Charity Shop Nasties and Strangers Boobs.

I live in Brighton now with all the "cool" kids and stupid hats - subsequently the Charity shops round these parts are generally pretty dry and devoid of goodies.

I'm not even sure if this is the result of people like me. I know there's a bunch of sensible people in the area who go out constantly to bleed these places of crappy retro clothes to then go on to peddle a load of day glo nightmares for a ridiculous profit in trendy boutiques to the ever flowing stream of dumb fopp tourists and hip arty students. There's good money in it too - If I could be bothered I'd probably do the same.

Me not being the worlds greatest follower of fashion (which can also be read as "give a shit?") when I walk through the doors of these places I'm generally looking for old VHS flicks, cassettes and LPs.

In Brighton mostly this results in a big zero. Nonetheless I can't walk past even the really bad haunts without having a quick rummage. It's a habit that I share with the rest of the nerdy perverts of my ilk.

Anyway, where the hell is this going? I don't know really.

I've been woken up far too early by a big van delivering furniture for the studio and now I've got the cat on my lap who is trying to stop me typing this rubbish. Here he is...

Mum and dad used to run a video rental store back when I was pretty young and even more impressionable. We're talking the days of anything goes cinema here. Any old crap. The pre BBFC golden age of VHS.

Up in my bedroom at night I used to watch all kinds of tapes that I'd shoved into my school bag in secret. Purely based on the garish cover art or some fierce tag-line or something weird that tapped into odd feelings that I didn't yet understand. This was before the 'video nasty' act and the tape seizures came about so I'm talking about covers like "Driller Killer", the rape-revenge flicks, the original "Oasis of the Zombies" cover, "Evil Dead" (obviously) and "Mausoleum" (That one had monster boobs in it that chewed through a guys ribcage in the bath - I shit you not...). Most of the time the cover art was incredible and the film inside was atrociously bad. But that was half the fun. I guess when you're pumping out hundreds of straight-to-video flicks you need to get peoples attention. Sex and violence.

Like this abomination.... "Galaxy of Terror".... Seriously now this one is a real piece of piss! I've included this one because it got me sent home from school with a note for my parents (not good...). I only had the case in my bag too. Still don't know why I was showing it off at school. I remember there being a weird bit where a glass splinter (maybe...) gets stuck in some guys hand and then takes on a life of it's own and crawls further up inside his arm as he desperately tries to get it out.... I stuck this on briefly the other day and took it out pretty much immediately. It was the cover that sucked me in I think. Back then I can't have known why it did - but it's pretty obvious now though (i.e: girl, peril, zombie type thing). Just for the record - Sci Fi or any space crap is not my cup of tea. I have NEVER seen any of the Star Wars series and nor do I want to..... I realise that I may have just lost a bunch of readers and/or fans. Sorry about that.

So yeah, I pretty much saw it all at a probably far too early age - whether or not it's screwed me up much is open to debate. I reckon I'm OK. Rachel might tell you otherwise.

I hate these 24 hour DVD slot machine shops that are springing up everywhere now. Everything is becoming so sanitised and all the fun and interaction of going to a local independent store is all but lost. I remember people coming in to our shop and asking advice and talking crap while I was up a stepladder blu-tacking a "Demons 2" poster above the counter while I looked down some ladies top.

That's what's missing- screwed up pervert children.

You don't get that in Blockbusters bitch!

And Blockbusters? Jesus....That one will have to wait for another post - I hate those scum bags.

If you don't know then you need to know. Evil, evil, evil.

Again, sorry I ramble and digress -  the cat is trying to get his hands in my mouth.

Sometimes you do get lucky and the promise of that never allows you to stop hunting. 

It's a curse/blessing kind of deal. We were in a stinky charity/furniture shop a while back and, un-friggin-believably, Rachel dug these two gems from the bottom of a huge box of old tapes.... 

....Jorg Buttgereit's almost art-house, depressing-yet-amazing "Der Todesking" and the animal lovers favourite "Cannibal Ferox" - Utterley mental! I can honestly say that I've never picked up any seized VHS from a charity shop. I did once pick up Lenzi's "Eaten Alive" and the delightfully sordid "Don't go in the House" at a car-boot though. Ahhh such happy days....

I can't claim to actually enjoy Cannibal Ferox all that much - It's hardly a Vegan friendly film after all! - but any flick of the era with John Morghen in it is usually pretty funny - he's such a dick! Not only that, he hated the film and tried a few times to beat the crap out of Lenzi over the animal naughties he filmed. Good lad.

Der Todesking was a new one to me and it was surprisingly good in a very serious/slightly depressing way. It deals with death (obviously - it's called the king of death, numbnuts... having said that I may have translated that wrong so blah...) suicide, murder and decay in a very matter of fact almost documentary type way. There's also hardly any dialogue whatsoever.

Before I go, here's another VHS tape directly from the old shop that I only include here because I embarrassingly discussed this one a little too honestly with Miss Redstone the other night! I watched this one up until the end of the "grave dance" scene one morning before school and all day I couldn't stop thinking about it or understand what these "weird feelings" were - yes folks these were my very first "stirrings"..... Which I guess explains a hell of a lot (!!!) and my "thing" for ladies with oddly coloured hair - along with all things sex/death.....  

.....And these are just to brag a bit more to Redstone who likes her junk. One of which isn't even the story of the film - pretty weird as it's supposedly written by the same guy. Oh yeah....both of which are written like a ten year old. You know...something like this. 

Over and out.