Adam Baran

This just in: Now you can rent Jinx! on DVD in Los Angeles at the best video store on Earth - Eddie Brandt’s Saturday Matinee, located at 5006 Vineland Avenue in North Hollywood.

Here’s how that happened : While I was in Los Angeles last week, I mentioned to a friend that I was looking for a place like Amoeba Records only for videos, where I could scour the racks of used rare and hard to find VHS tapes. I didn’t know where that could be but, I figured there must be someplace in L.A. He told me about Eddie Brandt’s Saturday Matinee Video, located in North Hollywood. So on Saturday morning, I got in my car, punched the address into my GPS and set off for what would become the most mind blowing shopping experience I’ve had in a long time.

Ever walk in a store and want everything in it? That’s what it was like to walk into Eddie Brandt’s. They have tens of thousands of videos on both VHS and DVD, and what’s more, they can make you DVD copies of any VHS tape they have. They have a special loaner library of hard to find, never been released stuff - bootlegs accumulated over many years. I started going through the shelves of used videos for sale, and within minutes I had ten videos I had to have already set aside. “Just put it on the counter and rest one of those red bean bags over it,” the guy behind the counter said. I hadn’t even gotten to letter C yet. Already I had The Amazing Dobermans, a film about a crime fighting gang of pooches, starring Fred Astaire, The Annihalators, a Death Wish/Rambo knock off (I picked up quite a few of those), and Brotherly Love - a good twin/evil twin movie starring…Judd Hirsch!!

I went to the counter and asked if they had Good Luck Miss Wyckoff, an extremely hard to find film - or so I thought. They checked the system and didn’t have it, but one of the extremely knowledgeable customers soon piped up - “That was released as The Shaming!” On second check, they had it - and Donovan, the son of Eddie, the store’s namesake, threw the film into his computer, transferred it, and made a DVD copy for me (not for free of course, but not for a lot of money either). I had to wait about 90 minutes for the transfer, but it didn’t matter. I stayed for hours picking over the shelves. Among the more amazing other titles included Hell Comes to Frogtown, Daddy’s Deadly Darling (aka Pigs), Rainbow (a made for TV Judy Garland biopic starring Andrea McArdle as Judy and Piper Laurie as her mama), and Exterminators of the Year 3000.

The staff were super nice, and soon the back and forth was basically “Have you ever seen this?” “Oh you gotta see this!” I of course recommended Street Wars, Yeti: Giant of the 20th Century, and Death Drug. But they of course topped me, and had everything on my wants list. Except of course that is, for the two white whales of my video dreams - HIM, a gay porn retelling of the story of Jesus, and Bruce Lee Vs. Gay Power, a kung-fu Bruce Lee rip off about a karate fighter battling an evil gang of homosexuals. But I have no doubt, to be honest, that even though they didn’t have it - they could probably find it for me in no time. We’ll see what happens.

At this point I decided I had to give them a copy of my movie, “Jinx!” and they gladly accepted. They told me it would be available on Tuesday (yesterday) and then they invited me to a BBQ the next day, where the men crowded around the grill and talked exploitation movies instead of sports, and I felt at peace, like moving to Los Angeles wouldn’t be such a bad thing if I could meet people like this.

You can also call them if you are looking for something really rare and they can burn it for you for a fee and send it over. Which I’m planning to do with some stuff I want, despite the fact that I bought so many videos there that I had to buy an extra suitcase to take them all home in.

So if you’re in Los Angeles, and you want to see Jinx! and you don’t have IFC or a computer, head over to Eddie Brandt’s Saturday Matinee and see if it’s available. And tell Donovan and his mom (and the cute dog, who parks it in the Western section) Adam said hi.

For more info, including directions and such, visit them online at www.ebsmvideo.com.

About two months ago I bought a huge box of rare trashy films whose descriptions sounded beyond comprehension. Yeti: Giant of the 20th Century, Rooster: Spurs of Death, Black Terminator (with is sitting proudly on my shelf next to the Indonesian Lady Terminator), Sometimes Aunt Martha Does Dreadful Things, and Spawn of the Slithis. I’ve been slow going through said box and actually watching the films, but one of my favorites so far has been Attack of the Beast Creatures. From 1985, this piece of trash gem tells the tale of a group of survivors of a shipwreck who get stranded on a deserted island in the tropics (though it’s clearly some woodsy Connecticut area) and run afoul of tiny killing monsters who pick them off one by one by one….

Now the plot is pretty much standard horror - they land on the island, one guy’s injured, and there’s upstanding guys who care and that one mean guy who keeps telling the others not to care, that they have to fend for themselves. One guy sticks his face in the river to clean it off and when he gets up his face is melting off, because the water wasn’t water at all! D’oh! Then they all go to sleep and these little eyes show up and attack them. It’s hard to get a look at the monsters at first, but eventually we see them and realize that they are basically dead-on copies of the Zuni Doll in Trilogy of Terror. Here’s a glimpse of that immortal classic, which I showed at my last birthday party to much delight:

Yeah, that’s right. She tries to drown a wooden doll with magical powers. Bright move. Anyway, compare the Zuni Doll with the monsters from Attack of the Beast Creatures.

Exactly the same doll! Except the Beast Creatures have that cat-hissing noise whilst the Zuni doll has the immortal “YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYA.” I know, folks, I don’t get it either. I guess they figured nobody would notice because nobody would probably ever see the movie?

Yep, it’s the best movie ever! And did I mention the whole thing takes place in the 1920’s? It’s not clear whether the filmmakers wanted to evoke the memories of the Titanic disaster, which only occured 8 years before the start of the Roaring Twenties, or whether those costumes were all they had in their stock. In any case, we’re (the audience) are treated to the most ludicrous “I can’t believe what I’m actually seeing” horror film since, well ever, in my opinion. Amazingly bad acting, ridiculously bad puppetry, a script from Mars….what more do you need people?

Oh by the way…

BOO! AHAHAHHAHAHAHAH!

Oh God, words fail me. This is too much.

When I hear people tell me they’re going to L.A., I always recommend they check out the Pierce Brothers Westwood Cemetary where this little cutie is resting in peace.

For more info on the tragic circumstances surrounding the O’Rourke death, and the story of how O’Rourke was discovered, here’s the E! special report.

I can’t believe her dog of a mother couldn’t put on a bit of makeup for the interview. Gross!