Back in the 1980s, the term “home video” actually referred to movies that had been transferred to honest-to-goodness analog videocassette tape. Keen-eyed genre mavens would excitedly trawl the aisles of their local emporium, often choosing between titles based on little more than lurid cover art and advertising hype.
One of the premier purveyors of the most cherished low-budget, unabashedly lowbrow entertainments was Charles Band’s Empire Pictures, staffed by a tightly knit “band of outsiders” whose names crop up time and again across the studio’s roster of deliriously enjoyable sci-fi and horror films. As it happens, Empire was a pure product of the decade, founded in 1983 and defunct by 1989, when it made way for Band’s next (and still flourishing) endeavor: Full Moon Features. Now, the fine folks at Arrow Video have gathered together a bumper crop of Empire’s output in their lavishly produced box set Enter the Video Store: Empire of Screams.
From 1984, The Dungeonmaster (also known as Ragewar in its longer iteration) plays out like the surrealist game called exquisite corpse, with individual segments from different writers and directors stitched together like a Frankenstein monster, linked by the presence of lead actor Jeffrey Byron. The underlying story sees computer nerd Paul Bradford (Byron) sucked into a fantasy realm presided over by the diabolical Mestema (Richard Moll), who sets him a series of tasks to be performed in order to save his girlfriend, Gwen (Leslie Wing). And the only assistance Paul has in his quest comes from a fancy electronic gauntlet that contains a haptic version of the home PC he dubbed X-CALBR8. (Dig the Arthurian pun.)
Along the way, Paul does battle with a bevy of vividly imagined and rendered creatures that include lumbering stone gods, the reanimated dead, slavering cave beasts, and the heavy metal band W.A.S.P. There’s even a nod to The Road Warrior in a segment that features armorized dune buggies. At bottom, The Dungeonmaster is little more than a fitfully entertaining calling card meant to showcase Empire’s talented in-house special effects artists and stop-motion animators. Also fun is Moll’s plethora of portentous pronouncements and outsized scenery devouring, but any attempts at dramatic tension are quickly undone by X-CALBR8’s seemingly infallible abilities. Nevertheless, it’s a fair indication of things to come.
Arguably the best movie in the set, Stuart Gordon’s Dolls, from 1987, is a deft blend of horror and comedy, albeit of a far more restrained (even whimsical) variety compared to his previous H.P. Lovecraft adaptation, the 1985 cult classic Re-Animator. The film’s brooding gothic atmosphere is brilliantly captured by cinematographer Mac Ahlberg, while the design and deployment of the homicidal dolls is consistently impressive. The uniformly excellent cast comprises seasoned cinematic veterans like Guy Rolfe, the star of William Castle’s Mr. Sardonicus, and Hilary Mason, who made a vivid impression as the blind psychic in Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, as well as actors Gordon brought over from his Organic Theatre repertory company, particularly Ian Patrick Williams and Carolyn Purdy-Gordon.
Given the dire results for those who fail the test of character set by the elderly Hartwickes (Rolfe and Mason), it’s clear that Dolls is meant to be a horror-tinged fairy tale replete with a moral that endorses an active imagination and childlike openness to experience. Not for nothing do we first glimpse our young heroine, Judy Bower (Carrie Lorraine), contentedly perusing a copy of the Grimm brothers’ Hansel and Gretel in the back seat of a rental car while her borderline abusive father, David (Williams), and devotedly evil stepmother, Rosemary (Purdy-Brown), squabble up front. The film’s debt to fairy tales is further confirmed when the end credits namecheck Bruno Bettelheim, whose psychoanalytically inclined 1976 book The Uses of Enchantment commends the value of dark, violent fairy tales for edifying purposes.
John Carl Buechler’s Cellar Dweller, from 1988, also deals with the power of imagination, only here the emphasis is on artistic creation. The film takes place at the Throckmorton Institute for the Arts, which, at first sight, seems like little more than a glorified cabin in the woods. The prologue details the fiery demise of renowned comic book artist Colin Childress (Jeffrey Combs) at the hands of a monster who emerges from his artwork with the help of a dusty leatherbound tome not unlike Lovecraft’s fabled Necronomicon. Thirty years later, aspiring illustrator Whitney Taylor (Debrah Farentino) arrives at the Institute looking for inspiration.
Though it doesn’t knock itself out delivering well-rounded, three-dimensional characters, Cellar Dweller does take the time to adumbrate the artistic aspirations of performance artist Lisa (Cheryl-Ann Wilson), primitivist painter Phillip (Brian Robbins), and hardboiled novelist Norman (Vince Edwards). More particularly, it dwells on the enmity between Whitney and videographer Amanda (Pamela Bellwood) that stretches back to their art-school days. The film doesn’t hesitate to poke fun at creative personas, especially during Lisa’s beguilingly misguided interpretive dance, but it’s nowhere near as scathing as Art School Confidential. The downbeat ending makes clear the razor-thin line between the use and abuse of the creative faculty.
Peter Manoogian’s Arena, from 1989, plays out like a noir-inflected boxing movie (The Set-Up only with a more upbeat finale) set in outer space. More impressively, it’s a dazzling bit of low-budget worldbuilding, delivering meticulously rendered space station sets, and a bewildering variety of extraterrestrial biodiversity (think the cantina scene from Star Wars on steroids). The story centers on Steve Armstrong (Paul Satterfield), who’s roped into fighting monstrous aliens in the arena by the machinations of crime boss Rogor (Marc Alaimo). Rogor’s most enticing weapon proves to be nightclub chanteuse Jade (Shari Shattuck), who supplies the film with the requisite femme fatale, while the “good girl” is Steve’s manager, Quinn (Claudia Christian), in the sort of hardnosed role Audrey Totter might’ve played to good effect back in the day.
A Gordon joint filmed in 1987 but not released until 1990, Robot Jox ran afoul of Empire Pictures’s financial collapse. Particularly affected by the delay was the film’s underlying theme of Cold War rivalry and resultant paranoia, which had been rendered a bit old hat by the fall of the Berlin Wall in the interim. Still, the core idea of geopolitical tensions being worked out by proxy remains intriguing. Written by Gordon and Joe Haldeman, the film is basically a “kinder, gentler” (to quote Bush I) version of Peter Watkins’s Punishment Park. In this internecine system, the American side is called the Market, while the Russians are the Confederation, so it’s the economic inevitability of capitalism versus the territorial imperative.
The whole situation seems to conform to George Orwell’s famous dictum “The war is not meant to be won. It is meant to be continuous.” And, for a while, that’s how it seems. Opposing jox Achilles (Gary Graham) and Alexander (Paul Koslo) go at it tooth and nail, in the bar and on the battlefield, where hundreds of spectators become collateral damage. After all the macho posturing and murderous enmity, the film’s final fist bump of brotherhood seems to signal the triumph of the individual over the system, though that fails to take into account the genetically engineered warriors waiting in the wings who know nothing except the ethos of battle, as well as the larger forces of history, which James Joyce called “a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” Robot Jox leaves this as a question mark hanging over the open-ended finale.
Image/Sound
With the exception of Cellar Dweller, the films included in Enter the Video Store: Empire of Screams are stunning new 2K restorations sourced from original materials that improve significantly on earlier Blu-ray releases. Because the Arena transfer was made from a 35mm print, it exhibits a grainier image and more muted palette than the other titles, but it still looks pretty good overall. Otherwise, vibrant hues really stand out; there’s some depth on display; fine details are clearly discernible; and flesh tones appear suitably lifelike. Black levels, so crucial for the two horror entries (Dolls and Cellar Dweller), are rendered uncrushed and inky black. Each film boasts a cleanly delineated LPCM stereo track, while Dolls also sports a Master Audio 5.1 surround mix that nicely opens up the film’s thundercrack- and synth-heavy soundscape.
Extras
Arrow Video knocks another one out of the park when it comes to the packaging of this gorgeously designed collection. The set arrives in a slipcase-enclosed oblong box featuring some very cool wraparound art by Laurie Greasley that depicts a futuristic video store patronized by characters from the various films. In each disc’s clear case, you’ll find a foldout double-sided poster with original and new artwork by Ilan Sheady, as well as three reproduction art cards. (There’s also an Arrow Video membership card in the case for The Dungeonmaster.) Also located in the main box is an 80-page book that contains an overview of Empire Pictures’s history by Dave Jay, essays on the films from Jay, Lee Gambin, Megan Navarro, and John Harrison, an archival interview with John Carl Buechler, and details on the restorations.
Arrow haven’t stinted when it comes to the bonus materials on the individual discs. They offer three different cuts of The Dungeonmaster, and Arena comes in both full-frame and widescreen versions. Given the set’s nostalgic bent, most of the extras tend to prioritize production anecdotes, with less emphasis on interpretation, but they’re still enjoyable and informative.
A brace of new and archival commentaries illuminate the films (Dolls alone gets three) with contributors including actor Jeffrey Byron, directors Stuart Gordon and Peter Manoogian, and make-up effects artist Michael Deak. The newly recorded tracks are moderated by The Schlock Pit podcast hosts Matty Budrewicz and Dave Wain, except the one on Dolls where David DeCoteau fondly recalls his friendship with Gordon and his own time working for Charles Band.
There are also a handful of interviews old and new with Gordon’s go-to editor Lee Pearcy, Arena co-writer Danny Bilson, and Arena actors Gary Graham, Anne-Marie Johnson, and Paul Koslo. Rounding things out: a lively making-of doc for Dolls, an endearing appreciation of effects artist and Cellar Dweller director John Carl Buechler by Budrewicz and Wain, and an informative roundtable discussion of stop-motion animator David Allen’s work on Robot Jox and elsewhere.
Overall
A massive sugar rush of home video nostalgia, Arrow’s Enter the Video Store: Empire of Screams is also a tantalizing sampler of Empire Pictures’s endearingly scrappy offerings.
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I waited for the price to come down and, honestly? This is why I try not to spend $60 on Messiah of Evil. Because I need that $60 for the only film in this set I’ve actually seen- Stuart Gordon’s Dolls. I waited years to get the lowest prices on Scream Factory’s boxsets of The Omen, It’s Alive, Critters, and The Fly so I could afford to splurge on Dolls.
Why? I admit there is no hidden mystery to be found with it. And it seems to only have a sense of morality guiding the killings until the “body count” starts looking a bit low or they don’t know what to do with a certain character who isn’t immoral enough. I guess it’s really just the 80’s horror of it all. A quasi-mediocre horror movie from the 80’s has so much more to offer as time goes on than it might have when MGM was restoring these films almost 20 years ago.