We recently started carrying a whole mess of VHS tapes of newly released movies from Lunchmeat VHS. One of these is an 80s scifi throwback called Galaxy Warriors. I took the time to watch it today, and I wanted to share some thoughts.
Galaxy Warriors looks, at first glance, like it’s going to be a Roger Corman-y sleaze fest. It’s a movie about a group of lady bounty hunters who end up on a prison planet where they’re forced to fight the other female prisoners to the death. It sounds like it should be an uncomfortably sleazy affair. Instead, it’s no more risque than an episode of Xena: Warrior Princess (and about as well produced.)
The official trailer. You see what I mean?
The film is full of costumes of varying quality, and sets of varying quality, and special effects that would have elevated a bunch of the kinds of movies this is seeking to emulate. (Seriously, the practical effects for the spaceships and the stop motion monsters would have improved most direct to video scifi.)
As I said, I watched the movie on VHS. I specifically watched it on the 28″ Sylvania CRT TV we recently installed in the Cowabunga Video display at Hemlock Bazaar. A VHS on a large CRT TV is 100% the way I would recommend watching this film.
It’s a 16:10 presentation (SD TVs were 4:3 or 16:12. Modern TVs are 16:9. a film in 16:10 gets minor letter-boxing at the top on bottom on SD TVs and minor pillar-boxing on the left and right (or minor cropping on the top and bottom) on modern widescreen TVs. It’s a compromise in both cases, but it looks pretty good in both cases.
If VHS tapes aren’t your thing, the movie is also occasionally available on various streaming services.
The movie was a delight, I really loved it, and I think you will too. And to really drive home that old school charm, Lunchmeat has even released an official novelization of the film!
If you haven’t been paying attention to modern technology trends, you may have missed the news, but VHS is the future of home entertainment. This revolutionary format brings analog video in to your home, but in a convenient cassette based format. What’s more, VHS is a read/write format. That means that anyone can make their own tapes. Truly a modern miracle.
And since we’re living in the future, you can order your VHS Tapes with a computer! I know, it’s hard to believe, but it’s true! Check out some of the VHS Tapes we have for sale:
Specifically, we’ve just added a HUGE selection of titles from Lunchmeat, a new VHS manufacturer. They partner with indie filmmakers to release genre films that just feel right on VHS. You can browse the whole collection, but I wanted to highlight a couple of specific titles and share some trailers.
In all seriousness, physical media is neat. VHS tapes don’t look especially good compared to bluray or streaming or even a DVD, and a lot of people don’t even have a VCR anymore, but this lo-fi way to connect audiences with films has a kind of charm that extends well beyond it’s fuzzy scanlines.
Some films feel very different when they’re watched like this. If you still have a VCR kicking around, give it a shot. (And if you don’t, come check our shop. We usually have one or two on the floor in Ellijay, they’re just too heavy to justify shipping.)
Imagine for a moment Kung Fu legend Ip Man fighting corrupt politicians, Japanese soldiers, and the Axe Gang as a masked vigilante during an invasion by the Japanese army in pre-revolution China. Sounds about perfect, right?
Enter Ip Man: Kung Fu Master. It was released in late 2019, and was released directly to streaming platform Youku.
Lots of reviewers compared the film negatively to the more popular trilogy of films about legendary martial artist Ip Man, but I think that’s entirely the wrong way to think about this movie. Think about this as a direct to video release from a small studio that is exploiting the popularity of a real person in order to tell a story that has very little to do with that real person.
Taken in that light, this film is a world better than you might expect.
Compared to other “Ip-sploitation” films, this one sits near the top of the pile. I think Ip Man: The Final Fight might best it, but it’s significantly better than most of the other films looking to cash in on Ip’s name.
(And I’m going to be honest, when he showed up wearing a leather mask reminiscent of Kato’s from The Green Hornet, I got Hype.)
So, if in this era of video streaming, you’ve found yourself missing the kind of direct to video martial arts films that littered video store shelves in the 1980s, you’d be hard pressed to find a more worthy successor than this direct-to-Chinese-streaming release about a highly fictionalized Vigilante Ip Man.
Are you a fan of kung fu movies with leaping swordsmen and mystical forces? You might like Wuxia. (Pronounced Woo-Sha or Woo-She-ah.)
What?
Wuxia is, in many ways, the Chinese equivalent of English Sword and Sorcery novels. Translated literally, Wuxia means martial arts and chivalry. In practice, it means historical fantasy, usually with martial arts and mystical forces. Think Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.
Until recently, very few vintage Wuxia novels were translated into English, and even fewer modern ones. In recent years, with the rise of self publishing and a renewed American interest in these stories, they’ve become more widely available.
Modern Wuxia novels are frequently found along side Manga, and tend to draw on things like Dragon Ball and other Manga influences. Some authors have started mixing in romance elements as well. These can be a lot of fun! Classic Wuxia novels, on the other hand, tend to be a little more somber and serious. Things like The Legend of the Condor Heroes or The Three Kingdoms have more in common with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon than Dragon Ball.
Either way, Wuxia is a fun genre that has been under represented in the US for too long.
First up, The Employees by Olga Ravn. This book bills itself as a workplace novel of the 22nd century. It is, in turns, chilling, deeply moving, baffling, and bizarre. I’ve never read anything like it before, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.
The Employees: A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century – Olga Ravn
Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize and the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize, The Employees reshuffles a sci-fi voyage into a riotously original existential nightmare
Now in paperback, The Employees chronicles the fate of the interstellar Six-Thousand Ship. The human and humanoid crew members complain about their daily tasks in a series of staff reports and memos. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew becomes strangely and deeply attached to them, even as tensions boil toward mutiny, especially among the humanoids.
Olga Ravn’s prose is chilling, crackling, exhilarating, and foreboding. The Employees probes into what makes us human, while delivering a hilariously stinging critique of life governed by the logic of productivity.
There’s a lot to say about New York Ninja, and others have said it a lot more eloquently than I have, so if the premise intrigues you I’m sure you can find more details. The premise: in the 80s a mid-budget kung-fu flick was shot and shelved before it could be edited. The film preservationists at Vinegar Syndrome found it, digitized the footage, and proceeded to turn it in to a whole new movie.
That’s right, it’s a brand new, 100% authentic 1980s kungfu flick. And it’s honestly pretty damn wonderful.
New York Ninja – (Blu Ray)
Shot in 1984 by director/star John Liu and abandoned after principal photography, this singular project edits the surviving footage, set to a newly created soundtrack featuring voice dubs from genre stars. After his pregnant wife is slain by a human-trafficking ring, a TV news crewman (Liu, dubbed by Don Wilson) dons white ninja garb and unleashes his martial arts skills on those responsible. Also with the voices of Michael Berryman, Cynthia Rothrock, Linnea Quigley, Leon Isaac Kennedy, Ginger Lynn.
The 2021 Grammy award winning “I Be Trying” was the first Cedric Burnside album I heard, and I loved it. Cedric is the grandson of R.L. Burnside, for whom he frequently played drums, and he also played drums for Junior Kimbrough. In addition to being an accomplished drummer, Cedric is a guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter. His music is amazing.
Hill Country Love, released in April of 2024, is Cedric’s latest album and it is Delightful.
Hill Country Love – Cedric Burnside
From Amazon:
Provogue Records is proud to announce the latest studio album from Grammy-Award Winning Bluesman, Cedric Burnside, entitled ‘Hill Country Love’. To Cedric Burnside, ‘Hill Country Love’ is a culmination of a career that’s already seen astonishing accomplishments and only keeps growing. When Cedric prepared to record ‘Hill Country Love’, the follow-up to his 2021 Grammy-winning album ‘I Be Trying’, he set up shop in a former legal office located in a row of structures in the seat of Tippah County, a town with 5,000 residents that’s known as the birthplace of the Hill Country Blues style. The fourteen songs on the record were finished in two days, but in addition to being satisfied with the sound, Burnside believes that his eleventh album represents real creative progress
Welcome to another Hemlock Bazaar product spotlight. This is a semi-regular series of posts where we highlight interesting or noteworthy items from our collection and showcase things worth talking about. Today we’re talking about Cartoons! Specifically, Thundarr the Barbarian and The Herculoids.
The Herculoids was produced by Hanna-Barbera in the late 60s, with a brief revival in the 1980s. It is about a family living on an alien planet, and their monster pets/friends. It is, in a word, beautiful; in two words, buck wild. There’s a dragon, there’s a rock monster, there’s a dinosaur that fires projectiles, and there’s a family of goo creatures.
The Herculoids was the first cartoon to really explore the Sword and Planet style of science fantasy, and it’s real wacky.
A preview from the publishers
Thundarr the Barbarian was produced in 1980 by Ruby Spears. Until recently, I thought Thundarr was another Hanna-Barbera production. This isn’t especially surprising, as I later learned that Ruby and Spears were former Hanna-Barbera employees, and that both had written for, you guessed it, The Herculoids.
Thundarr is set in a post apocalyptic wasteland, in the far future year of 3994, following a catastrophic event in the less far future year of 1994. It’s another Sword and Planet style science fantasy series, with lightsabers and wookies and magic. It has a lot of DNA in common with The Herculoids, but it’s darker, less goofy, and even weirder.
A preview from the publishers
If you’re a child of the 1990s, it’s likely you encountered each of these shows in infrequent re-runs on Cartoon Network or Boomerang. It’s equally likely that you were baffled by them. But you didn’t hallucinate, they were not a dream, The Herculoids and Thundarr the Barbarian were real, and they’re available now on Blu-Ray.
Of course, if that’s not your thing, we have lots of other cartoons:
