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Directors: Various
Screenplay: Ron Bonk, Donald
Farmer, Matt Hill, Alaine Huntington, Marcus Koch, Tim Ritter Todd Sheets, Brad
Sykes
Cast: Various
Synopsis: Gathering together low/no budget filmmakers, HI-8 presents a series of shorts tied
around a series of rules, and in tribute to shot-on-video genre film making, letting
legends in the genre and newcomers create a variety of stories.
HI-8 is another anthology film from when, the early 2010s, they
proved to be very marketable from The
ABCs of Death to VHS franchise,
and yet in this particular case there's the spectre of low budget filmmaking
specifically from the eighties and nineties boom in shot-on-video, or very
lo-fi productions, which is the influence over the segments. Among the many
rules this anthology demanded from its directors, included in the end credits,
includes no CGI or green screen, no modern filmmaking techniques, restrictions
in areas like lighting, and that the films could only be shot on VHS, Hi-8,
Digital 8, or Mini-DV. As a premise, its sound and the restrictions at play are
fascinating to consider the potential of in terms of what they force upon the
participants. This is especially as the individuals involved also include
pioneers from that era, whose low budget productions gained a tribute like this
decades later, alongside those who started in the nineties and the Millennium, a
throwback which goes as far as include early pictures of everyone in their
youths for a nostalgic emphasis.
The question to still ask, in a
world where these films are cherished, is the whole issue that anthologies can
be divisive for many in their quality per segment. I openly admit, positively,
I like anthologies to the point even the lesser quality segments eventually
grow in virtue just from the experience of the entire production. In particular
as someone fond of these no-budget films I argue that in any length they have
the advantage of 1) being sympathetic just for people trying to make their own
films on very limited resources, 2) the unexpected cultural richness as many of
these films (like here) have to use local actors and settings, and 3) they can
be utterly weird and surreal on purpose and/or by accident. Anthologies however
by their nature are an unpredictable thing due to multiple separate voices
being put together.
HI-8 does have too many segments; the shorts (despite being very
short) are affected by the lack of a clearly trajectory, as like The ABCs of Death following all the
letters of the alphabet, to keep a pace to. Some of these segments could've
done with a more fleshed out length - case in point Switchblade Insane by Tim
Ritter, one of the eighties pioneers of films like Truth or Dare?: A Critical Madness (1986), which is a
troubling but fascinating idea of a wife who realises her husband is a serial
rapist murderer but joins him on his ventures as an engaged participant with
voyeuristic tendencies. It's disturbing, lurid and explicit, HI-8 not holding back in tastelessness,
but it's an idea initially of interest as its entirely from said wife, watching
in another care as he has a victim, following her perspective for a dark
narrative especially as he is a misogynist with a distorted view of clearing
the world of "dirty" women. If it has been longer, it might've
avoided to crass and pointless twist ending, which doesn't work, and be forced
to try a different ending which turns this unsettling premise into something
fleshed out.
Thankfully we get A Very Bad Situation by Marcus Koch and The Tape by Tony Masiello
afterwards back to back which fit the idea of these films and their lengths;
interestingly Koch is more known for
his special effects work on low budget films, while Masiello is a visual effects creator whose worked also on low
budget films but also the 3D versions of major blockbusters. A Very Bad Situation, starts with a
news montage of an alien invasion only to turn into a paranoid chamber piece in
which three people locked in a garage become four, everything I hoped for in
SOV cinema in how the story is easily done in a lower budgeted anthology and
accomplished well, obvious in plot but carefully together, having the advantage
too for a SOV film that you' have a clever practical effects artist wanting to
be involved and present a ridiculous gore effect to end it on a high note. I wouldn't
be surprised if Koch himself was
involved with the exclamation inducing effects too.
The Tape, meanwhile, is the nod of realisation that SOV horror fans
or people like myself are the ones who watch a film like HI-8 in the first place and get a winking sense of humour from this
fact, an employee of a closing independent video store (cueing a celebratory
pissing over Blockbuster, who closed
in real life first) who finds a mysterious tape and becomes fixed on its gore
like The King in Yellow did for book
enthusiasts. It's a purring congratulatory ode to gore SOV films, which yet
makes jokes about it when the protagonist's girlfriend is completely baffled by
the lead's proclamation that it's the best film since Citizen Kane (1941). It also leads to a path of madness, at least
an ill-advised decision to try to find its creator whose flesh mask and walls
covered in plastic bin bags gives away an unconventional lifestyle. Here
there's a point to be made of the equalitarian nature of no budget genre
cinema, our lead a larger figured man, his girlfriend raising her eyebrows at
all this a larger figured (but tattooed) woman who, in one of the funniest
moments, attempts to seduce him only for him to still be watching the
mysterious tape during sex. Even by the end of the 2010s, who is onscreen in
most mainstream cinema is a very specific, biased idealism whilst there has
always been, due to SOV cinema casting being more reliant on friends and
willing participants, a greater sense of community. Even Genre Bending, a controversial segment I will get to later, casts a
larger figured actress as the lead alongside two male actors of very different
body proportions, which, despite that film playing into intentionally offensive
humour, is still more progressive than many mainstream million dollar
productions.
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Unfortunately after The Tape is where HI-8 starts to collapse with a sense of exasperation and feeling its length to a detriment. Ron Bonk's Gang Them Style, premise wise, is inspired in which a tough guy from an eighties John Carpenter film tries to rescue his grandmother and the citizens of a retirement home from a zombie outbreak, all with the issue that (with people with mobility problems) even where he parked the car is an immediate problem. The issue is that, out of my own preference, the short immediate signals its intentions to have its humour almost entirely about pop culture references just from the title being a riff on Psy's Gangnam Style, a South Korean pop song which unexpectedly became a global phenomenon even in the West in 2012. It's a film made for people who grew up with films like Escape from New York (1981) or Aliens (1986); films which aren't necessarily a bad thing to quote from, as I both love They Live (1988) and that they at least tried to implement the famous bubblegum line in a new context, but it's exactly the same issue as with Family Guy of references which are merely for their own sake, rather than naturally included in a short which has its own humour.
From here, the sense there's too
many segments is felt too, not even a sense of marathoning like a favourite of
mine The ABCs of Death series, but
overlong. I haven't mentioned the bookend story, which is by Brad Sykes, the director of the uber low
budget and cheerful slasher Camp Blood
(2000), in which two guys and a young woman film a SOV film in the woods,
the horror waiting for them incredibly fragmented by the story being placed in
pieces between the other segments and never actually connected to the anthology
segments themselves as you'd expect for the format. It is, in itself, merely a
segment by itself which is bizarre to have as a wraparound in a
self-cannibalising quality.
From there the anthology goes
feel drift a little, pleasures to be had if you appreciate this type of cinema
but an acquired taste. The Request,
from no budget veteran Todd Sheets,
is a tale of a radio host being haunted by a mysterious called which merely
feels like a fragment of a more interesting figure in this area of cult cinema,
feeling not enough to really establish his obsessions barring the reference to
his band Enochian Key and the use of
guts for gore effects. Another veteran Donald
Farmer has something more interesting in Thicker Than Water, the girlfriend in a male-female couple taking
an extreme to making sure an ex is not going to reappear in her boyfriend's
life, mainly because he's played by Mike
Malloy, the director of the documentary Eurocrime! The Italian Cop and Gangster Films That Ruled the '70s
(2012), who brings a bit more sense of horror and weight than expected in
this segment; and Brad Sykes himself
also contributes The Scout, in which
a man and a woman are caught at an abandoned building in the desert, playing
with an utterly surreal notion of seeing another reality with the viewer
watching over the shoulder at a camera, an interesting conclusion to a short
which could've been pretty predictable if its beginning was anything to go by.
The one segment that does need
its own paragraph to unpick the potential issues and thoughts about is Genre Bending by Chris Seaver, because it's of the school of trying to deliberately
offend the viewers for comedy, naturally likely to offend some from what I
describe. Best way to describe it is a stalker watching a woman, who has an
unexpected (and actually funny) conclusion, then another man gets involved
which brings in the even more deliberate attempts at offensiveness as the
segment attempts to make jokes about rape. Our female lead has already spoken
some already crass things earlier for this humour, and segment plays with the
second male lead slowly realising, despite being an attempted rapist, that he's
(literally) screwed as she is not the victim he presumed and has the situation
entirely in her hands. It's from a director who makes films with titles like Return to Blood Fart Lake (2011),
so we're dealing with a filmmaker who is deliberately going for broad and un-PC
moments like the second man's song penned for the scenario or how she goes
about the turning of the table to the abrupt ending. The issue is whether you
find Genre Bending's tone funny or not, whether you find it offensive and not
acceptable, whether questions about why it might not be funny even for reasons
not related to political correctness may have to be asked, or whether the
viewer will just shrug his or her shoulders and think the entire thing was just
dumb. For me personally, dumb and trying too hard is the answer.
And in the end, as anthology films
of horror cinema have grown in size, the frequent issue that they're extremely
variable in quality is a concern here. Here, too, there's also the question of
why there wasn't as much invention when a lot of it at the midway point falls
into a vague place of apathy. I still, with hindsight, enjoyed HI-8 (even in mind Gender Bending is going put a lot of people off for very
understandable reasons), but as someone who defends and loves this area of
cinema, I admit I've seen more interest feature length films than these shorts
so it's a very flawed project.
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