Kindertrauma Funhouse | kindertrauma

We have something real cool today and it's all thanks to our pal Darkko who shared this flick with me. It's called NIGHT VISION and it's from 1987 and it's directed by the apparently late and clearly great MICHAEL KRUEGER. Now, if you're NOT the type who digs zero budget flicks that lean toward the long winded and feature only short spurts of sanity, you may want to run in the other direction, feel free, nobody blames you. But if you, like me, go gaga for the blessed confetti explosion of idiosyncrasy such outsider efforts frequently supply, you may have just entered heaven and not just any heaven, hog heaven, the best heaven of all! To bait his hook, Dan H. cleverly advised me to simply watch a short scene on YouTube knowing full well it would seal the deal…

Did you see that? This movie largely takes place in a corner Mom and Pop video store sometime in the eighties! I feel like I'm seeing something that was filmed in some beloved home I once lived in and in a way I am. I don't have to tell you that this little gem has many flaws but so do we all and flaws really aren't so bad if you simply embrace them. Scraggily though it may be, NIGHT VISION is rather imaginative all things considered and was ambitious enough to go against the grain during a time when many horror flicks were marching in line. Also this film is basically about a haunted videotape which makes it quite the early precursor. Or maybe this KRUEGER guy just liked VIDEODROME a lot, I don't know. If nothing else it fearlessly exposes the seedy underbelly of Denver.

So here's the thing, I have to go away for a little while because I gotta do something that I said I was going to do that I never did. You know how it is. I need to focus because I can only do one thing at time and multitasking is for chumps. So I'm leaving you with this movie to view and here is my challenge to anyone who wants to participate…

Watch this movie and identify as many VHS movie boxes that appear on the shelves at the video store that you can.

I'll even start you out!

I spied the large clamshell box for THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN. Yay for me.

They have the same plastic embossed FROM BEYOND ad I used to have hanging on my bedroom wall. Weep.

Do they really have a poster for the YVONNE DeCARLO flick VULTURES (1987) posted by the door? That has to be rarer than a hen's tooth!

Why is there a VHS copy of the GOLDIE HAWN and BURT REYNOLDS vehicle BEST FRIENDS in the SCI-FI section? I feel like that is a subliminal message.

Good lord, is that the same VHS copy of BLOORAGE (1979) that Craftypants Carol sent to me but with its title altered to BLOOD NYMPHS?!?!