Here's a shot-on-video mystery for you: Check out this classified advertisement from the back pages of the July 1989 issue of Fangoria magazine. Anyone have any idea what this is? Better yet, did anyone actually order the video? Did you indeed laugh until you screamed? Web searches for Segway Productions have so far been fruitless, but there was a Segway Publications that published a 'zine called Independent Video in the early 1990s. Were they related?
If you have any clues as to the origins of this West Islip, N.Y., oddity, please let me know. And if you have any other good examples of homegrown horrors advertised in the back pages of Fangoria (particularly if they are pre-1988), send them my way and I'll post 'em.
I found a reworked smaller version of this ad in Gorezone #8 which was released the same month.
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cheers,
Derek
Back in the day I purchased this video after spotting the ad in FANGO.
ReplyDeleteIt was a shot-on-vhs flick (washed out, complete with rainbow-streaked VHS edits) about a mustached Vietnam vet who slowly loses his mind and ends up offing neighbors and family. He eventually starts seeing the people he killed come back and talk to him and there's a poor man's MANIAC-sinpired conclusion.
I haven't watched it since I first popped the s. o. b. into my VCR, but it's in storage back in America (I live overseas). If I ever dig it up (perhaps winter of 2013, when I return on holiday), I'll see if it still plays. I seem to recall that the cover was a cheap VHS box (like the kind that came with a blank cassette) that had the artwork layered over it.
It was played once and never revisited.
Holy mackerel! That's amazing, anonymous. Let us know when you return to the States. We await your report with baited breath!
ReplyDeleteWow! I've been searching for this movie for over 15 years. And not just the movie itself, but literally anything about it (i.e., the fact that it actually existed).
ReplyDeleteBack in the mid-to-late 90s I would trade bootleg VHS tapes of obscure, bizarre movies with people I met on the Internet. Most of us in the tape-trading community would put up our own small webpages (usually using services like Tripod or Angelfire) to "advertise" our collections and swap with one another via post; those without the inclination or the know-how to put together a website would just e-mail lists to one another.
Anyway, there was one guy who went only by "Turk" who had a page called "My Video Shelf". He had mostly gore and punk rock/metal concert tapes, but he had two videos I had never seen or heard of before or since -- "I'm Not Crazy" and "Death Comes Ripping". By the time I found his site I was well-versed in all things shot-on-video and these were the only two titles that stuck out to me as being truly obscure. The description for "I'm Not Crazy" matched what the poster said above.
"Turk" and his site vanished quickly, and I never got to contact him about more info for the movie. I've never, ever been able to find a single reference to it ANYWHERE on the Internet, and nobody else I've ever talked to had ever heard of this movie. After giving up searching I just assumed it was some homemade production that was never actually released anywhere except maybe among Turk's friends.
Just on a whim, I decided to use the Google phrase "i'm not crazy vietnam vhs" and stumbled upon this site and I am very happy to see that I (or more accurately, you) have finally found proof of its existence!
I really hope to find this movie (and "Death Comes Ripping") one day; it would be so satisfying.
--Matt (cowman777@hotmail.com)
Thanks for the post, Matt. When I found that Fango ad, I too assumed that maybe this thing only got as far as the filmmaker's friends and family, so I was happy to hear from anonymous above that at least a few people actually purchased it.
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