1988, United States. Directed by Charles Pinion.

Punk rockers like to make things, or at least they used to. Up until the mainstream consumption of the punk rock aesthetic, there was a little something called the DIY ethic which most punks held as something very important, an integral part of what it was to be a punk rocker. Do it yourself. Don't make music to become famous. Make music because you love to make music, and if you want to make a record for people to hear, why not do it all yourself? Or put together your own zine since none of the mainstream magazines have any interest in covering what you'd want to read about.

Or how about making your own movie. Ahh, see, right there it gets a bit tricky. There are plenty of punk rock zines and punk rock bands, but there's only a handful of punk rock filmmakers. Oh sure, there have been movies made about punks, but those movies weren't made by punks, and the results were often something a little like SLC Punk, in which a very unoriginal, typical teen romantic comedy was dressed up in punk rock clothes in order to cash in on a growing fad. There were no punks in that movie. There were just actors dressed up as punks. It's about as authentic as when my friend Danielle and I dressed up as Mrs. Paul and the Gordon's Fisherman for Halloween one year back in high school. We may have looked like sea farin' peddlers of fish sticks, but you know what? It was all a sham. I have no idea how to make, package, and then successfully market a brand of delightfully scrumptious fish-based food products.

There are some very practical reasons why there are a lot more DIY punk bands and writers than film makers. For one, it's a lot easier to make a zine or start a band than it is to make a film. Neither of those endeavors are particularly easy, but compared to making a movie, they're cheez whiz. Equipping yourself, getting film, developing film, editing, re-editing, converting to video, finding people to be in your movie, etc etc. etc. -- these are all labor and money intensive, far more so than putting out a record or scamming copies from Kinko's. The costs don't go away, either. When you buy your guitar, you have your guitar. It can last you for years. If you are doing a film project, however, you have a constant cost. You have to develop. You have to reshoot for things that come out fucked up. You have to develop again. And you have to get people, more people than you need for a band. You can only cast the same ten friends in so many roles before folks start to notice. For this reason, a lot of punk rock filmmakers stick to documentary films, which is where a lot of talent has really shone through. Making a documentary is still a complicated thing, but at least people don't have to be cast and learn their lines.

Those who do venture into feature film making often do so via the cheapest possible method. After all, we're not talking "indy film" here with a budget of $500,000 and actors from the SAG. We're talkin' low to no budget, as in under a couple thousand dollars, possibly under a couple hundred dollars. We're talking equipment that can be purchased on the cheap or acquired for free. In short, we're talking about super 8 film or VHS video. Since super 8 is film, it can be difficult to work with. You have to learn what you are doing if you ever want to shoot anything beyond short films of your buddies showing their asses to cops or something. And up until recently, as in up until the widespread growth of the internet, super 8 film has been difficult for a lot of people outside of major cities to acquire and have developed. Thus, for much of the 1980s and early 1990s, VHS was the default medium of choice for people who were looking to make movies on budgets they'd amassed by eating only from Taco Bell's much missed 39-cent Fiesta menu.

People will leap to the defense of just about any recording format. Super 8 of course has a fervent and growing following, and has even seen itself showing up in big budget features. 16mm and 35mm are industry standards of course. Digital video has a legion of supporters these days, and even Hi-8, SVHS, and 8mm video have tons of advocates. You'd be hard pressed, however, to find anyone that would leap to the defense of VHS as a medium for doing work. Of all the video formats available, NTSC VHS is the absolute bottom of the barrel. Naturally, it's the standard in America. In production classes you're taught that NTSC actually stands for "Never Twice the Same Color," because you have about one generation of copying you can do before your print gets severely distorted. Other than it's low cost, there is absolutely nothing good about VHS and the NTSC standard. VHS quality is low, and up until the advent of digital non-linear editing systems, working with VHS in post-production was an absolute nightmare. These days, thanks to things like Adobe Premiere and Final Cut Pro, it's just a major disappointment instead of a nightmare.

But still, for years it was all the no-budget filmmaker had. What could you do other than suck it up and chase your dreams, baby? Even if a lot of these people had been talented, working with VHS back in the analog days was more than enough to foil all but the very best. Because of the difficulties in editing, most shot-on-video feature films ended up overlong and full of long dull moments that should have been cut out. Of course, there are also those times when the whole movie is one long dull moment, but what can you do about those besides not watch them? And when people do venture into the realm of making feature films on video, more times than not it's a horror film.

Why horror? Simple enough. for one, a lot of the people come from b-movie fan backgrounds, and that means they probably have at least some love of horror films. Horror film fans above all others seem the most prone to the desire to make their own movies, which I have always thought was one of the coolest aspects of the scene. Very few horror film fans sit back and simply enjoy the genre without feeling the desire to take an active part in it some way. Finally, horror films are easy to make -- relatively speaking. You don't need that many people. You don't need that much money. You generally don't need specific sets, and you can pull off decent effects for next to nothing if you know what you're doing.

Having lived in Gainesville, Florida for the bulk of the 1990s, the shot-on-video splatterpunk oddity Twisted Issues has something of a special place in my heart -- the same place that any shot on video movie has in hearts. It's that place in your heart that thinks the movie is cool because, hey look! I know those people! Familiarity breeds tolerance when it comes to SOV films, and what seems not so bad to people who know people involved in the film may seem like a train wreck to those outside the circle. Twisted Issues did, however, get a fair amount of praise and positive reviews from those who were not involved with the makers of the film or Gainesville, Florida. I have to be honest and say that sort of baffles me. I guess judged by the standards of no-budget, shot-on-video feature-length films twisted Issues isn't all that bad. In fact, parts of it are quite good. But parts of it are also dreadfully slow, poorly lit, and ponderous.

The film opens with flashes of interesting, if not totally successful surrealistic vision. All punk films have to have scenes of carnage and destruction from various news reports, preferably filmed directly off the TV screen for that cool fuzzed out distorted look, and of course, we get that here, intercut with scenes of some kids skateboarding over to their friend's house. The intro shows us the movie's big problem: it doesn't know when to be a film and when to be a music video. What should have been maybe a twenty-second segment goes on for several minutes so the song can finish. I know music is important in punk, and local music in Gainesville has always been fiercely creative and beloved by the locals, but I want to listen to music, not watch it. It might have been different if the skating was any good, but we're not talking Lance Mountain here. They pull off feats like going down the sidewalk, and turning 'round the corner. Basically, this is skating I could do, and if I can do it, then it's not very interesting.

The pay-off for this lengthy and not terribly interesting intro is that they get to their friend's house, and he doesn't open the door. So they skate away. The end. I had to sit through five minutes of people rolling casually down the street just for that? I mean, sure nowadays it's cool to sit there and take in the scenery of Gainesville, but after the first minute the novelty of seeing "that one house" or "that 7-11 that changed its name to The Gate" wears off, and you are left with a seemingly endless scene of people skating to their friend's house, only to find out he's not there.

Actually he is there, but he's still asleep since everyone in Gainesville wakes up between noon and six in the evening. Their friend is Charles, a creepy, psycho looking guy who bears a completely disturbing resemblance to Bruce McCulloch from The Kids in the Hall. It's uncanny, I tell ya! Both of them give me nightmares. Anyway, Charles is a strange one. He spends most of his day watching a weird dancing marionette on his television, or even weirder, he watches the actual events of the movie in which he has a part. It's a twisted sort of surreal thing, and shows some sparks of true warped imagination behind what could otherwise be considered just another goofy shot on video horror film.

Charles has a cute girlfriend, and apparently, they have a tendency to inflict fatal wounds on one another, only they don't die. They just sort of bleed and suffer for a spell, then heal. I don't know. It's never really explained, but I guess it doesn't have to be. You know, that's the art portion. Anyway, among the things Charles watches are a couple of karate students sitting on the front porch. Maybe this is public access cable. One of the karate students is a young skate punk named Paul. He is of the straight edge persuasion, which means no drinking, smoking, or drugs. Yeah, there was that no casual sex thing also, but everyone seems to be pretending that's been forgotten. What can you do? People like booty.

The karate students are discussing the essence of the peaceful warrior. Paul is committed to avoiding violence, though when his classmate hits him with with the scenario "What if a drunk pours beer on you and kicks your skateboard away?" Paul finds himself confused. Could he remain at peace when such a heinous crime had been committed? I guess we know that's going to happen at some point.

One of the film's creepier segments is local hippie record store clerk Bill Perry as the "Say Yes" guy broadcast in close-up over a television. It's not particularly creepy unless you know Bill, and if you do, just about everyone has a disturbing story involving him. Ask someone about his package revealing microshorts. We're talking tighter and shorter than those worn even by young Japanese schoolboys in 1970s Godzilla movies. Still, you had to go buy records from the guy because he had the good sense to hire the employees with the best musical taste. It was probably the only hippie record store with a huge section devoted to AntiSeen.

Paul later meets up with his cute skater girl friend, and they skate to a party. Yep, lots of skating, none of it interesting. Sort of like watching long scenes of someone casually riding a bike to the store. I know skateboards, like bikes, are fun to ride and a good, cheap mode of transportation, but that doesn't mean you want to watch lengthy scenes of people on them. If they are flipping all around and doing cool things, that's fine. But if you're just going down the street, then it's not fiery cinema. At least this time something happens. The carload of drunken rednecks -- the bane of every punk's existence -- happens by to yell insults. Well, I guess they are not really rednecks. They're ... something. People in bad shaggy wigs. Maybe people from the 1970s. I couldn't really tell. All that's important is that they are drunk and mean.

Paul and his gal pal arrive at the party, where the film promptly turns into another music video. For several minutes we have to sit through a song and shot after shot of people standing there watching the band. It's funny for a while if you are from Gainesville because you can yell, "There's Bill! There's Var!" but once again, the novelty wears off really quickly. The song is by Gainesville's legendary Mutley Chix. Okay, maybe they weren't legendary, but they were one of the better bands from what I call the sludge phase of Gainesville music -- which quite frankly I didn't really care for. Sort of proto-grunge stuff, but of course, no one from Gainesville would get any credit because it all happened in Seattle, right? I dug the Mutley Chix as much as the next Gainesville punk, but that doesn't mean I want to sit and watch a very slow, droning song while the camera wanders around the crowd of bored looking bystanders (what kind of crowd doesn't have at least one guy who discovers he is on camera and promptly waggles his tongue and does the devil horns hand sign?), often going in and out of focus. It's the auto-focus feature, kids. It's not your friend. It has a mind all it's own, and like a crummy boyfriend or girlfriend, it'll fuck you over and ruin all your hard work.

After the show, Paul hangs out on the front porch, a Gainesville past time, while his buddies smoke pot and do the obligatory "You want some? Oh, ha ha ha!" joke every straight edge kid must endure every single time their friends smoke pot, even if they smoked pot earlier in the same day and did the joke then, too. There's quite a bit of pot smoking in this movie, which is, of course, totally unrealistic. I lived in Gainesville for seven years, and I can hardly remember seeing anyone do illicit drugs. From what I recall, everyone was too busy going to church and doing volunteer work. I think that was it. No, wait. Oh hell, what can you do in a town where half the police force are former members of the University of Florida Surf Club? They are quick to confiscate drugs, not so quick to write them up, but pretty quick to check out the quality. I used to watch the mailman for my neighborhood lie in the backyard with his buddy, reclining on a full bag of mail while they smoked pot and laughed. Sometimes, I wouldn't get any mail for a week.

I'll tell you right now one thing this movie does well: it makes me miss Gainesville. I live in the big city now, wearing a tuxedo everywhere and riding around in limos to posh $8,000 a plate dinners with Silicon Alley venture capitalists and luminaries. Sometimes, I feel like I've forgotten my roots. Watching Twisted Issues is sort of like watching a home video. It's not very interesting in spots, and if you weren't there it may very well be insufferable, but it does dredge up the memories. Man alive, do I miss lazy days sitting on the front porch, skating down to The Gate to buy some Moose Juice from Tom Walls, the crazy Libertarian guy who would give you a discount if you listened to him rant about guns and property rights for a few minutes. Huge, drooping trees, poorly maintained roads of cracked asphalt, weeds, and sand. Lush foliage everywhere. And a sense of community. That, more than anything else, is what I miss. And that sense of community is what allows a bunch of broke punk rockers to make their own movie just for the hell of it. Just because they felt like it. Twisted Issues is glorious in that it's an example of people simply making a movie because they thought it would be fun. They put a lot of thought into it, and despite the short-comings, most of which are in the editing and acting, it's a great success. Twisted Issues is the sort of movie everyone with the inkling to do so should be making.

So, back to the movie. There's this other guy walking around looking a lot like Joeaquin Phoenix, which would have been suspicious since the Phoenix clan all lived around Gainesville. Unfortunately, Joaquin was just a young lad at the time, so this isn't him, and so my chances to get Twisted Issues on Before They Were Rock Stars goes out the window. I think he's going to get some beer for Charles, but he sure is going the long route. It's just a geography thing. In Gainesville, you didn't do much shopping down by the power plant, but you did shoot your movie there if you wanted some cool scenes of industrial creepiness. Lord knows I spent half my video production class stalking around the power plant. You could get right up close to it, and one of the buildings gave off this eerie green glow. And when I get back down to Gainesville to film some stuff for an idea I have for a film, one of the first places I'm heading is the GRU plant. So I can't fault them for using it, I suppose.

Meanwhile, in one of the film's better scenes, Charles' girlfriend professes her hatred of sprouts, causing Charles to fly into a murderous rage with the hedge clippers he was using to cut the sprouts. Having the top of her head sheared off annoys the girl to no end, so she bandages herself up and goes to bed.

While Paul is skating home for a quick shower, he is cornered by the same gang of drunks. They fuck with him, even going so far as to pour beer on him and kick his skateboard. Paul busts out with an elbow to the groin and some punk-fu, but his righteous fury is cut short when he gets run over. Granted, he might not have been run over if he didn't stand perfectly still for ten seconds waiting for the car to get to him. Just a case of bad editing. The sluggish cuts make it seem like a lot more time is passing than should, and you get too many seconds of Paul standing there, completely motionless, waiting for the action. But like I said, given the limitations of the medium, I'll let it slide.

The drunks dump Paul's body and call it a night. The corpse is soon picked up by a druggie mad scientist and his crazy necrophiliac assistant. In my review of Goblin I discussed briefly the problem a lot of no-budget DIY films run into: the age problem. Most of these films are made with a cast and crew of friends. It's rare that you go outside the circle to look for people. So what happens when you need a cop or a mad scientist? You end up with a twenty year old guy in sunglasses and a wig pretending to be an adult. I've seen twenty year old cops, doctors, Presidents of third world nations, and everything else. It's one of those things you just have to role with. Weirdly enough, Hollywood and it's sickly cult of youth has embraced this, and now we're seeing movies with actors in their early-to-mid twenties cast as famous nuclear physicists and ex FBI agents.

The mad doctor and his sidekick toy with the idea of simply fooling around a tad with the corpse, but then settle on the much more rational idea of bringing it back to life. After a montage of close-up of pulsating goo and meat products, Paul is resurrected as a vengeance seeking zombie. Since the doc had to rip skin off Paul's face to repair his leg, Paul dons a fencing mask to hide his hideous disfiguration, then promptly kills the doctor, who for some reason kept a very large, mint condition wooden stake just sitting on top of his crude equipment. This is another one of those things that may seem weird to outsiders, but people who live in Gainesville will just nod and say, "Yeah, I knew a guy with a fencing mask who was really into collecting stakes. Chickenwire, too."

What Paul does next is the movie's true stroke of genius. Forget all the arty editing and montages of social decay. Paul takes drill and bolts his skateboard to his foot! He'll never have to worry about anyone kicking it away again! He then skates out to extract gory revenge on those who killed him. The murders are bloody, though not exactly technically challenging. He crushes one guy's face, complete with the ol' Lucio Fulci eyeball flop-out effect, which could have been done better but isn't too bad. This guy happened to have a sword in the front seat of his car, which is another thing that might strike you as weird if you aren't from Gainesville. If you are, then again you'll just nod and go, "Yeah, I knew a guy that used to walk around armed with a mace while wearing a rooster outfit." Zombie Paul makes use of the sword to do away with the remaining members of the drunkard gang. It's fun enough stuff, finally making up for the dull first half an hour or so. But just when you start to think the movie is going to lay of the ultra-weirdness, Pinion throws you a curve ball and the film goes spinning into a completely bizarre subplot, which is where the real genius begins.

Charles has this sort of arch nemesis guy named Hawk, who collects medieval gear among other things. This, again, was not unusual as you could throw a rock in Gainesville and hit half a dozen SCA and Renaissance Faire people. Hawk is the man hired to bring down the zombie Paul, along with these other guys who don't do much of anything. For reasons I have yet to fully comprehend, Charles and Hawk engage in a completely bizarre battle royale of killing each other multiple times. Hawk shows up looking like the Zodiac Killer, complete with clunky metal bucket on head, and the two proceed to gun each other down, stab one another, rip apart limbs, and watch the entire battle being played on television as it happens. It gets pretty surreal, and goes completely off the deep end when Charles ends the fight -- and the movie -- by turning off the television, thus presumably killing everyone involved.

So there you have it. It's a weird one all right, and that alone makes it more interesting than most shot on video feature films. It introduces a sense of surreal absurdism into the mix, making the movie something more original and creative than just your standard shot-on-video zombie movie, of which there must roughly half a billion (which is still only half the number of vampire films that seem to get made). Sometimes it doesn't make sense, but that doesn't really matter. What counts is that there were some real smarts behind some of the more deranged moments of the film, and that's refreshing given how many obnoxiously bone-headed no-budget videos are out there. For once, we get a shot on video horror film that tries to do something different, and it actually succeeds far more than it fails. Chalk it up to small town punk influences. They'll fuck you up good, but they also provide you with a lovely, warped perspective on things. This website is a grand example of just how damaging it can be.

Twisted as it can end up, that small town punk ethic also drives you to strive for something unusual and creative in ways others might not. Your standard horror fan making a horror film is going to mimic what he's seen in the past. Throw a fucked up punk perspective into the mix, then let it all simmer in the sweltering Florida heat for a spell, and the outcome is sure to confuse and blow minds. Twisted Issues takes chances, and when it does is when the movie becomes a real hoot to watch. I imagine it's those parts that attracted so many outsiders to it and allowed it to succeed beyond a small circle of locals. It also keeps a sick sense of humor, which is really the best sense of humor to have. The whole murderous relationship between Charles, his gal, and their friends is ridiculously funny. Watching her nonchalantly wave hello to someone as blood gushes from her mouth and head, or watching Charles twist his face into disturbing smirks as he ponders the point blank shot to the head he just took keep the proceedings amusing when other shot on video films might get bogged down in their own desire to shock.

The use of the television set as sort of this omnipotent peeping tom prying into everyone's lives is also interesting simply because while it's spying on some people, it's enslaving others with the allure of voyeurism. Hmm, looks like Twisted Issues was criticizing the sick trend of "reality television" years before the trend even happened. I've always thought that there was no need to build 1984 type televisions that watch people so long as you could keep people watching the television. That Charles "kills" everyone by simply turning off the television is an especially effective punctuation mark given how slavishly we follow every sleazy moment of the lives of neurotic strangers. Teleport City enjoys a lot of weird shit. Reality-based television shows are not among them.

Of course the film has it's flaws, most of which we've already touched on. The acting is often bad. The musical interludes go on far too long with far too little happening in them. Both lighting and focus are an issue, although sometimes the use of lighting is quite effective and unique. Same goes for camera work, which ranges from average to inspired when it manages to stay in focus. Some judicious editing of dead weight near the beginning would have really helped this movie out. As it is, it's probably pretty damn amusing to people from Gainesville, and probably mildly entertaining to fans of shot on video horror films and splatterpunk movies. All in all, it's a flawed but generally enjoyably experiment with momentary flashes of brilliance.

Labels: Horror: Microbudget, Horror: Zombies, Year: 1988