The Scarecrows [1988] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Customer Review: Big Noisy Fish With Go-Faster Racing Stripes.
Raging, chanting refrains of Jolene! Jolene! start off. But Lo-fi Tennessee is no Dolly Parton song. From the exploding, cascading entry, you know you’re outside the realms of Celine Dion’s aromatherapy clinic; outside in the garbage cans more like, for this is scum rock - raw, aggressive, dangerous in a way many of the current punk\thrash bands can only masturbate over being. There’s always a sense with the best of punk of expecting the unexpected and wanting to be dragged up out the barcalounger to jump about the room like a ferret’s down your pants. Picasso Trigger deliver this. The sound is uniquely noisy, whirry, jangly, disjointed and buzzy - much like being in the mosh-pit at a gig, but it’s not boring like a lot of ultra-speed thrash metal. The chainsaw guitar is modulated. The drums aren’t just whump-whump-whumped, but patterned into distinct tempoes. It’s like Gene Krupa on acid at times; particularly on Anti’d where you feel the sticks jumping up off each beat on the snares like living animals. What T’aint consists of is like a mutant cross between Bikini Kill and Black Flag stuffed through a liquidizer and poured out into the punk anima-bag with a mix of menace, rage and good-humour in a manner that marks it as born from genuine desire, not some slick marketing ploy. Too many punk bands of the nineties have been overdosed on Nirvana and suck up to Cobain’s nightmares, rhythms and song structuring. Picasso Trigger hark back to earlier days and remind me a bit of the Dicks in their arrangement of the tunes’ dynamics in the way the songs veer from trash and thrash to swaggering meat beats. On each track Lisa Cooper’s guitar pulverizes the chords to a mesh of white noise over pummelling almost tribal drumming, whilst Sam Mintu’s heaping bass hurtles and beats about the bushy parameters of noise, driving onward and keeping it all together, rounding up the mess into a whole. Kathy Poindexter shrieks and shouts, keeping things urgent, even popping a few trombone blasts in on Kiss Me Where it Counts. Red-Headed Retard particularly is like someone pulling a gun in your face. It’s that scary. Energetic and enthusiastic, this is young music for young people and it comes up right out of the gutters. Smell the sweat, feel the heat, drink up the beer, thrill to the adrenaline buzz of four people smashing living daylights out of their instruments. Cool! Amazingly, like early Husker Du or Flipper, after a period of adjustment, it’s clear there are intricacies to the music and even hummable tunes hiding under the distortion and chaos. Once you pick up on them, you’re hooked. Hanging right on the edge of the maelstrom at times, this is ideal music to take to boring parties and pub discos to pep things up a bit. Standout tracks here are Lo-Fi Tennessee, where “love is a butterfly” and 455. Oh, and Kiss Me Where it Counts, a mordant, and by PT’s standards, beautiful love thang. Kathy, you can kiss me anytime you big bag of fun-ful fury you… T’aint’s not the best by Picasso Trigger, but now they’ve split, potential unfulfilled, you’re not going to see them providing soundtrack for the next Pepsi commercial so get what you can of them. They knew that big stadium rock of U2 proportions was a boring waste of time for middle-class losers anyway, and never pandered to the rock critics, big studio bosses and radio stations - or if they wanted to, they messed up big time. They did their own thing. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not. As far as bounce, guts and a sound to knock stuffing out of those nice new Mission speakers, you wont find much like them. I, for one, will miss not hearing a third LP. If they’d just learned to rein it in, they coulda been contenders… For a fiver, you can’t go wrong and if you like T’aint, check out Bipolar Cowboy, Fire In The Hole (both LPs) from Alias and Plutonium (4 track EP) from Jettison.
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This awesome 2DVDs collection presents 639 stunning artworks by prominent artists of impressionists movement (Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Eduard Manet, Paul Cezanne, Paul Gauguin, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, John Everett Millais, Vincent van Gogh) and underlined by magnificent and breathtaking music of their predecessors and contemporaries: Respighi, Offenbach, Elgar, Strauss, Saint-Saens and Ponchielli. It creates unbelievable aesthetic experience and allows complete immersion into compassion of the impressionists’ era, approaching their inspirations and surroundings. On MosaicDVDs artists and their contemporary composers are presented in natural and interweaving complexity. Would be your primary interest in arts on in music this DVD program will delight immeasurably. Music in this collection: Ottorino Respighi Feste Romane Circenses (Circuses),Giubileo (Jubilee),Ottobrata (Harvest of October),La Befana (The Epiphany) Fontane di Roma La fontana di Valle Giulia all’Alba La fontana del Tritone al mattino La fontana di Trevi al meriggio La fontana di Villa Medici al tramonto Pini di Roma I pini di Villa Borghese Pini presso una catacomba I pini del Gianicolo I pini della Via Appia Birds Preludio La colomba La gallina L’usignoulo. Il cucu Siciliana,Passacaglia, Italiana,Arie Di corte Jacques Offenbach Barcarolle The Tales of Hoffmann Opera Orpheus in the Underworld Galop (Can-can) The Tales of Hoffmann Amilcare Ponchielli Dance of the Hours, opera La Gioconda, Camille Saint-Sa?ns VII- Aquarium, XIV- Finale The Carnival of the Animals Johann Strauss II The Blue Danube, Overture Die Fledermaus
Price: $32.00
Customer Review: Very impressive impressionism
If you enjoy art and music style DVDs this one probably the best in existence! First, the actual arts collection is the most complete (more than 600 art works!!!) and the image quality is very impressive. I don’t know how they managed this quality of images but the picture is really stunning! It not an average `ambient art’ DVD with mediocre images and sloppy music, everything done with great taste and regards to the quality. Now, the music is superb! It is not just vague “classical music” track. The music is appropriate for the time and style and the sound quality is simply amazing. It is an entertainment, but no doubt it may be of value to anyone who studies art or music as it creates the mood of the period. Beside all this set makes very cool background for my personal time and works with my favorite bourbon. My parents used it for a party’s background on big screen tv and it was really, really cool!
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Price: $389.99
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The Scarecrows [1988] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Customer Review: very scary !
there is another release of ” scarecrows” from jef films ,but this is better quality , the region 1 unrated version ,the picture is sharp & the soundtrack is good & its uncut! mgm have done exremely well here except there is no extras ! but its a gripping horror drama ,lots of gore
& action . a group, of mercenaries hijack a plane after a robbery & they
need to get to mexico ,but one of them is greedy & parachutes off with the
money & lands smack in the middle of a field of scarecrows! the others
force the plane to land & find a deserted farmhouse & the creepy scarecrows ,but this is just the start of a night of terror ! one criticism
is most of the film is in the dark & you are struggling to see what is
going on but ,its one hell of a movie ,buy the r1 on mgm ,sure to be a classic ! worzel gummidge it aint !
Customer Review: OVERRATED BUT STILL GOOD
After making a daring escape from a military base, a group of robbers, Corbin, (Ted Vernon) Curry, (Michael David Sims) Roxanne, (Kristina Sanborn) Al, (David James Campbell) and Bert, (B.J. Turner) lose their money in a cornfield, and after dealing with a traitor in their ranks, the group comes upon a small, abandoned house on the grounds. Thinking it’s the perfect place to regroup, they hole up and decide on a plan of action. After trying to make an escape, they find the scarecrows in the field are alive and hinting them down one by one.
The Good News: This actually wasn’t as bad as I thought. One of the best things about this film is that it conjures up an effective and genuinely creepy atmosphere. The mystery surrounding the scarecrows is absolutely creepy, as they look just right and the aura created from them is remarkable. So much is derived from them and their look that they literally carry the film in the beginning. The biggest example of this is the first romp through the stalks. It’s a very long, drawn out sequence built around the faces and suspense from the scarecrows. A lot of it’s success is based on the scarecrows. It’s also pretty gory for what it is, and there’s some nice blood-splatter. The kills are nice and brutal as well, and feature a good dose of blood. There’s a hacksaw used to cut off a hand, a sickle repeatedly stabbed into the leg, and several stabbings. A gag with a bag up in a tree and the fact that every murder always features a graphic dissection doesn’t hurt it either. It’s simplistic story is also a big plus, keeping it upbeat along the way and putting all the focus where it should be.
The Bad News: There’s several things in here that didn’t really sit all that well. First, and most aggravating was that the majority of conversations were held over headsets, and often times made it seem like no one on-screen was actually speaking. It’s incredibly irritating and makes it completely disjointed. This makes it worse as it’s during the best part of the film. There’s also an uncut version around that is far gorier than what is given, which seems believable as what’s on display is kinda choppy at times and looks like it was edited. But outside of a few other very small nit-picks, this wasn’t all that bad. Not great, but not bad.
The Final Verdict: A little bit undeserving of it’s status as a cult classic, but it’s still a genuine creepy, features a memorable villain, and has some great moments spread throughout. There is some merit to it, though, so give it a chance. It’s fast enough that it won’t hurt much.
