A double-shot of arthouse exploitation awesomeness comes to Blu-ray.
Last week we posted an interview with American indie filmmaker Frederick R. Friedel, in which the intelligent, articulate exploitation auteur recounted the trials and tribulations of making his first foray into moviemaking, 1974s LISA, LISA which was later bought by notorious distributor Harry Novak and re-released years later as AXE.
It was via the AXE title that most of us hardened strange cinema aficionados became aware of the film, a misleading moniker with an amazing and even more misleading Novak-sculpted trailer that left more than a few viewers disappointed in the final product. The same song can be sung for AXEs sister flick, Friedels THE KIDNAP LOVERS which Novak sleazed up and re-christened with the sensational handle KIDNAPPED COED. Now, Severin Films has packaged both pictures together for the first time on Blu-ray and, aided by the wealth of immaculately produced special features, a strong case is made to finally appreciate these films as not throw-away drive-in sludge, but strange, psychological and even slightly surreal micro-budget mini-masterpieces.
With AXE, Friedel scraped together 25K to bring his tale of a pack of suit-wearing thugs who infiltrate an impossibly Gothic rural farmhouse and hold a disturbed young girl and her drooling grandfather hostage, to lurid life. As the sniggering droogs wave their guns around and subject their victims to various torments, the girl, Lisa (Leslie Lee), succumbs to an already thriving strain of madness and, armed with you guessed it an axe, the gal goes to town.
AXE isnt filled with nudity or explicit gore, but it is mean-spirited and violent and these attributes were enough to get it deemed a Video Nasty in the UK, something that Friedel was blissfully unaware of. This bit of censorial bravado led many youths to seek the film, only to be let down by its thoughtfulness and semblance of sophistication. Indeed AXE is no slasher, rather its a true American Gothic with a rhythm and style all its own.
KIDNAPPED COED is even better. Again, once you peel back the tabloid title and lurid trailer, the film which stars AXEs Jack Canon in a similar role is a perverse love story, a kind of BADLANDS-informed road movie-cum-western with a mesmerizing performance by actress LeslieRivers and a memorable socre by George Newman Shaw and John Wilhem (who also did the arch, jazzy score for AXE). Loaded with eccentricities and a bright visual palette, KIDNAPPED COED is Friedels masterpiece, almost Godard-like in its impression.
Severin goes above and beyond with this release. As Friedel states in both our interview and the alarmingly detailed accompanying doc At Last Total Terror, it was Severins David Gregory that worked the deal with Novak to get these films back, allowing Friedel to reclaim these dynamic little films and finally tell his tale. The doc is an essential watch, even if you dont feel as strongly about the films as some do. Also on the disc is another innovative Gregory-directed doc about the making of the music of both AXE and KIDNAPPED COED, an interview with the great Stephen Thrower (who brokered the initial meeting between Friedel and Gregory), a pair of absolutely amazing commentaries with Friedel, Production Manager Phil Smoot and FX man Worth Keeler and, best of all, the weird hybrid version Friedel made of both films called BLOODY BROTHERS. And if all that juice wasnt enough, Severin throws in an additional disc, a CD of the complete scores for both pictures!
For a pair of films once dismissed as pieces of curious Novak sleaze and as footnotes of the SOMETHING WEIRD VIDEO catalog, rediscovering AXE and KIDNAPPED COED and re-evaluating them as the evolved slices of genre filmmaking they are, is an astonishing experience. This isnt just a Blu-ray release, this a full-blown archaeological dig; a cinematic search and rescue mission complete with an attached masterclass.
An absolute must-own.
