Rotten Reels: 5 Essential Vinegar Syndrome Titles

The moniker of the recently birthed repertory home video line, Vinegar Syndrome, feels like a secret handshake amongst cinephiles in and of itself. The disease it references is one of celluloid, when film begins to degrade, releasing acetic acid, the key ingredient in (you guessed it) vinegar. This phenomenon became a plague in the 1980s, chewing up prints of pictures often forgotten in hot, humid conditions (the initial reports of such destruction came from the Government of India in 1948). In some cases, where reels of more obscure pictures were scarce due to budgetary restrictions, one serious case of vinegar syndrome could rob the entire planet of a work of art. 

The Silent Era has suffered the worst, losing the most movies to degradation, misplacement and natural disaster than any other period in history. According to a 2012 study conducted by the Library of Congress, only 14% of roughly 11,000 movies made between 1912 and 1930 exist in their original format. Around 70%: lost completely. This inadvertent filmic holocaust has been described as an “alarming and irretrievable loss” by some of the world’s most renowned film historians.

Coming in at a close second in terms of cinematic damage is the Exploitation Era of the 60s and 70s. This really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, as many of the weirder, obscure pictures made during these decades of disrepute are movies we’ve probably never heard of in the first place. Outside of nefariously funded smut that filled grindhouses on New York’s infamous 42^nd Street, there were regional pieces of entertainment that barely made it onto screens, touring two-dollar drive-ins and redefining what we know as a “limited run”. On top of that, the 70s porn industry churned out spank bank wonders that may have played a handful of trench coat havens before being stored away in the vaults of their producers, destined to rot and never again see the light of day.

Thankfully, there are archivists and champions of not only the Exploitation Era, but also the black hole of VHS genre gems. These folks have worked tirelessly to ensure that all movies, regardless of reputation, continue to be enjoyed by generations to come. Former filmmaker turned home video mogul Bill Lustig (Maniac Cop, The Violation of Claudia) is possibly the most prolific, establishing Blue Underground, a label devoted to all subgenres of exploitation. Don May Jr., former VP of Elite Entertainment, formed Synapse Films in 1996, devoting himself to titles that ranged from Sam Raimi-starring slasher riffs (Intruder) to Japanese Pink Films (Entrails of a Virgin). Then there are the true “deep cut” devotees like Bill Olsen of Code Red, who has kept such wacko cult pictures like Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker (a/k/a Night Warning) and Death Row Game Show alive via his ultra niche line.

Vinegar Syndrome are the newest kids on the preservation lot, hailing from Bridgeport, CT and owning their own private archive, from which they scan, restore and color grade DVD and Blu-ray releases with the help of their in-house sister company, OCN Digital Labs. Slaving away to ensure that the movies they love from eras under negligent attack aren’t lost absolutely, they’re doing the Lord’s Work to benefit exploitation hounds. Now, in addition to a home entertainment line and aiding independent theaters chains (like the Alamo Drafthouse) to host 4K and 35mm screenings, they’re also running an Indiegogo campaign with the intention of launching their own streaming service. Because what good is the past if you can’t bring it into the forward thinking media present?

To celebrate this occasion (and maybe urge you to pitch in to this truly worthy and important cause), I thought it fitting to focus on a five-film primer — an introduction to the wild world of VS. These are the pictures that turned me on (sometimes quite literally) to what the company is doing, and I hope you’ll join me by indulging in this opprobrious treasure trove.

• Raw Force [1982] (d. & w. Edward D. Murphy)

Writing about Raw Force with mere mortal language is like attempting to critique sculpture utilizing only interpretive dance; it’s a futile endeavor that becomes undeniably frustrating as coherent thoughts refuse to form. How in the hell do you describe a movie that packs this much WTF insanity into one tidy ninety-minute package? Directed by bit actor Edward D. Murphy (who personally transported the film’s negative back from the Philippines once shooting wrapped) and alternately titled Kung-Fu Cannibals after its initial 150 screen East Coast run, Raw Force is like an exploitation grab bag, stuffed to the gills with cheap thrills.

The boys from the Burbank Karate Club (along with Cookie from the LAPD Swat team) board a commercial grade cruise ship, where beardo weirdos break ice blocks with their heads in order to fuel boozy orgies and pole fighting demonstrations. Once they come head to head with Philippino Hitler and the zombie controlling cannibal monks to whom he feeds women on Warrior’s Island (which has a really nice brochure, by the way), bazookas are fired, people are kicked in the face and breasts are bared for really no reason whatsoever.

All kidding aside, Raw Force is easily one of the most entertaining pictures ever made, as it careens uncontrollably toward immoral transcendence. Murphy and his merry band of misfits (which includes Cameron Mitchell, dressed as Captain Stubing) are so game for every sleazy twist and turn that it all flows with an atypical grace. As an added bonus, B-Movie schlockmeister Jim Wynorski (Chopping Mall, 976-Evil II) helped perform an uncredited edit for the producers, as well as cutting the picture’s trailer (he’s briefly interviewed on the immaculately mastered Blu-Ray). Best enjoyed with a rowdy audience (I’ve seen it twice on 35mm with sold out crowds who nearly burned the joint down), Raw Force is an unrivaled amalgamation of everything you love about sleazy, Times Square fare.

• The Doll Squad [1973] (d. Ted V. Mikels, w. Jack Richesin, Pam Eddy, Ted V. Mikels)

Ted Mikels’ movies are loaded with ambition, and The Doll Squad may be the greatest example of the director’s overwhelming sense of aspiration. Pre-dating Charlie’s Angels by a full three years, the picture fees like an unwitting prototype, born out of Sweding Bond in the Valley. To steal the infamous tagline from Juan Piquer Simon’s gonzo slasher, Pieces, The Doll Squad is exactly what you think it is. Top superspy Sabrina Kincaid (Francine York) rounds up the titular multi-ethnic gang of highly trained female operatives (all of whom have the most fabulous hair and makeup) in order to hunt down an unseen madman who just blew up a stock footage space shuttle (and is, of course, threatening the globe with annihilation). It’s the Fox Force Five pilot Mia Wallace describes to Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction writ large (including matching forest green jumpsuits), but the sheer commitment to execution in spite of budgetary limitations marks it as an absolute marvel of idiosyncratic motion picture making.

The very best pieces of exploitation from any era were the ones that felt weirdly political and progressive, and The Doll Squad fits both of those bills. Outside of simply casting a number of lovely vixens as leads in a bona fide action film (a rarity even by today’s standards), there’s an undercurrent of empowerment that runs through the entirety of Mikels’ mini-epic. The meetings the women hold are referred to as “Women’s Lib” gatherings, and male assassins are constantly trying to put a stop to their existence. And while the Doll Squad is acting at the behest of a quite tweedy US Senator (with a veritable broom closet for an office), they’re a completely independent unit, operating outside of oversight and devising their own world saving schemes. Yes, Mikels’ camera doesn’t miss an opportunity to ogle them in bikinis (this is an exploitation movie, isn’t it?), however he also empowers them in a way that feels somewhat radical in the same year we saw the third iteration of James Bond. The “Ted V. Mikels” Blu-ray comes complete with Mission: Killfast, a more traditional martial arts movie that took the director nearly a decade to complete due to financing troubles. But The Doll Squad is the real attraction: a fist-pumping, cheapo spy yarn featuring a group of girls touting big machine guns and a “don’t fuck with me” attitude. It’s essential viewing.

• Night Train to Terror [1985] (d. John Carr, Phillip Marshak, Tom McGowan, Jay Schlossberg-Cohen, Greg C. Tallas, w. Philip Yordan)

George Romero’s Creepshow is the greatest horror anthology film of all time. But then again, Creepshow doesn’t open with a group of coked out New Wave dancers, all preening and prancing in their neon get up. Night Train to Terror is largely incoherent, stitched together with a bizarre through line about God and Mr. Satan showing each other rear projections of “case studies” supposed to depict…something about human nature. This complete tonal and narrative inconsistency probably has something to do with the fact that this is a Frankenstein film, pieced together from vignettes shot by five directors, one of which (the Richard Moll serial killer segment) was salvaged from an unfinished slasher titled Scream Your Head Off (copies of which may or may not be available on the VHS black market). Night Train to Terror plays out like sleep deprived memories of Amicus horror productions – cheap and flatly lit but delivering buckets of blood and rubbery flying beasts instead of pea soup ambiance. It’s a skeevy, bare breasted midnight movie romp, featuring misplaced music video interludes destined to get stuck in your head for years after you first sit down with this warped Z-Grade masterpiece.

Or maybe there is a method to this movie’s madness? While Night Train to Terror often feels like astral transmissions from an unknown galaxy, constructed entirely out of PCP and broken cassette tapes, the philosophical underpinnings that drive it remain endlessly fascinating. God and Mr. Satan are at odds over the “musicians”; Satan calling the movie’s main pop jingle (“Everybody But You”) unlistenable trash, while God defends the humans’ right to creativity. Sure, it’s a rudimentary ruffian’s reduction of the concept of free will distilled through a Buggles video, but that doesn’t mean intention can’t at least be partially mined from this bat cave full of guano. Night Train to Terror can never be called “good” by even the most apologetic horror picture aficionado, yet it remains compelling, right up to the point when the model runs clear off the tracks and into the milky black backdrop that’s supposed to pass itself off as the spectral veil of existence.

• Pretty Peaches [1978] (d. & w. Alex deRenzy)

Alex deRenzy’s Pretty Peaches (yes, the porn scene lifer possessed the hubris to include his name in the title) is smut boiled down to baseline skeez. Chronicling the backwoods journey of the titular cherubic jailbait (Desiree Cousteau) as she flees her father’s interracial marriage (only to crash her Wrangler in the woods), it resembles such volcanic “little girl lost” rape/revenge staples as Meir Zarchi’s I Spit on Your Grave or Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left. Only instead of erupting in “feminist” catharsis or exploring the very nature of inherent human evil, Peaches merely abuses the young girl for the titillation of the audience, going as far as to have her indulge in said degradation. Kid and Terry (Joey Silvera and Ken Scudder, respectively sinewy and scummy) become her captors, violating her upon first discovery and then continuing to use her as a sex object as they head for San Francisco, seeking some semblance of ransom for the girl. But Peaches only tiptoes around the “roughie” territory of Hot Summer in the City (a revolting masterpiece of the subgenre), instead opting to transform Cousteau into a fleshy Real Doll. It’d be arousing if it weren’t so (to put it politely utilizing the parlance of our times) “problematic,” but the sheer commitment to character by Cousteau is something to be admired. She’s no Meryl Steep, but her reaction to getting her ass violated by an enema obsessed “doctor” will more than likely blow your mind.

Make no mistake, Pretty Peaches is hardcore pornography, stopping dead for penetration the same way an action picture does a bombastic shootout. Even as Peaches is exposed to more and more flamboyant perverts, the movie never lets up, soaking the screen in bodily fluids and climaxing in a satirical breakdown of the nuclear family that rivals Texas Chain Saw in terms of sheer audacity. There’s no defending Pretty Peaches on a moral level (especially once the forced S&M lesbian orgy is featured), but watching the movie groove to its own dissonant drummer becomes dizzying after ninety minutes – an idiosyncratic reminder that pornography could, at one point in our history, not really resemble anything else in the cinematic timeline. Too often the form is outright dismissed with clutched pearls and a wave of the hand. If we’re going by today’s artless, misogyny-riddled world of Brazzers and Bang Bus, there’s good reason for such tut-tutting. But smut like Pretty Peaches is too bizarre to deny – meandering like a dazed drunk on his way to the whorehouse. Trigger warnings galore (and the easily offended should obviously steer completely clear), this is real deal vintage sleaze with little societal value.

• Punk Vacation [1990] (d. Stanley Lewis, w. Lance Smith & Harvey Richelson)

Punk Vacation is a movie at war with itself, never quite knowing what tone it wants to strike as it tells the tale of a gang of savage punks who kills a small town shop owner, only to raise the vengeful ire of his seemingly angelic daughter. What begins as a fairly standard set up for an Assault on Precinct 13/Rio Bravo groove turns into a jangly, somewhat shapeless jaunt through free form genre filmmaking. Taking on the “anything goes” ethos of the musical style it borrows its name from, Punk Vacation is a barreling freakout that never quite cares whether or not you’re on board with its peculiar wavelength. It’s a sneering, face-painted nightmare that still showcases a solid set of filmmaking chops when it comes to the sun kissed daylight photography and choking murkiness of its night scenes, all of which threaten to erupt in violence at any given moment.

All of this may sound overwhelmingly oppressive, however Punk Vacation may be the most jovial punk v. redneck revenge picture ever made. The town’s sheriff (played by Warhol and sexploitation regular Louis Waldon) is an insane caricature, rattling off misattributed quotes about “pinko commies” and proving he knows nothing about WWII history. At times, the movie borders on becoming a slapstick comedy. Even when our vengeful heroine is tied up by the gang, it never really feels as though her life is in jeopardy, as she engages in a dialogue with a couple of spiky haired pixies revolving around Scientology and sexual kink. Unlike Nomad Riders, the 1982 biker revenge film from producer Steve Fusci (that is also included on the VS Punk Vacation Blu), this is no downbeat, sub-Rolling Thunder affair. Punk Vacation is certainly a mess, but it breezes by in a euphoric haze that’s singularly infectious.

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Jacob Knight is an Austin, Texas based film writer who moonlights as a clerk at Vulcan Video, one of the last great independent video stores in the US. You can find find him on Twitter @JacobQKnight.