Dan and Ben Take the P.I.F’s!: The “Charlie Says Vol.2” Comedy Dining Experience

In celebration of hitting a 200 subscriber milestone I thought I’d offer up a bit of a bonus video this week! here’s a commentary we recorded in November 2018 covering over 150 Public information films. We were really rather “Merry”. and we will admit it’s a bit more towards the “Derek and Clive” end of the spectrum as a result. Still! here’s to the next 200! and we hope you enjoy this dealve into the terrifying world of the UK in the 1970’s and 80’s

 

Liquid Sky (1982)

It’s rare that I get to see films like Liquid sky. Movies movies sacrifice plot over absolutely everything in order to deliver a creative, colourful and unique viewing experience. This isnt a film that is trying to balance a good plot with visuals. This film couldn’t care less where its going. It just wants to look good doing it. And in that sense it’s absolutely achieved its goal here.

The films a rare example of a “Nice Video; Shame about the song” movie that’s made it onto my shelf of interesting things. And I’m pretty sure it’s going to be there for a pretty long time. It does have its faults, bit it’s far from a terrible film.

Equally; I’m not sure if I mention this in the review (I wrote this some time around March 2019) but I found out today (19th July 2019) that lead actress Anne Calisle plays both Jimmy and Margret in this film. If I dont mention it in the review then I almost certainly would have as it’s an astounding performance in this case! If I do mention it…then I was a good egg for doing so and its yet further proof of my increasing frailty. Anyway! Enjoy.

(While the original poster is nice…the VS re-release poster is just astounding…if not a tad muted for my taste.)

Jack Frost (1997)

Rounding off both Season 5 and 2018; here we have Jack Frost. A film thats been on my radar more or less since it came out due largely to it’s prominence in several Nerdy “Forbidden Planet” esq stores that used to populate the market stalls and highstreets where I lived in the early 2000’s. the Holographic Box art that came with the VHS of this movie was very unusual for the time and because of that I’d always wanted to check it out (Even though I knew deep down that if they had to stress a gimmick like this this hard it probably wouldnt be very good.)

The reality is, this films quite enjoyable. its by no means a regualar watch, nor is it anything groundbreaking. But I can easily see myself watching this again this Christmas and it was good enough that I’d certainly be interested in picking up the sequel.

If you are interested in picking this one up Vinegar Syndrome are the current distributors for it and they’ve done a cracking job with the Bluray version, if you like your “Troma” movies or anything by “Full moon” I think you’d probably quite dig this one.

This review was intended to make it up to youtube on the 24th of December however due to ongoing issues in personal life involving my partner I was unfortunately at the hospital all through the day this was set to go live and I was unable to schedule it in advance due to repeated copyright strikes. As a result I had to re-edit this review on the fly between trips to the hospital to try and get it up before the year out. as a result this one came out on the 31st but does wish people a merry christmas and a happy new year (Well…at least I got the last part right).

 

(Personally…while the original poster was striking and got my attention. I think the new artwork for it (Pictured above) looks much more fitting)

Penetration Angst (2003)

The story that I tell at the beginning of this review is very much true. back in the mists of time for what was the mid 2000’s Sky digital was a veritable raft of obscure, strange and bordering on the “Public Access” levels of quality content. I could and would easily sink entire nights flicking through the likes of “Rapture TV”, “The Community Channel”, “Anime Central”, “Channel M” And “Teachers TV” and thats before I got into the foreign channels or better still the cheapo foreign channels (Which especially after a beer or two quickly resemble alternate universe television)

The Horror Channel around this time was in it’s absolute infancy. and while it’s not unheard of now to catch classics like “The Evil Dead”, “The Fog” and “The Thing” on there back in 2004-2009 you were much MUCH more likely to find films like “The Wasp Woman”, “Manic Nurses Find Ecstacy” and in the early hours of the morning, Indie fodder like this movie.

It was a simpler time in all honesty and I do genuinely miss that invigorating thrill that came with landing on the “Cheapo Movie” channels and finding all sorts of obscure trash to pick through. “Movies 4 Men”, “Talking pictures” and “True Movies” still carry the mantel to this day but it’s not quite the same without those absolute bargain bin features padding out the graveyard slot.

Penetration angst is a film that stayed with me for over a decade before I actually found out what it was and the fact I was actually able to secure a copy only makes me all the better for it. it’s filth cinema, smutty, sultry and dirty a true contender in the “Modern Exploitation cinema” catagory. It has a pride of place on my shelf and with the exception of the likes of “Bad Biology” and “Teeth” I’d argue it’s the best non porn vagina driven movie I’ve ever seen.

(Also. if you own a digital television subscription be it Sky, Virgin or Freeview give your obscure channels a spin some time…while they’re not quite as tacky as they were back in the day. They do still have the habit of pulling absolute chaos out of there backsides!)

(This is another film that never quite got it’s poster/DVD art right…then again how do you market a killer vagina movie!?)

The Bikini Model Academy (2015) Comedy Dining Experience

After we enjoyed recording a commentary for “Threads” so much both myself and my co-host Ben Decided to do a couple more and see if the “Magic” was just a one off or whether we had a thing going here…this is the first of 3 films we covered in one evening (The 2nd is “Coming soon”) the 3rd…well…im not sure what to do with that one (Alcohol and Cheeseburgers are a daaaangerous mix)

Either way we felt happy enough with that session that we have more of these pencilled in coming soon so if you cant be bothered to sit through Bikini model academy WITHOUT 2 people taking the piss out of it I highly advise you give our full length commentary a go!

Lady Terminator (1989)

It’s collaboration time again! this time with a good friend of mine Raymond. This has been many months in the making we wern’t entirely sure of the best format to present this one in. I like Raymonds video style. he always finds a very entertaining angle to his reviews and he’s arguably one of the most thorough critics in his field when it comes to finding out info.

In the end we settled that I would give way on my channel to him and vice versa for me! as a result this weeks episode is a majority Raymond based episode! it’s a corker and im very proud that the months of scripting and working we did together finally came together and paid off.

Over on Raymonds youtube channel you will find a review for 1993’s Terminator woman in which I had the pleasure of turning up (I’ll be posting that one on here as well seperately)  but in the mean time here is arguably one of the strangest movies I’ve spoken about in a while.

With this video we finally draw a close on season 4. it’s been the longest season to date and while making it I had my doubts…though looking back. im kind of happy I went the way I did with this one…next week will pretty much be quiet so Join us in September for the first episode of Season 5! which will take us right up to the end of the year!

(This is technically a part 2 of 2 I’d advise you go and watch “Terminator woman’s” review first also this is a fairly meh poster…its too busy and blocky)

Bikini Model Academy – (2015)

…I got nothing for this one. Eveything I want to say about this film is in this review. the only thing that I would like to add is watching this review back after 2-3 months since I finished it. I would like to point out that I mention how much nudity and sex is in the film at one point without really stating why. it was a deleted line from the script and I was supposed to deliver it with a bit of a different inflection to what ultimately made it into the final cut. my goal was to say that basically for a film thats so desperate to be porn its arguably one of the tamest films to feature live breasts that i’ve ever seen and heres exactly why it is that tame. However it ends up coming out in this review like Im basically saying “THERES ONLY 4 BOOBS AND 2 SEX SCENES. SAD FACE! GOING HOME!”

I would also just quickly like to say that this got flagged up for copyright and was blocked…this time by a 3rd party content id bot…so not even an actual company could be bothered to police the IP of this thing…not that I blame the filmmakers for that…if i’d made this film I’d rather send a bot out to flag it down than have to watch this film again…

This is an objectifying, boring, and slightly mysoginistic piece of work in my opinion. I showed it to “Friend of the show” Ben one night while we were slowly getting drunk on the finest spirit based whisky drink ever manufactured. and he concurred…you may find out more about that conversation at a later date. but for now. all I can say is; Im sorry for what your about to experience. Really. Truely I am.

(What is Gary Bueseys face even doing in this poster!?…)

Braindead (Dead Alive) (1992)

Im ashamed that I left watching “Braindead” till as late in my life as I have. It’s not really considered a mainstream horror in the same way that the “Nightmare on elm streets”, “Friday the 13ths” and “Halloweens” of the world are…in a sea of slashers where the closest thing to compare it to would be “The Evil Dead 2” Braindead stands out by a country mile as a truely shocking and twisted slice of Dark horror comedy.

It had always been on the outskirts of my film viewing horizons. I’d seen clips from it over the years but for one reason or another i’d just never got round to watching it…I was still trying to get the “Classics” under my belt…missing by a country mile the classic I could have been watching all along with this beauty!

I decided when I finally did down this movie that I had a choice…I could either watch it in pristine bluray quality (Bootleg but definitely enjoyable) or I could watch it for the first time in mangled VHS-vision…I chose the latter and I really dont regret my choices. The general nastiness of this film is enhanced tremendously by the nasty, grainey and semi chewed up fuzz that VHS provides…I actually own the Rental copy of this movie…It came from a video shop in Rhyl (It still has all the stickers from the shop on it and everything!) and watching it back through the murk you really get a feeling for the history that this tapes been through in order to arrive in my collection. I really do treasure it…Until peter jacksons 4K remasters of these movies come out it’s the closest I’ve got to watching this film in it’s intended condition…Though equally if they were to do what they did with the “Nekromantik” Bluray and include a polished up Super clean cut…alongside a trashed “Grindhouse” cut I’d be terrifically grateful…

I’d love to see Jackson return to these kinds of films…controversial, shocking, and brilliantly wicked fun…I know he probably never will but I can dream!

 

(Also this is one of those films that has never quite been able to get it’s promotional marketing quite right…this is the best representation of the film I could find (The rental cover) and it says absolutely bugger all about the film itself…It just looks really cool…)

Power to the P.I.F! – Public information films: A Retrospective (2018)

I did it! One year on Youtube and it’s a double celebration because with this article the entire site is now backdated which in turn means I can finally make this site public to the public! So Hello if you’ve seen my nightmare fueled advert and welcome! you’ll find plenty around here to keep you busy so please feel free to leave a comment or say hi!

Public information films have been something that i’ve been interested in for a number of years, as a kid I mainly remember the “Think” campaign but there were many others that happened around this time that really stuck in my mind.

It wasnt really until I met my very good friend Ben that I discovered there was an active following for public information films, and that further more he’d been collecting them for years. we’d swap stories of P.I.F’s from around the world regularly and he’d happily point me to some form of carnage as and when he found it. Ben produced a documentary called “Out of your tiny minds” or something similar (Titled from the pif that shares the same name) So when it came to tackling these films I really couldnt think of anyone better to help me. I really cant thank him enough for giving up his time to help me make this and to do it right.

It was very difficult to decide which public information films would make it into this special and which wouldnt, but after the positive response i’ve recieved from this video i’ll almost certainly do a follow up in future. Though quite when that’ll be I couldnt honestly say.

For now though, im happy. A year might not seem like a long time to be doing youtube but it’s been an eye opening experience and I really hope Im here this time next year telling you just how excited I am to have been here now for 2 years!

Thank you to everyone who’s regularly tuned in and followed me on this Journey it really means a lot and thank you in particular to everyone who’s reached out and offered either video recommendations or collaboration opportunities. you’ve really made me feel very welcome and I hope there are many further good times ahead.

 

(Warning! the rabies P.I.F is in this episode…you know the one…well you’ve been warned now it’s out of my hands…)

Doctor Screw (2006)

When it came to choosing a “Red Triangle” that would see off “Alternate Doctor who month” it was really no question in my mind at least that porn would be the end result. I mean, I maybe could have gone with Torchwood or Class…something a bit more adult but still in universe, but I thought it was too mainstream, too well connected to the series to fly to be honest.

Next my thoughts went to BBV and there were some very serious considerations for “The Airzone Solution” or the “Auton” series. But again while I think they may work well as a TYTD episode in the future it just wasnt right here. Porn. Porn was what was needed and by gum porn was what I settled for!

Of course the options were bountiful (No pun intended) “Doctor who and the Phaleks” was my go to option for the longest time before briefly swapping to the “Woodrocket” sequences, there was even a brief dabble with “Abducted by the daleks” but in the end “Doctor Screw” was one of those porn films that had both not been widely covered and one that I distinctly remember doing the rounds in the early days of the David Tennant era with a dirty smirk and a cheeky chuckle from the Doctor who fandom back in the day. so I was happy to pick that one purely due to its lack of coverage.

It’s quite frankly appauling as pornography. But in terms of being a piece of alternative cultural history it really is a piece of its time. I pretty much say everything I can possibly say about this series in my review itself but even for its impotence I’d recommend fans of the new series check this one out. it’s really weird due to just how early it came out in the new series’ run and as a result it kind of fudges its way through the best it can. It’s also interesting from a historical standpoint as it marks the transition between porn parodies being a cheap and cheerful rubbish affair to being a highly polished and nightmare inducing rubbish affair (Im looking at you Strokemon).

Either way this is a very bizarre notch in Doctor who history and I really couldnt think of a better way to see this season off.

(I really love that boxart for the complete set…I own the solo releases and they’re rubbish by comparison…)