NFSMW - E3 NFS Most Wanted s'offre un trailer

Il n'aura pas fallu attendre bien longtemps depuis l'officialisation de Need for Speed Most Wanted pour que ce dernier s'offre enfin du contenu digne de ce nom. En effet, c'est lors de la conférence pré-E3 d'Electronic Arts que Criterion a pu montrer son nouveau bébé au travers d'un premier trailer de présentation que voici.



On apprend également que NFS Most Wanted se déroulera dans une ville entièrement ouverte, faisant office de monde permanent pour le mode multijoueur, et dans laquelle il faudra à tout prix devenir l'ennemi public numéro 1. Pour ceci, on nous sert la tambouille habituelle : sauts vertigineux, drifts interminables, accidents spectaculaires et vitesse hallucinante sont les quelques arguments de ce nouvel opus. Espérons que Criterion effectue un travail à la hauteur du reboot de Hot Pursuit. Une vidéo de gameplay directement issue de la conférence devrait par ailleurs bientôt rejoindre notre galerie. Need for Speed Most Wanted sortira sur PC, PS3, Xbox 360 et PS Vita le 2 novembre prochain.

· Voir et télécharger la vidéo de Need for Speed Most Wanted (53 Mo)
· Forum Need for Speed Most Wanted

End of Nations licenciements et changement de développeur

Ca fait maintenant très longtemps que Petroglyph travaille sur son MMORTS, End of Nations.

Tellement longtemps que, ça devait arriver, le studio se voit dans l'obligation de licencier 30 personnes. Une mauvaise nouvelle mais qui n'enterre pas le jeu pour autant. Trion Worlds, jusque-là son éditeur, a décidé de reprendre le chantier en interne. Il déclare d'ailleurs porter un intérêt particulier aux retours des joueurs ayant accès à la beta du jeu (qui elle aussi dure depuis des plombes). Trion Worlds veut visiblement rentabiliser son investissement en n'abandonnant pas le projet.

Par contre ça sent le sapin pour Petroglyph qui, s'il n'a pas d'autres projets dans ses cartons, pourrait bien disparaître pour de bon.

· Forum End of Nations

L'hôtel des ventes en argent réel fait ses premiers pas

Objet de toutes les critiques lors de son annonce, avant de faire l'unanimité, l'Hôtel des Ventes de Diablo 3 s'apprête à connaître une métamorphose radicale. En effet, si vous vous intéressez un tant soit peu à l'actualité du jeu, vous n'êtes pas sans savoir que l'Hôtel des Ventes se prépare à accueillir une section où les enchères s'effectueront en argent réel. Si la date du 15 juin est désormais fixée pour nos vertes contrées, il en est autrement outre-atlantique puisque cette fonctionnalité est d'ores et déjà accessible.

Et d'après les premiers retours, cela semble fonctionner du feu de dieu. Neoseeker évoque ainsi le cas d'un joueur (capture d'écran à l'appui), ayant déjà accumulé près de 2000$ de transactions. Pour le reste, la tendance semble tourner autours de 40$ pour les achats, avec des pointes à 250$ pour les achats immédiats.

Bien évidemment, ce système d'enchère en argent réel n'est pas sans intérêt pour ces petits malins de chez Blizzard. Car comme pour l'Hôtel des Ventes en argent virtuel, l'éditeur prélèvera une commission pour frais de transaction. Chacune d'entre elle se verra ainsi ponctionner d'un dollar pour tout ce qui de l'équipement (Armure, Armes, etc...), et 15% du prix de vente pour ce qui est des consommables (potions, gemmes, pages de forges, or, etx...). Mais cela ne s'arrête pas là. Car cet Hôtel des Ventes en argent réel utilise le porte-monnaie Blizzard pour stocker les gains générés par les transactions. Gains qu'il est ensuite possible de transférer vers un compte Paypal. C'est lors de se transfert que le bon père Blizzard prendra la part qui lui revient, soit 15% du montant total. Une bien belle opération en somme pour l'éditeur...

Pour les plus curieux d'entre vous, le comic en illustration provient du site suivant : Dorkly.com

· Forum Diablo III

La bêta de Steam pour linux dans les startings blocks

Après avoir crée une version Mac pour sa célèbre plateforme de jeu en ligne, Valve a annoncé hier l'apparition prochaine d'une bêta de Steam pour les systèmes tournant sous Linux.

Nous avons ainsi pu apprendre que cette première bêta commencerait dès la semaine prochaine en interne, avant de s'étendre à 1000 petits utilisateurs chanceux courant octobre. Durant cette phase de tests, les équipes de Valve ne mettront à disposition que le client de Steam ainsi qu'un seul et unique jeu (mais nous ne savons pas encore lequel). Le tout récent mode Big Picture ainsi que les autres titres Valve ne sont par contre pas au programme.

Côté technique, les développeurs signalent que les versions 12.04 et supérieures de Ubuntu seront prises en charge, et qu'ils sont à la recherche de configurations matérielles aussi diverses que faire ce peut. Ils recommandent néanmoins aux nouveaux utilisateurs de Linux de s'abstenir de participer à cette première bêta, et d'attendre des versions un peu plus évoluées.

Si les modalités d'inscription ne sont pas encore connues, elles ne devraient pas tarder à faire leur apparition sur le blog des développeurs présent à cette adresse. N'hésitez donc pas à aller le consulter régulièrement si vous êtes un amateur de pingouins.

· Consulter le blog des développeurs

grindhouse classics “stigma”

In 1972, hot on the heels of his little-seen-at-the-time-but-now-recognized-as-the-undisputed-horror-classic-that-it-is I Drink Your Blood, a tale of a Manson Family-esque hippie clan that contracts rabies, writer-director David E. Durston was approached by then- fledgling producer Charles B. Moss, Jr. (who would go on to oversee the mood-horror masterpiece Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, among other films) to do another “viral outbreak”-type film, only this time to de-emphasize the more lurid elements and place the story on more firm socially-conscious ground.

In short, Moss wanted to do a serious film about an epidemic on an exploitation budget.

Durston went away to think things over and, spotting a back-of-the-page newspaper story about new strain of syphilis that appeared to be resistant to penicillin, decided that sounded like fertile ground for just the type of movie that Moss was looking for.

The result is Stigma, another fine entry in Durston’s all-too-short cinematic oeuvre that, like I Drink Your Blood, excels in the areas of mood, atmosphere, and characterization, and features some surprisingly fine acting from its (at the time) little-known cast.

In the lead role of? Dr. Calvin Crosse we have Philip Michael Thomas, who just over a decade later would go on to major television stardom on Miami Vice. Durston discovered Thomas playing a supporting role on Broadway and cast him immediately — a fortuitous decision as it turns out that he possessed the natural charisma and screen presence to literally carry this film on his shoulders.

Our guy Dr. Crosse has just been released from prison, where he served a couple years for performing an illegal abortion (this was 1972, after all), and is on his way to Stilford Island, off the coast of Maine,? where his medical school benefactor, one? Dr. Thor, has sent for him to come and assist him with some mysterious project he’s been working on but can’t say too much about.

The good Dr. Crosse doesn’t seem to have much luck thumbing rides (again, this was 1972, and he’s black) though, until he meets up with a GI just returned from Viet Nam named? Bill Waco (Harlan Cary Poe), who just so happens to be from Stilford and is heading back home.

Stand-up guy that he is, Waco loans Crosse his extra army uniform and the two are soon offered a lift to the ferry they need to catch to reach the island, where Bill receives a hero’s homecoming and Calvin finds a bunch of local yokels who won’t even give a black guy directions to the doctor’s house.

When he does finally get there, though, he’s in for a second ruse surprise (the first being the inhospitable treatment of the natives, racism being a constant undercurrent in this film). Dr. Thor is dead, and Calvin’s essentially conscripted into taking over his practice and studying this mysterious outbreak he hints at in his notes and tape recordings.

In short order Calvin gets on the wrong side of the local redneck sheriff (appropriately named Whitehead and played with maximum relish by Peter Clune) and learns that the viral outbreak that his late instructor had discovered was a new strain of VD, namely a kind of super-syphilis, that’s showing up in some unlikely places — not only among the teens and twenty-somethings, as you’d expect, but also in the crazy old alcoholic lighthouse keeper!

Just how randy are the folks on this island, anyway?

It’s a testament to just how absorbing a sense of time and place Durston has created here that the movie can essentially take a breather at the halfway point for about five minutes to present an educational 16-mm VD scare film hosted by famed New York top 40 DJ “Cousin” Brucie Morrow and pick right back up where it left off with no loss of interest on the viewer’s part. So well-rounded are all of even the most minor characters that we still give a shot about what happens here despite the interruption — and anyway, it is actually a necessary one in terms of plot advancement.

Dr. Crosse naturally suspects that the source of the outbreak is the country whorehouse run by grizzled old madam Tassie (Connie Van Ess), but why does the sheriff’s promiscuous daughter (and Waco’s flame) D.D. (Josie Johnson) pay a midnight visit to Dr. Thor’s house? Why is the sheriff so determined to obstruct Dr. Crosse at every turn? And just how did that crazy old alcoholic lighthouse keeper come down with the disease?

Stigma plays its hand pretty close to its vest until the film’s riveting final act, when all is revealed in the lead-up to a very satisfying conclusion. Along the way we’re treated to plenty of gorgeous location footage of the Massachusetts coastline (sorry, there really is no Stilford Island, Maine), a downright compelling performance from Thomas that showcases a multi-faceted and highly skilled actor well worthy of the TV superstardom that was in his future, and believable and dare I say even intriguing turns from one and all of the supporting cast.

Stigma isn’t exactly a horror film per se, although one can’t help but think it had a marked influece on a very young David Cronenberg who would go on to mine similar terrain in his early films Shivers and Rabid, but it’s? certainly got enough gratuitous nudity to make it an easy sell to grindhouse audiences (although distributor? Cinerama did a crummy job of marketing it upon initial release and it probably didn’t turn much of a profit) and touches upon enough hot-button social issues to make it something of a “message” movie.

All in all, though, this critic would have to say that Stigma resembles, genre-wise,? a “medical thriller” above all, as its subdued atmosphere and strong characterization really do put a damper on the more obviously horrific elements of the story and the film instead accentuates the inner lives and working of its characters and their community. It’s a thoroughly satisfying viewing experience in every sense, unless you’re looking for another I Drink Your Blood.

Which certainly isn’t a bad thing to be in the market for, but Stigma isn’t it. And why should it be? Durston had been there and done that — with this film he proved his stylistic versatility by tackling similar themes in a completely different, but no less gripping, way.

Stigma has just been released on DVD from Code Red, who have done their usual excellent job in terms of presentation and extras. The newly-restored anamorphic 1.78:1 transfer looks superb, with only minimal graininess in places, and the mono soundtrack is crisp and clean.? For supplements we’ve got an 18-minute on-camera interview with Durston, the theatrical trailer, a TV ad spot for the film, a selection of previews for other Code Red titles (under the heading “movies you probably won’t buy” — guess business has been even worse than I thought), and best of all, a feature-length commentary with Durston moderated by Jeff McKay and hosted by Code Red head honcho Bill Olsen.

As with his commentary on Grindhouse Releasing’s I Drink Your Blood DVD, Durston proves to be a gregarious and engaging raconteur, and while his memory is foggy in places and he obviously gets just flat-out confused from time to time, he’s still a lively and energetic storyteller and it’s a joy to hear his recollections, whether crystal clear or foggy.

Sadly, David E. Durston passed away at the age of 88 shortly after recording his extras for this DVD and missed won’t be here to see a new generation of exploitation fans turned on to this, his second-most-well-known work. He couldn’t ask for a more fitting tribute than the loving resotration that Code Red has brought to this film, though. It’s definitely one of 2010′s best DVD releases to date.

2012-12-21-125

[Rumour] GTX 400 availability to stay limited indefinitely

It is 13th April, and our worst fears seem to be coming true. While theGTX 470/480 cards are listed in most e-tail stores, very few, if any,have any stocks at this point. Some e-tailers did get a small quantity,which were sold out within minutes as expected. Fudzilla reports thatNvidia AIC partners have told them they received four times less cardsthan they pre-sold to distributors and (r)etailers.

This means that the e-tailers must have been expecting four times the quantity, and some may even have accepted pre-orders for such quantity, which could only lead to more confusion and chaos.

The next batch of GTX 400 cards hits sometime in May, but is also expected to be in relatively limited quantities. Fudzilla suggests that the third batch is several months away, and should be ready only by the time ATI releases or are about to release their refresh/next-generation products. Even at that time, no one really knows what quantities of GTX 470/480 will be available, or if they will at all be competitive against ATI's new products.

Based on all evidence we have seen thus far, all those horror stories (regarding yield, etc.) do seem to be true - there are hardly any Geforce GTX 470/480 cards out there, and it is likely to stay this way for a long time. Like we have been saying since November last year, we suggest not holding your breath out for Fermi.

Nvidia's GF104 mainstream cards are scheduled to release sometime this summer, and should be available in much greater quantities.

Reference: Fudzilla

oh, what the hell — “redneck zombies”

There must be something in the water in Maryland, because I honestly think no other state has produced more backyard cinematic auteurs. I’m not talking about Baltimore-born-and-bred Oscar winners like Barry Levinson here, obviously. No, I’m thinking more the kind of guys who figured all they needed to make a movie was either a 16mm camera or a hand-held VHS camcorder, some friends, a few thousand bucks, and most importantly, the will to just get out there and get the job done. The kind of guys who watch a movie and think to themselves “heck, this shit doesn’t look that hard, I bet I could do it!” Maryland’s been damn generous when it comes to producing moviemakers of this ilk — after all, John Waters, Don Dohler, and Tony Malanowski all hailed from there, each with less ability, experience, and money than his predecessor, but arguably more determination. The name Pericles Lewnes should be added into that list somewhere as well, I’m just not quite sure where.

Who, you say? And why the uncertainty as to his placement in the dime-store pantheon?

First, the who — like the other esteemed folks just mentioned, Lewnes hailed from the Baltimore suburbs and didn’t know anything in particular about movies other than the fact that he wanted to make one and had some like-minded acquaintances (a good many of whom chose to have their work on his picture credited pseudonymously — hence the deliberate lack of reference to actors and actresses, screenwriters, etc. that you’ll find for the balance of this review — no, I’m not just being lazy) who were willing to chip in with the scripting, acting, and “special” effects —so in 1989 he set about to make what he considered to be the most outrageously stupid movie he could think of, a tongue-in-cheek (to put it midly) shot-on-video splatterfest with perhaps one of the more deliberately no-frills, here’s-what-this-flick-is-about, take-it-or-leave-it titles in cinematic history,? Redneck Zombies (whether or not Lewnes and company were aware of the earlier super-8 effort out of Texas, Ozone! Attack Of The Redneck Mutants, I have no idea).

The total budget for their movie was just under $10,000, it was shot in Maryland farm country, and the “plot,” such as it is, can be summed up more or less completely in one sentence thusly : “Incompetent army fuck-up loses barrel of “chemical warfare toxic wate” (the script’s exact words) somewhere in the sticks, local inbred hillbilly clan uses said barrel as part of their new still, green moonshine comes out, everyone who drinks it turns into a zombie, and gory hijinks ensue when a group of city-folk campers who apparently barely know each other (and frankly have no reason to given their diverse cultural backgrounds etc.) and can’t seem to talk about anything other than sex and how fucking tired and/or lost they are encounter aforementioned redneck mutant zombies.” Damn if that wasn’t the quickest and easiest story recap I’ve ever churned out in a couple years of movie blogging.

So that’s who Pericles Lewnes is, and what he made. Now, as to why I’m not quite sure where he should fit in on the list of homemade moviemakers out of Maryland —

First off, chronologically speaking it’s pretty cut-and-dried — Waters preceded Dohler who preceded Malanowski (who got his start working for Dohler) and they all preceded Lewnes. But Lewnes shot his first (and, until 2007′s highly experimental distributed-via-online-download effort Loop, only, apart from working as an FX man on a couple of Troma’s Toxic Avenger sequels) movie on video, and all those other guys shot on film. Furthermore, Lewnes had a very specific goal in mind for his picture — he wanted it to be the first-ever (so he thought, in truth BoardingHouse beat him to the punch by a few years) SOV feature to be blown up onto film and distributed for theatrical release (a pretty lofty ambition for a guy with no cinematic experience whatsoever — and damned if he didn’t get his wish, since?Troma picked this flick up and it got some east coast movie-house play before enjoying a long and semi-prosperous run in the home video rental market). So there’s our first key difference between Lewnes and his Maryland-based cinematic progenitors.

Next up is the budget — Lewnes hustled up $10,000, which is frankly? a bit more than more than probably Dohler and certainly Malanowski had to work with on their earliest forays into moviemaking (albeit not by much, and any flick produced in the, say, $5,000-$25,000 range is gonna look pretty cheap regardless), and unbelievable as it sounds this actually proved to be more than enough to give?him and his cohorts the ability to produce some pretty damn solid (for the homemade variety, mind you) gore effects (as with most SOV horror or horror/comedy hybrid efforts, it’s pretty clear that?this is where more or less all the money went — certainly the uniformly (in this case self-aware) atrocious acting “talent” probably didn’t cost a dime, not should it have, but at least in this movie they’re clearly having a good time across the board hamming it up).

Following on from the budgetary differences, minscule as they may be, we have the issue of actual technical competence, and for that we need to get a bit hypothetical for a moment here. Certainly if you gave Don Dohler a couple million bucks, he could at least deliver some solidly cool special effects, but you would probably still get straight-forward “point-and-shoot” style camerawork and a script about a killer alien or three on the loose in the woods being hunted down by townsfolk (in this case played by, I dunno, Brad Pitt and Sylvester Stallone or something), with no self-aware humor whatsoever. In short, instead of a backyard evil-alien runaround pretending to be something more, you’d have a medium-budget evil-alien runaround pretending to be something more (and I mean no disrespect by this — Dohler’s absolutely serious efforts to deliver a product of at-least-near- passable quality with no reference at all to its own obvious budgetary limitations is one of the things I love about his work — he was more about showing off what he could do with limited means while keeping more or less?something of a straight face about what he couldn’t do and still giving even that a go regardless), and if you gave Tony Malanowski a Hollywood-sized budget you’d probably get a semi-respectable middling-quality “supernatural thriller” of some sort.? In short, both these guys took their jobs seriously. Lewnes, quite obviously from the get-go, doesn’t. But that doesn’t automatically mean that he’s a bad filmmaker —?he’s just a guy who has no illusions that he’s making anything other than a bad film (or video, as the case may be).? Redneck Zombies knows it’s a piece of crap right out of the gate and never tries to “rise above” (whatever that even means) its blatantly less-than-humble origins. Lewnes, opearting without the budget to actually?scare you, is more than willing to settle for grossing you out and making you laugh instead.

Beyond all the obvious and stupid laughs, though (look! a baby drinking moonshine! and a gay hillbilly (played by the director himself, no less)! and lots of dick jokes!) there is, dare I say it, some intelligence at work here — the “tabaccky man” scene, with a backwoods tobacco farmer hustling his produce (is tobacco actually considered a form of produce? oh well, too late to wonder about it now) from out of the back of?his truck while dressed as the Elephant Man and talking like, I dunno, the angel of fucking death or something, is both hilarious and genuinely unsettling (if you’re in the right mood) and shows that Lewnes has probably at least watched, if not understood, a Bergman flick or two, and the lame-brained spoof of the infamous hitchhiker scene in the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre shows that he’s counting on most of his audience to at least have enough?smarts to get an admittedly blatant in-joke (which may not sound like much but I’ll take brainless entertainment that assumes its audience has a brain over pseudo-brainy mainstream Hollywood product that actually insults your intelligence and plays to the lowest common denominator at every turn). So who knows? To return to our “if you gave these guys a budget —” hypothesis, maybe with a couple million?on hand?Lewnes could have produced a seriously sardonic black comedy of some sort.

So for all that digital “ink” spilled, I think we’re back at the beginning — quite clearly Pericles Lewnes has a lot in common with the Maryland homemade moviemakers who came before him, but there are key differences, as well. He’s got the “I’m making shit here and I know it” attitude of John Waters mixed with the “I can make these effects look decent” gumption of Don Dohler combined with the “maybe I can try to at least be creepy here for a second” ambition of Tony Malanowski, yet stands on his own as perhaps the most at-the-end-of-the-day- unclassifiable of the whole bunch. Certainly Redneck Zombies never for one instant displays any pretenses of being anything apart from the brainless gore-fest-mixed-with-overtly-stupid-humor romp in the woods?that it is, yet it at least tries to, as weird as this may sound, show the audience for that kind of crap some level of, inherently blasphemous as this may sound, respect. Even if said audience isn’t much in the habit of looking for any, much less caring whether or not they actually get it. There’s an attitude of “hey, turn your brain off and have a good time here, because we did, too”? in?Redneck Zombies? that’s missing from a lot of other blatantly lame shit of this ilk?that just seems satisfied with topping itself on the outrageous gore front as the movie progresses and has no other ambitions apart from that. It’s this reviewer’s steadfast belief that if more “dumb movies” were as smart as this one, then more of them would be genuinely entertainigly stupid, rather than just stupidly?stupid for the sake of nothing other than — well, being stupid. Anyone can do that kind of stupid. The kind on display here at least takes some forethought and planning.As mentioned earlier (and speaking of stupidly stupid instead of smartly stupid — some notable exceptions like?Combat Shock and?Screamplay aside), Troma picked up Redneck Zombies for theatrical as well as home video distribution, and a couple years back released the definitive, 90-minute “director’s cut” of the movie as part of their “Tromasterpiece Collection” DVD series (it’s billed as the “20th Anniversary Special Edition”). Picture (full-frame) and sound (mono) have both been remastered and are of respectable-enough quality, and extas include a pretty good commentary track from Lewnes, a selection of outtakes and deleted scenes, a plethora of interviews with, it seems, damn near everybody inovlved with the making of this thing, trailers for some other Troma prodcut, and the usual annyoingly unfunny Lloyd Kaufman ego-boosting crap. It’s literally a packed -to -the- gills release and even includes the complete original soudtrack score on a second “bonus disc” CD. Good stuff, Maynard.

If you’re up for a swim on the absolute bottom of the SOV barrel, Redneck Zombies is a fun way to while away an hour and a half of your existence. It knows what it is, knows that you know it too, and never thinks you’re an asshole for digging this kind of —- uhhhmmm — “entertainment.” It’s reasonably well-executed, refreshingly self-aware, and completely devoid of even the basic ability to sets its sights any higher. That’s never going to make it a “respectable” piece of moviemaking by any stretch of the imagination, but it never figured to be? and frankly has an attitude about it that seems to state that it?honestly?could care less. As somebody somewhere else?once said (about something else entirely, and I can’t remember what) “it sucks — but it sucks with integrity.” ?Who can’t go for a little bit of that every?once in awhile?

international weirdness “american nightmare”

I see you there, scratching your head. “American Nightmare?,” you’re thinking, “but I thought these ‘International Weirdness’ posts of yours were about — ya know —?international flicks? Hence the title and all that?”

I understand your confusion, my friends, I really do, but rest assured — the 1983 release?American Nightmare (it was filmed in ’81 but languished around for a good long while before finding a distribution deal) is, in fact, a?Canadian film, shot on the dirty streets (well, as close as you’re going to find to dirty streets) of Toronto, and the film’s decidedly non-American origins are readily apparent the moment most of the actors go?abewt the business of delivering their lines. As a matter of fact, some genre fans have even gone so far as to proclaim this movie to be the nearest thing to a Canadian?giallo.

It sort of makes sense, really — the plot is definitely reminiscent of some of the great Italian exploitation efforts, centering as it does around a bitter heir to the throne of a media empire (Lawrence Day), whose relationship with his father is — uhhmmmm — distant, at best, as he searches for his estranged sister, who has gone missing in the drugs-and-prostitution underworld of whatever major American city this is supposed to take place in. Our erstwhile amateur sleuth is joined in his investigative efforts by his sister’s one-time roommate (Lora Staley), who also plies her trade by night at a strip club and later at night at — well, wherever her “clients” take her. There’s just one other wrinkle to add to the proceedings — there just so happens to be a knife-wielding killer on the loose hacking and stabbing his way through the city’s practitioners of the world’s oldest profession (the film even opens with a classic?giallo-style hooker murder, with the unfortunate victim in question being portrayed by future?Baywatch beauty Alexandra Paul). Needless to say, there’s more going on with these grisly murders than meets the eye, and the entirely unofficial investigations of our intrepid duo, as well as the official police investigations led by a young, and already awesome, Michael Ironside, lead into some very uncomfortable, and very powerful, territory.

Really, though, it’s the style and tone of this gritty — and often quite brutally nasty — little piece of business that make the?giallo comparisons apt : the killings themselves don’t shy away from the blood (or misogyny); veteran Canadian composer Paul Zaza’s score is icy, clinical, and entirely memorable; director Don McBrearty gives the proceedings a very sleazy “street-level” feel while also having an artist’s eye for the grislier aspects of his script; and the heady mix of sex and violence that forms the beating heart of the whole affair is played up for all its worth and then some. Throw in a terrific cameo appearance by exploitation favorite Lenore Zann as a hooker/stripper trying to “go straight” and a hilariously, and stereotypically, pathetic cross-dresser neighbor and what’s not to love here?

This largely unknown Canuxploitation tax-shelter rarity, produced by veteran hand Paul Lynch, has recently seen the light of day on DVD under the auspices of Scorpion Releasing’s “Katarina’s Nightmare Theater” line hosted by former WWE “diva” (whatever that means, but she does a decent enough job as presenter of these flicks) Katarina Leigh Watters. Full-frame picture and mono sound are both far less than perfect but entirely passable (although you’ve gotta crank the volume way up), and extras include an interview with Lynch about his entire career as a whole and a full-length audio commentary with him and Watters that is, thankfully, a bit more specific to this film itself. A nice little package that will hardly knock your socks off but is probably more than fans of this movie ever had any realistic cause to hope for.

Definitely a product of its time, and with groaningly lame dialogue in parts,?American Nightmare is nevertheless a pretty powerful, and surprisingly well-done, slice of cinematic nastiness that lingers in the memory fairly strongly after viewing. Treading the line between exploitation nastiness and “quality” arthouse-style filmmaking, it mostly manages to blend the best of both worlds together fairly successfully without giving into the excesses of either. One of the more pleasant —even if the film itself is pretty damn?unpleasant — surprises I’ve popped into the DVD player in quite some time.

“story of a junkie” tells it like it is (or was)

?There are words and phrases that you think you have a true understanding of, but you don’t. And I would submit that one of those phrases is “gritty urban realism.”? You might think you know all about it because you’ve read some books, or seen some films, that were gritty, urban, and realistic. But you don’t have any clue what “gritty urban realism” means unless or until you see Lech Kowalski’s “Story of a Junkie.” Then you become an expert on the subject?in my book. And isn’t that what you’re absolutely dying to be?

No? Well, who asked you, anyway? Oh yeah. I? did. Time to get this circular imaginary conversation out of the way and move into the review phase of this — uhhmmmm — review, which is, I guess, sort of where I started, before I got sidetracked by — myself. “Story of a Junkie,” Christ — I sound like a junkie right about now.

Let’s get one thing straight right from the outset : “Story of a Junkie” is NOT a documentary. It’s far too realistic to be.

Shot in 1984 on the streets of New York’s Lower East Side (a.k.a. “Alphabet City”), this film follows the life of? Gringo, a desperate heroin addict, and those in his immediate orbit.? Gringo is portrayed by John Spacely, who is not an actor. He’s a real-life junkie. The stories he relates to the camera are not scripted, they’re real. The supporting cast are also real junkies, and the activities they undertake — scoring, shooting up, the whole works — are not staged, they’re real.

But I repeat, this is NOT a documentary film.

Oh, sure — the movie’s director, Lech Kowalski, is best known for punk rock documentaries like “D.O.A.,” “Born To Lose” and “Hey! Is Dee Dee Home?,” but “Story of a Junkie” is more like cinema verite, in that it combines actual interviews and footage of actual drug addicts with re-enactments of stories from Spacely’s life, not unlike what you find on all the true crime shows that litter the cable TV lineup, with the crucial difference here being that these re-enacted scenes do not feature (semi-) professional actors, but real Lower East Siders involved in the drug culture.

As such, it’s much more immediate, visceral, and powerful than any straight-ahead documentary could possibly be.

To be sure, the film has no “plot” per se, it’s entirely ad-libbed. And again, all the scenes depicted are real, as are the people and the locations. When a room full of junkies are shown injecting themselves in a shooting gallery, that’s EXACTLY what’s happening — a room full of junkies are injecting themselves in a shooting gallery. But when a dealer is gunned down in the streets, it’s obviously not a real murder that’s being filmed — but the raw and unvarnished nature of the film’s surroundings certainly gives it the air of absolute authenticity.

So “Story of? a Junkie” isn’t just a REPRESENTATION of Lower East Side junkie life in the early 80s, it’s a? RECORD of Lower East Side junkie life in the early 80s. Even if it’s not a documentary. Which is the last I’ll say about that, I promise.

Forget “Trainspotting”? — Kowalski’s film is, without question, the most jaw-dropping, gut-punching, absolutely spot-on account of the addicted life ever committed to film, because it IS the addicted life committed to film.

Some of the shit that comes from Spacely’s mouth will have you hitting the rewind button just to make sure you heard it right. He talks about how he was raised by a normal, loving family in Southern California, but lost his way in life when his steady girlfriend was hit by a truck and killed. She was pregnant once, and when she miscarried he threw the fetus in the trash because it was “nothing but a big period anyway.” He lost his eye in a fight with some drag queens. After another fight, he had to have a large slice of meat amputated from his body, When the doctors wouldn’t give it back to him, he stole it and snuck out of the hospital. He’s a nonviolent anarchist who years for another war in order to “awaken the consciousness of the youth.”

In short, he’s a mass of contradictions, but I don’t know what else you’d really expect from a guy in his condition.

There’s no comfortable distance between viewer and subject in this film. You’re plunged headfirst into Gringo’s world and there’s no “narrative” per se to follow — you’re as lost as he is. To the extent that any sort of linear “storytelling” is involved here, it comes pretty late in the game : through a set of circumstances typical, I’m sure, to junkie life, Gringo is separated from his beloved skateboard, and at the very end he gets it back. That’s about as close to a “storyline” as you’re going to find here. Mostly we just follow Gringo around, with plenty of interview asides with those he comes into contact with or even just people who happen to be around.

Given that this part of New York has now been gentrified beyond all recognition (along with, sadly, Times Square and other former shitholes), this flick is truly a historical record, not just of a time that no longer exists, but of a place that, for all intents and purposes, doesn’t either.

“Story of a Junkie” took some time to cobble into shape once all the footage was shot, and played some festival screenings and the like before finally getting picked up for proper (albeit limited) release by Troma, of all people, in 1987, and along with the similarly (mostly) harrowingly realistic “Combat Shock,” it remains one of the absolute best films ever to go out under their moniker. They’ve put out a great DVD release for it featuring a digitally remastered (but still appropriately grungy) print presented in full-frame,?? a terrific commentary track by Kowalski (this film is actually even more interesting with the commentary on than without), an interview with executive producer Ann Barish (wife of the founder of the Planet Hollywood restaurant chain) that’s genuinely both interesting and informative, and the usual Troma-centric extras including and introduction from Lloyd Kaufman and a Kaufman-directed music video for the death metal band Entombed.

Plenty of films (most notably the aforementioned “Trainspotting”) show you what a junkie’s life is LIKE — this one shows you what a junkie’s life IS. Not to be missed under any circumstances.

John Spacely died of AIDS at some point in the early 90s. The times, the places, the people depicted here are all gone. But heroin’s still around, and still doing ( in concert with its evil twin, the “War on Drugs”) exactly what it did to the people in this film. The problem’s moved from the inner city shooting galleries to suburban schools and bedrooms. Everyone seems to be resting easier with it safely out of sight,? but the fact that it’s now largely out of mind, too — well, that’s something that ought to concern us all.? The locales and the people involved may have changed, but the problem remains, and whether viewed as cautionary tale, historical record, or some combination of both, “Story of a Junkie” is the most no-bullshit account of it you’re ever going to come across. Even if it’s still not a documentary.

Whoops, I said I wouldn’t bring that up again, didn’t I?