Toetag Pictures

It’s a frustrating life being a hardened fan of the horror film. Finding sufficient blood letting is hard enough, but any sort of invention and excitement in what has become a remarkably conservative genre is a rarity. One such rareity, however is Toetag Pictures, an independent collective of talented young people from the land of the dead, Pittsburgh. Quite literally graduates of the Tom Savini school of gore, their movies delight in pushing the boundaries of acceptability into…well, not being very acceptable at all!

August Underground

The first Toetag celebration of vileness invites us to watch the video recorded exploits of two serial killers, but in a completely unflinching way with elongated scenes of realistic torture, including some nasty sexual violence. I imagine this is pretty close to being what a snuff movie would actually be – and if that appeals to you you’ll probably love it. Otherwise absolutely don’t bother. I think they got a bit carried away with the idea of the killer being otherwise “normal”, though, as the day-to-day sequences can be dull.

August Underground’s Mordem

Not sure how the titling system works, but this is the second, and best, in the series. Gone is any mooching around – just hardcore violence – although the acting (of the main characters, anyway) and characterisation are far superior to the first film. The aforementioned sexual violence is ramped up to almost pornographic levels and of the protagonists is female which adds a great twist. This is quite unbelievably sick and reminds me of nightmares I used to have years ago, with people chopped up and fucked all over the place! Sublime and unmissable.

August Underground’s Penance

Not a great conclusion to the trilogy for me, but I gather Toetag consider it the best. Much wandering around and soul searching between the gore, spiced up with infrequent animal slaughter. It’s not exactly Cannibal Holocaust, in that the sequences aren’t staged for the camera, thus avoiding any moral paradox. But I just spent the film feeling sorry for the animals which isn’t how I wish to spend my leisure time, thanks.

The Redsin Tower

The first TT production to be shot on film and it looks not only professional but very good indeed. Coming across like an Evil Dead meets Friday 13th homage, with some knowingly inane and humourous dialogue. The highlight for me is a great “demon baby plucked from the womb” sequence, which is shot in bright light, unlike some of the other special FX, which lose some impact inside the dark and eponymous tower. This, like all TT’s work, shows great promise.

Sp what’s next for Toetag - personally I’d love to see something with the violence of Mordem shot on 35mm, but it is unclear if the company wish to continue producing material like that or become a pure SFX lab which would be a shame. Even if these films aren’t to your taste they are at the very least interesting and are bound to make everyone feel something. Most horror films simply aren’t horrific whilst Toetag seek to innovate and up the gore, sometimes in truly shocking ways. I’d like to see films that will cause as much outrage now as the video nasties did in the 1980s – not nostalgic or ironic recreations of a time gone by. Movies to punish the senses, spill guts and make it hurt.

Toetag’s films are all available on DVD from their website with international delivery. There is also much entertaining info on the company. I am gleeful to report that the AU films sometimes get confiscated by customs in the UK, so you may to prefer to use Ebay

Those were the tedious days…

Be in no doubt, there was fuck all to do in the 1980s. As a fourteen year old uninterested in sport, a dysfunctional family life and television programs a dirge of smug, po-faced rubbish my Commodore computer was my escape, and effectively introduced me to electronic music. Prior to that, my main source of music was listening to metal and punk tapes through my ZX Spectrum tape deck – just like a primitive EA Trax. With the C64 you couldn’t use the tape deck for music so I was forced to listen to the in-game music (on the “SID” chip) and loved it, and through that developed a taste for Jean Michel Jarre, through to Front 242 and European industrial music up to techno 12”s, all of which directly influenced my early musical output.

Playing the games themselves for any length of time, like watching films from the 1920s or a four hour plays from the 16th century, is a truly specialist interest, requiring dewy yet steely eyes for the appalling graphics, and saintly patience for the high difficulty levels – there was a lot less entertainment on offer in those days – so plenty of time to plug through the ever repeating levels ad nauseam.

The music, however, can be enjoyed whilst doing more interesting things on your PC and the Sidplay emulator is excellent and absolutely free. Most of the tracks are poor even allowing for the technology but downloading the, ahem, “top 64” is a slight quality control – a few that made me smile are Rambo: First Blood Part 2, Crazy Comets, The Last V8 and Forbidden Forest.

I’m not sure the whole thing is interesting enough to warrant the small cult that appears to be surrounding it, but following the links to the sites of the obsessed is interesting in itself, as is the fact that many producers such as Timberland are using SID sounds in their productions, via SID VSTi plug-ins. However, for a supreme example of a modern interpretation of C64 music, check out the free demo of Bionic Commando: Rearmed for Xbox 360.

 

Links 

Sidplay 2 emulator

Top 64 C64 trax

Full collection of SID files

Quadrasid VSTi plug-in

Buy a hardware SID for £300!

Slay radio – “modern” C64 remixes

Prozacrap

What is depression? I know a little about bi-polar disorder, schizophrenia, paranoia but whenever I’ve tried asking anyone (medical professional or otherwise) to define straight, no-frills depression and I’ve never got further than a posh version of “what a silly question”. And yet during May 2007 my GP diagnosed me as being depressed on the basis of a ten minute consultation during which I confided how utterly frustrated and miserable I was at my debilitated physical state, due to an on-going chest condition. Instead of making serious attempts to speed the process of finding a diagnosis and cure for my chest – which is still in a bloody awful state over a year later – he chose instead to go down a ridiculous and confusing cul-de-sac that would affect my life for a year.

“A lot of people won’t take any kind of anti-depressants” he told me. I believed that to ignore a doctor’s advice was foolish, so…”They’ll be some, er, tremors, you know…” he intoned, conspiratorially. I think that he meant irregular bowel movements, loose faeces and generally spending ages on the toilet. I also regularly had dilated pupils and felt a bit high. This lasted a few weeks then the Prozac (which is a brand name for Fluoxetine) started to work as normal – I had fewer emotional ups and downs than usual but no other noticeable changes. At my next doctor’s appointment I reported that the drug had had no affect whatsoever on my physical condition so I’d rather stop taking it. However, I was shocked to learn that the course lasted six months and was advised to double the dose to 40mg a day just in case that helped. I tried this but it just made me very tired – I couldn’t cope with it and went back to 20mg.

Simple prescription errors meant that pretty soon I changed GPs.  I asked my new doctor if I should carry on with the Prozac. She took an altogether more head-tilted-to-one-side approach to medicine, suggesting I should maybe try stopping the course for a few days to see if the symptoms reoccurred. My efforts to discover what the symptoms actually were merely resulted in further head tilting. Efforts to discuss any mood variations garnered some unintentionally amusing advice to consult biorhythm charts – but it wasn’t really very funny.

Eventually after reading what I could on the Internet I decided to stop taking the Prozac. Week one was much as I expected – some stomach cramps and headaches, a bit like giving up smoking only not quite as bad. In week two I was feeling completely normal but in week three I started feeling dreadfully anxious for no apparent reason and the toilet problems re-occurred.

Two months on and I’m fully back to myself, yet I occasionally struggle to come to terms with the full range of emotions at my disposal. I’m a bit more up and down, more creative and humorous yet more irritable and sarcastic than I was on the drug. For the most part it wasn’t a particularly bad experience, just a real waste of time and money and a pointless subtle change in personality for me – not that I see any intentional foul play there at all – just incompetence. The lack of information given to me and the duff diagnoses are, in retrospect, shocking.

GPs are handing out high numbers of anti-depressants and perhaps they do work for people who actually have a related medical problem. But I would suggest these prescriptions should be based on the diagnosis of a mental health professional and be backed up with monitoring and counselling where appropriate. Until these conditions are met, I can see many patients replicating my unfortunate experience.