Grindhouse Megamix!

 Recently there was news from Full Moon Features owner Charles Band, that he recently discovered hundreds of VHS boxes of the old Wizard Video company that he had founded back in the early, early 80's. Well Band being the business man he is decided to re-release these boxes in VHS format no less! A very interesting and exciting proposition if I may say so myself. Now I'm not too sure how legit these releases are. I think they could be reprints but I'm not going to debate that right now. At least some of these old Wizard releases are being re-introduced to older fans and also to newer fans of junk cinema.

For those who are not familiar with Charles Band outside of his Full Moon Entertainment years. Band formed one of the first VHS distributors when the home video format was released to the general public back in the late 70's. His first endeavor was Meda Home Entertainment.

Band introduced many titles to the public with this label. He went out of his way to provide us with a variety of films that, well for a lack of better words, other companies wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. Mostly these were B movies and not A list stuff being release by Magnetic Video who carried titles from 20th Century Fox. Band sold his interest in the company and went on to form another video company that so many of us horror fans fell in love with during the hey day of home video purchases and rentals.

Wizard Video was Band's more daring label. He secured the rights to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I Spit on Your Grave, Emmanuelle Black and White, and Lucio Fulci's Zombie just to name a few. Wizard was also known, as I have stated in past blog posts, for some of the most lurid and eye catching artwork to ever grace a cardboard box.

After Wizard Video he founded Full Moon Entertainment and continued with that endeavor for many , many years. He has brought us the Puppet Master series, Subspecies and others to home video and also during the 80's brought us the classic 3D spectacle; Space Hunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone. I have a lot of respect for Band and what has brought to the table of all that is horror and cult cinema. So where the hell am I going with this you might ask? Well I will tell you.

Apparently Full Moon Features gave Director/Songwriter Mike Dahlquist 50 movie titles to work with and asked to have a "mash" created out of video and audio samples. I have to say that this is probably the greatest thing come out of all this re releasing of grindhouse films. I feel like this video presentation sums up all of what I love of these genre films. There are astro zombies, nazi machine gunners, mutants, cyborgs and a few hot ladies thrown in for good measure. The song itself is extremely catchy and the mix is perfect. Mike Dahlquist, David Dahlquist and Zachary Suprenant did a bang job on this. I hope that my readers will feel the same way and get this stuck in their noggin like it has been stuck in mine for the past few days! So without further adieu, click and enjoy!!