Tuesday, February 4, 2025

Johnny Deadline: AGFA Bonanza!

 by JB

In my never-ending quest to inform my beloved readers of steals and deals, I present an overview of two recent goodies.

I have a special space reserved in my black little heart for the fine folks at the American Genre Film Archive (AGFA). Taking up the baton handed forward when Something Weird Video went belly-up (RIP Mike Vraney), their releases capture a certain something, a squirmy-in-your-belly feeling that first attracted me to the world of Good Ol’ American Exploitation Pictures.
Recently, AGFA dropped a late Christmas present on the genre-loving world. Though I would have loved to have this disc back around Thanksgiving time, I’m guessing conditions beyond their control (Supply chain issues? Problems at the replicating factory? Experimenting with new packaging materials? Legal issues getting Santa to sign off?) pushed the release of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and Other Holiday Hallucinations to December 31. Perhaps the intent all along was for genre enthusiasts, suffering from holiday hangovers, to spin the new disc while taking down their Christmas trees. This new Blu-ray would best be served with two-week-old Christmas cookies and the dregs of the eggnog. I still would have preferred to have it during the whole of December.

The disc contains the best transfer I have seen of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and a boatload of holiday shorts made with the kiddies in mind: A Christmas Dream, A Christmas Fantasy, Christmas in Toyland, Christmas Journey, Christmas Tree, The Christmas Visitor, Merry Christmas, The Night Before Christmas, A Present for Santa Claus, Santa in Animal Land, The Spirit of Christmas, A Visit from St. Nicholas, A Visit to Santa, and a complete Liberace TV Christmas Special.
WARNING: Some of these DIY short films are nightmare fuel, especially the ones involving weird puppets. A Visit to Santa looks as if it was secretly filmed at Aunt Judy’s house during her weekend away at the casinos. The Liberace TV Special, on the other hand, is delightful. It gave me some insight into his huge popularity through the 1950s and '60s: he can really play the piano and his presence is warm and reassuring. No holiday can go awry when Liberace is in the house! Besides, he is Aunt Judy's favorite.

QUIBBLE: Too many of these shorts, regardless of stated title, are adaptations of that old reliable poem, “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” by Clement Clarke Moore (or was it Henry Livingston Jr.? A Christmas scandal!) Though it’s interesting to see how different shoe-string auteurs adapted the familiar work, there MAY BE one too many versions on this disc. FIND ANOTHER CHRISTMAS POEM.

ANOTHER QUIBBLE: At $37, this disc is a mite expensive. Kino-Lorber released Santa Claus Conquers the Martians on Blu-ray in 2013; that disc is currently unavailable on Amazon. A-ha! Did AGFA release its new Blu-ray version, knowing full well that the Kino-Lorber disc was out of print and figuring they would corner the market on cheesy, ultra-low-budget Christmas fun? Of course, the Kino-Lorber Blu-ray currently sells on eBay for about twenty dollars and includes vintage Max Fleischer holiday cartoons, Seasons Greetings from classic TV stars, Howdy Doody's Christmas Story, and rare, remastered holiday commercials. Decisions, decisions...
NOTE: The AGFA Blu-ray originally came with a now out-of-print slipcase, in case some of my readers collect those. The slipcase version goes for between forty and ninety dollars on eBay. Them’s some expensive cardboards there!

Now to our main feature: 1964's Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.

THE PLOT IN BRIEF: Martian wiseman Chochem (Carl Don) decrees that the children of Mars don’t have enough fun, so he dispatches a team to kidnap Santa and bring him to Mars. Fellow Martian Voldar (Vincent Beck) strongly disagrees with the plan and tries to KILL Santa. This is a children’s film.

Meanwhile, unfunny comic relief Dropo (Bill McCutcheon) pretends to be Santa Claus on Mars. Voldar kidnaps Dropo (“Kokumo, lead me to Pazuzu” –Exorcist II: The Heretic), and various non-hilarious hijinks ensue. One of the Martian children is played by a young Pia Zadora.

TRIVIA NOTE: According to the Wikipedia machine, in 1998 rumors began to swirl about a remake to be produced by David Zucker, with Jim Carrey attached to play Dropo. An estimated release date was announced as 2002, though the film was then believed to have been relegated to development hell.

BONUS HUZZAH: Amazon recently dropped the price of another tasty AGFA release that I have been eying for many a moon: The Blood-A-Rama Triple Frightmare disc. Now at "popular prices," the disc, which debuted in 2021, only sets you back $21, American. This disc is an embarrassment of riches. It features three drive-in low-budget horror titles and a mulligan stew of coming attractions, concession stand advertisements, and schmutz. The three films are Help Me, I’m Possessed (“Kokumo, lead me to Pazuzu” –Exorcist II: The Heretic), Night of the Strangler, and Carnival of Blood.
Help Me, I’m Possessed is instantly forgettable, though I really dug the hip, with-it synthesizer score. Night of the Strangler is an oddity, in that it does not feature a single strangler but it does feature a post-Monkees Mickey Dolenz in a lead role. Night of the Strangler is somewhat famous as an early blaxploitation film, as the plot revolves around a young white woman about to have a baby with her black boyfriend and her psychotic brother’s reaction to that news. The film premiered in Chicago at the Loop theater on October 13, 1972 under the title Is the Father Black Enough? Various sources also list other titles for the film: Dirty Dan, Dirty Dan’s Women, The Ace of Spades, and Vengeance is Mine. The film apparently was never copyrighted. Oops!
Carnival of Blood reminds me of the films my son used to make in middle school using our 8mm video camera and his friends as actors. The boys would run up the stairs, meet some sort of terrifying threat, then run down the stairs. Then they would hasten back up the stairs, meet some sort of... well, you get the idea. Lather, Rinse, Repeat! Or rather Run, Stab, Run! ("No fake blood on the carpets!" was the main rule of filming.) In Carnival of Blood a series of young couples have their fortunes told, play a carnival game involving popping balloons with darts, then climb aboard a dark ride where one of them is decapitated. After the fifth victim, it starts to get repetitive. The film marks the debut of future Rocky actor Burt Young.

What with the price of eggs and all, is this really worth your $21? Well, the entire disc is 266 minutes. That’s around EIGHT CENTS a minute for an economy-grade wallow in bargain-basement terror and DIY thrills. My heavens, this disc is surely one of the bargains of the year!
NOTE: Last week, AGFA released the second title in the series, Blood-A-Rama Triple Frightmare II, featuring more delicious drive-in ephemera and the feature films Love Goddesses of Blood Island (aka Six She’s and a He), Follow That Skirt (aka Mondo Weirdo), and The Undertaker and his Pals (aka Kokumo, Lead Me to Pazuzu. Just kidding!) Special features include a commentary track for The Undertaker and his Pals with comedian Patton Oswalt!

I breathlessly wait for the new Frightmare II disc to undergo a similar price drop. Are you listening, Amazon? It’s me, that "right jolly old elf" from the only Christmas poem ever written.

1 comment:

  1. "Them’s some expensive cardboards there!" It is a little frightening how much people pay for OOP slipcovers on the secondary market. Speaking of AGFA, the Hey Folks! It's Intermission Time slipcover is equally expensive.

    I have a small pile of Vinegar Syndrome slipcovers that I sometimes look at the values for. They sometimes go for double the actual disc releases. None of my slipcovers, though, are among the higher priced ones.

    I picked up the Blood-A-Rama release last year during a VS subscriber week sale. It was definitely below $20 then.

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