that it seriously baffles me how this 50 minute, shot-on-video, too-terrible-for-TV movie was worthy of release. The hilariously shitty cover doesn’t even look like anything Vestron would do. It’s not an easy tape to find, but since it is so terrible, if you do find it it’ll likely be for cheap. Please do not seek this movie out. I’m not overreacting here, this was one of the all-time worst and most boring movies ever. This was so fucking bad that I wanted to smash it with my bare hands. I struggled trying to break the tape to no avail, but luckily, the tagline on the back gave me the inspiration I needed in order to snap this in half, “Keeping telling yourself…It’s only a video…It’s only a video…It’s only a video…”

Here’s the poster for our documentary, Adjust Your Tracking! Let us know what you think. Please reblog and promote the fuck out of this.

P.S. You have less than 3 days to donate to the Kickstarter. Any bit of money will help greatly and get you a cool reward. Be a part of Adjust Your Tracking!

There is officially only 24 hours left on our Kickstarter. I want to thank everyone for the support. It’s been amazing. We love that everyone is getting involved! If you still haven’t donated or know anyone else who might be interested, please tell them about us. Please reblog the link and tell all you know. We really appreciate it and can’t wait to deliver a dope documentary for all of you! I’m already planning all the interviews and it’s shaping up very well. I can’t wait for you all to see it!

Donate: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1860100961/adjust-your-tracking-the-untold-story-of-the-vhs-c

- Dan

P.S. Should have some more reviews for you this week!

Coming soon…

You got this right! We are releasing Hellroller on VHS (in a big clamshell)! In honor of a screening we are doing in New York City at the Museum of Art and Design, we are going to be releasing Hellroller. Originally, it was just going to be an event only kind of thing, but we couldn’t let our fans and fans of the film not get the opportunity to snag this. We will be releasing 25 copies total, 15 of which will be available at our webstore at 7 p.m. this Friday (when I make the store public), and 10 of which will be available at the screening in New York on June 22nd.

We tried to do something special for this release, so we had a friend (Jordan Hershel) do the artwork reminescient of the fantastic badly painted 80s VHS artwork we all love. We also will feature a newly shot introduction with me (I was in a wheelchair for this) as well as a brand new video interview with actor David Henry Sterry (who played Dr. Kosloff and the King of the Bums in the film). This is a once in a lifetime chance to get to hear from someone who was actually in this insanely terrible masterpiece.

Do no miss out on this. Mark your calenders, they go on sale at 7 p.m. (EST) this Friday. The tape will only be $20 + shipping (and we do offer shipping overseas). I will make a post about it reminding everyone on Friday when the webstore goes public. Once they are gone, they are gone. Thanks!

- Dan

All proceeds will also be put toward the documentary.

By Dan Kinem



Sometimes VHS covers lie to you and design artwork that makes the movie look better than it actually is, sometimes titles are even changed to make the movie sound more appealing to audiences, but rarely has lying been done to the degree that Student Union, also known as The Harrad Summer, does it. This release shows a total disregard for the audience. Look at this beautiful cover that features half naked girls in short shorts, a Coca-Cola bottle, making out, etc. What kind of movie would you expect to see based on this cover other than a sex comedy filled with T & A and screwball hijinks? Well, you’d never guess you’d be seeing a drama called The Harrad Summer which tries to be a serious examination of sexual relationships and 70s sexual liberation.



This film is comprised of journals from four students at Harrad University: Harry (Dustin Hoffman look-a-like), Stanley, Sheila, and Margaret. The college is some hippie controlled school designed to experiment with sex and relationships and these kids are the prime suspects. Sounds great, right? Well it would be if you got to see any of the sex or nudity. I expected a movie filled with wall-to-wall naked bodies, and what I got was a few ass shots and one blurry boob shot. I mean, there’s a fucking Coke bottle on the front. I (like any sane person) think of rambunctious sex when I see Coke, yet we don’t get any. There’s not even any drug use!



It’s all broken down into four segments, each one based on one of the journals, and for a while, that works perfectly, but after about 20 minutes they start breaking the rules. You start seeing and hearing things that happen to other characters, which the person writing the journal couldn’t possibly have known. This makes a cool concept seem stupid and convoluted. You never know who’s story is being shown at any given point.

The gist of the experiment is that these four lived together at college, now lets see them live together in real life. They have to deal with old boyfriends, jealousy, parents, sex, etc. Of course everything falls apart and it shows they can barely deal with life outside of school on their own, let alone with a significant other. Their parents all hate the idea of “fucking for college credits” and try to get them to not go back. Why the hell did you send them there in the first place, then? Old boyfriends come back in the picture to fuck things up and cause jealousy. Because of these ex-boyfriends the guys decide to spend a night with two random girls at a motel (don’t worry, nothing is shown), then the next day they take their girlfriends to that same motel for sex. The only truly entertaining parts involve a carnival that one of the guys works at. I love anytime movies have scenes at carnivals or amusement parks, but when the simple fact that I see rides in the background is your only entertaining element then there’s a problem.



The couples continue to struggle to stay together all the while trying to deal with being in the spotlight. All the local old ladies want to ask them questions about their sexual experiences and become obsessed with learning about sex (apparently they have never had sex?). There are many hippie-like tendancies throughout the movie, too, such as an immediate distrust of adults, hating the rich, public nudity is okay, etc. It is all overly melodramatic and forgettable.

Without knowing before watching, this is actually a sequel to The Harrad Experiment, which showed what happened while they were in school. Without having seen it yet, I can only assume it shows teens experimenting with sex and is probably a much better movie.



If you thought the cover and name change was bad, here is where Charles Band (owner of Wizard Video) really fucked me. He put pictures on the back of the box that aren’t even from the movie! He also twisted the plot to make it sound much more entertaining than it is. The pictures on the back show nudity and summer fun, neither of which happens in the movie. These pictures got me really excited to see a sex comedy. It also promises a nude meditation, nude yoga, and a night at a bordello. I don’t remember any bordello and the nude yoga and nude meditation were the same thing and it only lasted like 30 seconds.



I’m not being harsh on this movie because the advertising was a lie, either. I actually wanted to like this and thought it might turn out to be a good 70s drama, but it turned out to be a boring movie with nothing of interest. The film was originally released by Wizard in a slipcase under its original name with pictures from the actual movie, then later Band decided he wanted to rape the renters out there by repackaging the same movie with a new title, cover, and slap some pictures on there from a completely different film. I can’t imagine how many people were duped into renting this movie (or even re-renting this). It’s a pretty rare release and one of the harder to get Wizard big boxes, but honestly it isn’t worth getting unless you are a hardcore Wizard collector.

This picture was taken after we interviewed the great Michael Raso. Just figured I would post a little update on how the documentary is going. We just finished another 5 day shoot in the New York/New Jersey area and talked to some amazing people. I’m not going to say who, but I can honestly say we got our best interview so far on this trip. I cannot wait to go on the big trip this July. I will definitely make sure to post more details on that trip before it happens, but we have many great things lined up!

Also worth mentioning, I added a new VHS ‘zine a friend of mine did for sale online. We only have four copies left. I did an article for it and many other VHS fans did, too! It’s a great read. We also have one autographed copy of Hellroller left from the screening (signed by the King of the Bums), so if you didn’t get one, make sure to act fast. The tapes will ship later this week! Thanks to everyone who ordered! Webstore: http://vhshitfest.storenvy.com

by Tim May

As Dan implied in his review of Student Union, truth in advertising can go a long way toward making trash like School Spirit palatable. When you see a cover like the one above, you have certain… expectations. School Spirit meets, but does not exceed them.

Billy Batson (who must have been named after Captain Marvel) is a college horndog who’s gotten involved in some sort of student government organization simply in order to make a new conquest of Judith Hightower, a smart girl from one of his classes. It’s all looking up for Billy’s quest. Judith seems to like him, so he makes his move when they’re alone in the dean’s office. One problem—once the big lug has Judith where he wants her, Billy is stuck without a condom. Judith, ever vigilant, forces him to go find one before she’ll let Billy have his way with her. After checking all the obvious places, he finds a condom dispenser in a sleazy bar bathroom. Apparently too overwhelmed with joy, Billy doesn’t pay much attention to traffic as he rushes back to the dean’s office, and collides with a huge truck and dies instantly, condom still clenched tightly in his hand.

After his body is taken to the hospital, the ghost of Billy’s uncle Pinky (John Finnegan), an old sleezeball charmer who died when Billy was a child, is sent to whisk Billy away to the afterlife. For Billy, the biggest bummer about this whole death thing is that he never got to hook up with Judith. Pinky, who is truly his nephew’s uncle, understands and decides to give Billy 24 hours to take care of any unfinished business. Conveniently, Billy simply must tap his head twice to become visible, so tap tap—off to make his final conquest.

Death initially seems to give Billy a bit more heart. He goes on about how Judith was the true love of his life (or at least the only one he hadn’t fucked yet), and about how he’s going to make the best of his last day on Earth. When he finally meets up with Judith, she has to pick up a French foreign exchange student with the dean. Billy offers to come along. The dean is played by Larry Linville, most well known as Frank Burns on M*A*S*H, a fact the cover proudly advertises, as if your average M*A*S*H viewer would let that sway them into renting a mediocre sex comedy. Linville imbues his performance here with much of that flustered authoritarian daffiness which defined his most iconic role, but Billy is no Hawkeye Pierce, so his exasperation feels like a waste.

All that progress Billy seemed to be making is thrown out the window when we meet the French exchange student, Sandy. Judith is thrown to the side and Sandy becomes Billy’s new target. Her defining character trait is that she is French and she is apparently charmed by Billy’s heretofore thoroughly unapparent charms.

Billy and Sandy team up with the dean’s slutty underage daughter Helen (whose only purpose is to provide another set of tits the viewer won’t get to see) to attend a “Hog Day” party. Hog Day is some sort of school spirit celebration for the school involving a slip ‘n’ slide and a giant inflatable pig and an insufferably terrible band called The Gleaming Spires. The dean fulfills the dean role and heartily disapproves of it.

Billy often seems to forget that he’s about to die and the movie seems to forget this fact even more frequently. After all the spectacle of Hog Day and going through a couple “soul mates” in the span of something like six hours, Billy has to face the music. Uncle Pinky comes to pick him up and take him to his eternal rest, when, in a pretty unclear turn of events, it’s revealed that he never actually died and his body makes a miraculous recovery. The ending, much like the rest of the film, is a warmed over, microwaved pile of shit.

What School Spirit lacks in plotting and characterization, it makes up for in a pleasant tone, an easy going pace, and yes, lots of tits, though not necessarily the ones you most wanted to see.

School Spirit was released by Media Home Entertainment in a slipcase. It was released on DVD in 2005.

Well, the time is finally here. We are leaving for our big trip to finally finish this documentary. We have so much excellent stuff jammed into these three weeks but if you have any amazing leads on a video store going out of business/with good tapes, someone we need to interview, etc. please private message us on here or feel free to email criterionmaster1@yahoo.com We particularly are looking for anything in Montana and North Dakota! Hopefully we will be posting update videos and pictures along the way and Tim will be holding down the review fort while we are gone.

Day 1 – July 11^th
Cleveland, Columbus, Indiana

Day 2 – July 12^th
Chicago to Minnesota

Day 3 – July 13^th
Minnesota

Day 4 and 5 – July 14^th and 15^th
Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana

Day 6 – July 16^th
Seattle, WA

Day 7 - 17^th -
Portland, Oregon - VHS Swap Meet

Day 8, 9, 10, and 11 – July 18th-21^st
California

Day 12 – July 22^th
Arizona and New Mexico

Day 13 and 14 – July 23^st-24^rd
Austin, TX

Day 15^th – July 25th
Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia

Day 17^th – July 26^th
South Carolina and North Carolina

Day 18^th – July 27/28th
Virginia and Maryland/New Jersey and New York City

Day 19th - July 29th
New Jersey

Day 20 - July 30th
Possibly more North

Just launched AdjustYourTracking.com! Be sure follow and keep checking for the latest updates from the Adjust our Tracking VHS Tour!

VHShitfest does Disneyland!

Just one of the many stops on the Adjust Your Tracking VHS Tour! Be sure check out all of the latest production updates at adjustyourtracking.com

by Tim May

The 1980s were riddled with cartoons created for the sole purpose of selling toys. Transformers, G.I. Joe, and He-Man are the most notable examples of this phenomenon, but there are a legion of 13-or-26-episode cast-offs which hoped to share in the riches (cocaine) enjoyed by toy companies who had gotten into the lucrative Saturday morning cartoon business.

The remote control titan Tyco offered an entry into this dubious genre with Dino-Riders on Marvel’s Action Universe cartoon block in 1988, but Tyco self-released the first episode on VHS ahead of time in 1987, complete with commercials for other Tyco products.

Perhaps it’s that Marvel connection which enticed Gerry Conway, the man who killed Gwen Stacy,  to come on as the credited writer for “The Adventure Begins,” a rather tepid, far too plot heavy set-up of a first episode.

The tape begins with an exclusive live action intro, which was changed in the broadcast version. It features a kid on a tour in a natural history museum, who breaks away from the group and finds a portal into pre-history where he becomes semi-animated/rotoscoped. It’s all very “Take On Me,” but it’s a fun way to open the tape and place you in the context of the Dino-Riders era. Then the show starts.

Dino-Riders throws the viewer into an intergalactic war between the peaceful (yet quite proficient with lasers and the like) Valorians and the war-mongering sort-of lizard-ish Rulons. During one of their space battles, both groups are trapped in a “tractor beam” which somehow sends them back in time to pre-historic Earth.

The cast of bland Valorians includes Questar, Aryan leader, Yungstar, obligatory viewer surrogate, Mind-Zei, blind dude, Serena, irritating ESP bitch, and way too many other people. Dino-Riders had a larger cast than LOST.

COMMERCIAL BREAK! Shortly after landing on Earth, Tyco treats us to some (overt) commercials it proudly promised us on the front of the box. There’s Tyco Superblocks, a blatant LEGO knock-off (the ad even makes a point of the fact that they work with LEGOs) and the Aero Turbo Hopper, one of the RC vehicles Tyco was known for.

Back in pre-history, the Valorians have apparently become friends with the dinosaurs and quickly developed a familiar enough relationship with them to be able to ride them around without any worry of death or injury. Meanwhile, the Rulons’ leader Krulos, who is either a frog or a lizard man, hasn’t been as lucky taming the dinos, so he simply develops mind control technology so that he can ride around on them, too!

I guess this whole war is over some Valorian power crystal Krulos is after, so he sends in his henchmen riding on pterodactyls and there’s a pretty forgettable climax (aside from the blind dude pulling a Daredevil/Zatoichi and mopping the floor with the Rulon henchmen) culminating in Krulos retreating so that there can be 13 more of these things. Just in case you didn’t catch the show’s title, Questar sends you into the credits proclaiming, “We’re not Valorians anymore. We’re Dino-Riders!”

Dino-Riders is from the generation before mine, the Transformers/He-Man generation. I’m relatively familiar with (and ambivalent about) those shows, due to long syndication deals extending far into my childhood and a steady stream of television, comic book, or cinematic reboots. Dino-Riders didn’t last past its initial 14 episode order and there haven’t been any new toys since 1990, and aside from a small group of die-hards, has mostly faded from the cultural memory. That doesn’t mean Transformers is good and Dino-Riders is bad. It has the same bad storytelling and characterization, horrible animation, and cynical money-grubbing vibe. They’re equally terrible. Transformers was just a better commercial.

Watch the entire tape, complete with commercials, above.

By Dan Kinem



What are the five best things in the world? Boobs, boobs, boobs, boobs, and tapes boobs. Few things even come close to rivaling the almighty breasts, yet, somehow Active Home Video and producer Bret Rhine managed to film a contest featuring some of the least appealing jugs imaginable. The majority of the contestants look like post-op sex change patients and the pathetic dance routines do everything but turn the viewer on. Thankfully, the video is hysterical, so the ugliness of most of these females doesn’t matter. The overall sleaziness and kitchiness make this a blast to watch.


^Good sign when there are two different opening title screens…

Comedian Dick Shawn hosts the event and opens with a painful stand-up routine that culminates in forcing the audience to sing, “What’s the hippie gonna do? Suck on a shoe.” This goes on so long that it almost gets funny… almost. The celebrity guest judges they got are Avery Schreiber, Carol Wayne, and Pat McCormick. They are there for comic relief, but the real comedy comes from the girls embarrassing themselves. Pat does point out how big Carol Wayne’s tits are at one point and says, “This lady will never drown,” which is both hilarious and haunting since Carol did drown in real life a couple years later.

There are three separate categories: Itty-Bitties, Middle-Weights, and Hefty Honies. Each girl comes out and dances to porn score and tries to impress the judges. Some of the girls make the mistake of leaving their tops on, which results in an obvious lose, while others know what it takes to win. They put a huge troft of water at the front of the stage for girls to dunk their junk in and most of the females take full advantage of this.





In the middle of the video they announce that there are some celebrities in the audience, which includes Burt Reynolds, Tom Selleck, and Woody fucking Allen. They all even go up on stage and dance with the girls at the end. Seeing Woody Allen up there getting down with some honies is priceless. It was so memorable I told Dabeedo about it over lunch at the local Chinese buffet (shout out to Ocean Buffet, woop woop!). We immediately rushed home (not before polishing off about 15 more chicken-on-a-sticks) to watch it. While watching, though, Dabeedo noticed these celebrities looked a little off. That’s when he started to doubt me. After hours of arguing and painstaking research we found nothing. That’s when we decided to watch the credits and sure enough, “Celebrity Look-a-Likes” was a credit. So depressing. Dabeedo squashing yet another one of my dreams.




Like I said, most of the girls are disgusting, yet you can’t take your eyes away. The entire time you are waiting for the “hefty honies,” but it keeps being delayed by unfunny jokes and even a male stripper segment (which was fucking hilarious).



When you finally get to see the goods you have lost most of the excitement. There is one girl who blew me away, though, but she ends up losing so it’s pointless. For the whore horror fans out there, Michelle Bauer even makes an appearance (as does Russ Meyer favorite, Raven De La Croix).




Overall, it was great watching for all the bad stand-up, terrible dancing, and mediocre-to-horrible gazoombas and I would recommend it to anyone who likes weird video oddities. The tape is super rare (probably because of all the celebrities) and is hard to find for a good price. It was released in a slipcase by Active Home Video and two years later a sequel was also released by them which seems even more rare. This is the type of stuff that will probably never be released on DVD and shows why VHS is such a great and relevant format.


Get ‘em Woody!

While on the Adjust Your Tracking VHS Tour we made sure to stop off at Smokey Joe’s Cafe in North Carolina where they shot Gore-Met Zombie Chef from Hell. We were all really disappointed when you couldn’t order any food there (specifically Dabeedo, who was dying for a Slimey Slider), but seeing a Gore-Met poster on the wall made it all worth it.

by Tim May

In a few short days, it will all be over.

The amusement parks will shut their doors. The leaves will change. School will be back in session. Your pinball skills will lie dormant for another nine months before they’re awakened for three months of beaches, roller coasters, and endless partying.

Whether or not this describes exactly what your summer vacation was like in 2012, you can cling to the Canadian classic Pinball Summer for a reminder of sunny days.

The film, inexplicably retitled Pick-Up Summer for American distribution, begins with an original eponymous song which will stick in your head all the way until next Memorial Day. It starts exactly like any average summer day. The scene is Pete’s Arcade, the hottest pinball spot for kids on the last day of school. Cheerleaders are cheering in front of the establishment and some horny old man flashes them. This joke presages most of what follows.

Our protagonists, Greg and Steve love to cruise around, chase skirts, and play pinball. Pete’s Arcade announces the town’s first ever pinball competition, in which the winner gets a trophy and a “pretty lady” (arcade proprietor and apparent pimp Pete’s words, not mine). The perfect contest for Greg and Steve provides them with the perfect adversaries, a biker gang led by an ugly motherfucker named Bert.

Bert steals the trophy before the competition which leads to a Hal Needham style car chase, complete with goofball banjo music and fatass cops. The trophy is retrieved, but Pete’s dopey assistant Whimpy makes a deal with Bert to rig the contest for him if he can join his biker gang. In order to join the gang, he must be de-virginized. Whimpy wants Sally, the sexy waitress, but Bert already has a claim on her, so they set him up with a woman in a motel room, whose drunk fiancé bursts in right before the action starts, sending Whimp running out of the motel in his underwear.

The convoluted search for the trophy makes up the bulk of Pinball Summer, but the action tedium is broken up by gorgeous and lovingly shot montages of amusement parks, cruising, dancing, and pinball set to a wonderful selection of original songs, each aping a different variety of ‘70s pop music—Neil Diamond, Paul McCartney, Cheap Trick. There’s a wonderful pool party montage set to a medley of Beach Boys covers—“Do You Wanna Dance?,” “Surfin’ USA,” “I Get Around.” If the pinball sequences aren’t as great as those in Tilt, then they’re the next best thing.

For a town that’s just now having their first pinball competition, it sure is lousy with pinball machines. Not just at Pete’s, but also at O.J.’s Drive-In and even a the aforementioned pool party, where a game of strip pinball gets broken up by the fire department for no reason other than to spray a lot of girls with water.

Pinball Summer is a first-rate sex comedy. It has a great soundtrack, some surprisingly solid gags, and plenty of nudity. Still, when watched at this time of year, it becomes more than just a mere sex comedy. It’s an ode to a bygone era that never existed; an era of endless summer of arcades and boobs and pool parties. New World Video released this slipcase in 1986, and the severely faded cover art you see up there represents the midday sun of 26 summers passed. Vacations end and the air turns cold, but even in the dead of winter, you can pour yourself an ice cold Coke and pop in a movie like Pinball Summer and transport yourself back to the season when all you have to worry about is who has the pinball trophy.

Breaking news! In a last minute decision, VHShitfest/Adjust Your Tracking crew will be at Tape Eaters, a VHS convention/music and art show tomorrow in Dayton, OH. If you are in the area you might as well come around and stop by. It should be a fun time. Bring some tapes and trade with me!

Also, we will be filming some more for the documentary so if you are really dying to get interviewed then hit us up!

P.S. Editing has started on the documentary. Go follow AdjustYourTracking.com.

- Dan

By Dan Kinem

Imagine a world where sex is banned, where all the buildings are made of tubes, where robots sing and dance, and where we have the ability to shrink people. According to this particular film that world was 12 years ago! Cinderella 2000 does what nearly every futuristic film from the 60s and 70s did, it makes outrageous and humorous predictions of what the future will be like, but what sets this movie apart from the rest is there’s singing and dancing! And sex! (despite what I said above)



I did not expect to like this futuristic retelling of Cinderella nearly as much as I did, but master B-movie director Al Adamson (Horror of the Blood Monsters, Satan’s Sadists) knows how to make a damn entertaining and trashy exploitation film! In the year 2047 (I know, I know, the title is Cinderella 2000. The title lied to us all!), Earth is run by an impotent “controller” who thinks fornication is dirty and should be banned. He realizes this method isn’t working when he sees that crime, fornication, and rape have all skyrocketed (no surprise). Despite screaming at the public via TV transmission to, “Cut out the goddamn screwing, I mean it!” no one listens and everyone everywhere is doin’ it.



Because making whoopee has been banned for so long most people don’t even know how to do it, but that doesn’t stop them from trying. They just roll around on top of one another hoping something happens. They try everything, even drawing out diagrams of spaceship-like penises, but nothing works and they are caught by a deeply disturbed sex-hating robot that runs around and stops people from boning, takes them back to his dungeon, bubble-wraps them (?), and then shrinks them for six months as punishment. The only people that are allowed to make love are the second-in-command and random girls decided by a sex lottery.





Now, I bet you’re all asking, “Dan, what the hell does this have to do with Cinderella?” Well, we’re finally introduced to Cindy, her Austrian-sounding mom, and her two bitchy/horny sisters (strangely one of them African American…). The whole family treats Cindy like shit, making her scrub the floors, sew their outfits, and whatnot. Cindy finally gets the day off after three months of straight working and she goes to have a picnic all alone… or so she thinks.



In the future not only is everyone horny, they all gel their hair into weird shapes and wear chrome clothes and huge bows.

A fairy godmother godfather comes down in a spaceship to interrupt the picnic and teach Cindy about love and sex. He brings some aliens with him as well as his magic wand, which he uses to turn animals into people with animal costumes on. He sings a song “We All Need Love” which is fucking fantastic and a bunch of humans with bunny, deer, and squirrel costumes dance around, as well as the two weird aliens with giant lips and spaghetti hair that he brought. It is catchy gold that I have been singing all week.



^Creepiest thing ever.

The story pretty much plays out how you’d expect from this point on. The commander is throwing a ball to bring up morale and the fairy godfather gives Cindy a makeover and sends her off but says to be back by midnight or else. She falls in love with the second-in-command and then they are separated at midnight. The only difference is instead of trying to match the right foot to shoe he has to match the right pussy to dick. The strangest part comes when Cindy and her new lover finally get together, her new lover and her fairy godfather force her to give oral sex to the commander in order to make him realize sex isn’t all bad. It was basically on screen rape, but Cindy didn’t seem to mind so it’s all good!

The movie ends with everyone happy and everyone fucking their brains out. I had a blast watching this and it doesn’t drag for even a second. It works perfectly because it has the humor of classic 70s porn with a dash of originality. The filmmakers had to find other ways to entertain besides hardcore sex and through that you get catchy songs, robots, and interesting sets. I highly recommend this for any fans of exploitation. It’s hilarious and Cindy is hot as fuck, no pun intended.


Lol.

The VHS was released by Super Video in the U.S. with Super Video’s trademark amazing cover art. It’s pretty rare, especially because it was one of their later releases, but it isn’t as in demand as their horror titles or their early clamshells with printed on artwork (though I’m not a huge fan of those personally). Vogue Video also released this film in Canada with the “hotel version” on it which features a voice requiring you to pay after 15 minutes. I’d love to get that version at some point. There’s also a quality DVD out there with commentary by producer Sam Sherman (who we had the pleasure of interviewing for the documentary) and two versions of the film. The only problem with the DVD is the artwork doesn’t come close to the fantastic VHS art.

^You can watch the whole movie above!

Hey, Shitheads!

Has it been two years already? On September 9^th, 2010, we started VHShitfest. The picture you see above is Dan organizing tapes in my old dorm room. What started as a place for me and Dan to review shitty tapes quickly expanded and branched out into an irregular video series, massive video reviews, and a feature length documentary. We’re very proud VHShitfest has been one of the hubs of the burgeoning VHS collectors’ culture. None of this would be possible without all of you. Looking back on our earliest reviews, it’s hard to see how we gained much of an audience at all. They were short and amateurish, but people seemed to like it. We became better writers and we expanded the scope of the site, and our audience grew exponentially.

The amount of content has slowed, for many reasons, some legitimate and some not, but today, you’re going to get a veritable pupu platter of ‘Shitfest goodness. Dan has a revealing interview with a surprise video, and I’ll have a review that takes us right back to the very beginning of VHShitfest.

Thanks for a great two years,

Tim

Tim’s Favorite Reviews of the last twelve months

-Magico

-Black River Monster

-Pick-Up Summer

Dan’s Favorite Reviews of the last twelve months

-Invasion of the Mindbenders

-Scream Queens Swimsuit Sensations

-Rock N Roll Mobster Girls