FrightFest review – The Last Video Store
Cody Kennedy and Tim Rutherford expanded this from their same-named 2013 short, so ought to have dibs on the title – but there are two films called The Last Video Store around at the moment. This 78-minute homage to the schlock of the ‘80s and ‘90s is at once confined to a tiny basement full of VHS cassettes and ranges across the cosmos. Nyla (Yaayaa Adams) enters the realm of speccy enthusiast Kevin (Kevin Martin) to return some tapes rented by her just-deceased father, but also hands over the VHS version of the Necronomicon – a gnarly tape called the Videonomicon, which has the power to open up portals to bad movies and bring characters from them into the real world … notably the preystalker, an alien bug done in the terrible CGI style of the mid-90s … Castor Creely (Leland Tilden), the hulking Jason clone from a Canadian hockey-themed slasher franchise (the Beaver Lake Massacre series) and the preening martial arts star (Josh Lenner) of Fury of the Viper. Written by Rutherford and Roach, it’s full of deep cut jokes at the expense of the likes of RageWar – if you know the Charles Band ouvre, you’ll get it, if you wasted the 1980s only watching films like Out of Africa and The Last Emperor, it’d take too long to bring you up to speed with an explanation. Hyperactive Martin, a real-life DVD store owner, and sceptical Adams make a decent team and it even has a few moments of proper horror amid the retro-trash celebration.
Discussion
No comments yet.