Earlier this week I got to chat with Joe Rubin, one of the founders of the great indie distributor Vinegar Syndrome, in anticipation of their monthly screening series launching tonight at 10:00pm at the Alamo Drafthouse: Vinegar Syndrome Presents. The series, which will focus on screening some of the great exploitation restorations the company has released so far, will also be paired with a themed menu for each film in one of the best places to check these unsung classics out.
Below we cover not only this great series, but all thing Vinegar Syndrome as well!
So what was the germ of the partnership with the Alamo Drafthouse?
Well I was talking to Joe Ziemba and he suggested some sort of variation, because I had spoken to him about the fact that we were doing restorations and they would be submittable as DCPs [Digital Cinema Packages] and he suggested we try something like this.
You’re also planning to run The Telephone Book, Night Train to Terror and Raw Force in the future. How important do you think the audience experience is for these films, compared to watching them home alone?
Well I think with pretty much every single film made before the 1980s and even into the mid 80s, the filmmakers weren’t anticipating them being seen outside of a theatrical environment.
Overall all of the films you mentioned aren’t in the same category, something like Raw Force is closer to something like Night Train to Terror and neither one is the Telephone Book, but they are all films that really rely on the absurdity of their narrative and what happens in them. So seeing them just ridiculously large is really the ideal way to see them, because it makes you able to appreciate, in the case of the Telephone Book intentional ridiculousness, probably in the case of Raw Force intentional ridiculousness and Night Train to Terror, who the fuck knows?
But with films like these they were made to be enjoyed in groups, because you’re not going to watch The Seventh Seal the same way you’re going to watch Raw Force. All three of these films were exploitation films made for a drive-in audience, knowing that they would eventually play places like 42ndstreet where part of the appeal was the audience.
It just makes sense to do as much as possible to recreate that sort of environment.
Do you think the experience of seeing these films in a Drafthouse would be the closest you could get to seeing films in that kind of environment?
Yeah, I have seen a number of screenings at the Drafthouse. Most recently, I saw Runaway Nightmare where we did the theatrical world premiere and Joe brought the director Mike Cartel to attend the screening. That was a really nice screening because I don’t know if you’ve seen the film, but it’s one of the more challenging films we’ve put out both in terms of structure and interpretation.
I was really nervous before the screening in how the audience would react. Would they laugh when they are supposed to laugh, not when they weren’t supposed to laugh? Or would they be bored or disinterested? I was very pleased with the reactions in terms of the overall audience at the Alamo Ritz, I was definitely impressed with, more than anything, the sophistication of the audience.
So about Vinegar Syndrome: I have to ask about the titles you release, as a label it feels very curated. How do you choose what films to release?
It’s really a combination like most labels; of titles we think are going to do well financially, but also titles that we personally enjoy.
Everyone seems to be focusing these days on the content, the movies themselves, for us really it’s mostly about presentation. Taking something that has never looked good or didn’t look good when it came out and then doing a restoration that will hopefully make the filmmaker, if the filmmaker is still around, proud to see their film presented in the closest way it was intended to be seen possible.
I have to agree. I just got Christmas Evil and the film hasn’t looked that good since I caught at 35mm screening in Philly.
That was actually taken from prints, because the negative is still lost. About 9 months ago Lewis Jackson the director found a much nicer print than we’ve had before and we did a 4K restoration. The only issue with 4K really is why not? 4K at this point for releases is still kind of overkill, but to some extent doing a 4K scan and restoration is a way to get people thinking about the film more critically than they would potentially otherwise.
If you’re just dumping it on 2K from an old master, with a lousy transfer, and a lousy restoration, it tells people who are watching it that it doesn’t deserve anything more. That is one of the reasons we are very focused on doing restorations that try not only to make the film look really nice, but make it look filmic. We are not trying to make a 40 year-old film look like it was made last week, we are trying to make a 40 year old film look like a restoration of a 40 year old film.
Now why did you choose to focus on exploitation and X-Rated films?
I can answer sort of personally as the initial reason, but at this point not as much. That is why we are creating a new sub-label called Etiquette Pictures, which is going to be devoted to more art films and strange experimental films, documentaries and things like that. Films that wouldn’t necessarily fit into the Vinegar Syndrome line, but aren’t divorced totally thematically from it.
In terms of the X-rated and exploitation stuff, these are films I’ve loved my entire life. To me they represent the ultimate outsider art in cinema. If you’re familiar with the book Nightmare USA by Stephen Thrower, just reading about the people he interviewed and did biographies on for that book is exactly why I love these films. These people made movies because they loved making films and if you didn’t have Hollywood connections or you couldn’t get A list people, you made horror films, you made sex films, you made biker films, you made action movies. Those were films that were not promoted or marketed or even at the time taken seriously by people who were more open minded with films.
Those were the films that inspired my entire life. I was 5 or 6 years old buying a VHS tape of The Body Shop by J.G. Patterson Jr. and loving it for all the reasons someone might watch it and say this is junk. I like the idea of being able to take these films and treat them with the same respect a company like Criterion or Kino or Olive would take a Preminger film or an Orson Wells film and say they are all worth it.
To bring it to the current day, the focus is curated by what we found people enjoy. There are still a lot of vanity projects. When I say vanity projects I am talking about releases like the one we did last year of the 3 Walt Davis films. It wasn’t a great release, but they were films I really liked and it was just exciting for me to release them and do a nice job with them as opposed to the shitty quality masters that already existed.
With the exception of only a couple of other companies, Distropix has been doing some X-Rated films, and Synapse Films, which has been some really nice releases especially with the Nikkatsu films, no one is taking X-rated films, soft or hard, and taking them seriously.
Honestly I think guys are really killing it, I just got my copy of Pretty Peaches and that was hilarious and looked amazing.
Yeah, and see that’s the point, it’s a funny film that just happens to have sex in it. It’s a funny, weird, almost surreal comedy that has Desiree Cousteau’s character playing a hybrid of Lucille Ball and Betty Boop and that is what makes that film interesting. Not because she is in an orgy or anything else, it’s because it’s an interesting piece of directing, acting and cinematography. If you don’t see the film the way it was meant to be seen in the proper aspect ratio, in its original cut, you wouldn’t be able to appreciate that.
Do you see that as a possible future program screening some of the adult titles?
The Drafthouse can’t take X-Rated films. It’s unfortunate, but because they are in a lot of territories that have really idiotic antiquated laws, public displays of nudity or sexuality would be prohibited in venues that serve alcohol. Even though there will be no one actually naked in the screening.
I didn’t know that.
That is why there has never been an X-Rated film for Weird Wednesday or Terror Tuesday.
Finally what are some screenings that are coming up that you’re excited about at the Alamo Drafthouse?
January is Raw Force, February is going to be a James Bryan’s film Don’t Go into the Woods, March is Demonoid, April is probably going to be Madman; I am not sure about May yet, it might be the Telephone Book.
Who knows, it depends on what does well, if horror does well we will focus on more horror titles for the screenings. If everything does well, we will try to introduce some more esoteric unknown films, and if horror fails, which I highly doubt it will, who knows.
The series will start with Christmas Evil which will be screening tonight at 10pm at select Alamo Drafthouse locations.
Check out the full menu for Christmas Evil Below: