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Back in the early 1990s, way before digital video, way way before
YouTube (or general internet access even), but at a time when Seattle and
Washington State were
hip for a minute or two due to grunge music and Twin Peaks,
filmmaker Kelly Hughes shot the series Heart Attack Theatre
for public access TV - basically a busload of movies filmed on VHS for
low-to-no budget, all of them guerrilla-style (he never bothered about
filming permits it seems) - and while he aimed to go for something Twilight
Zone-like, the outcome more resembled early John Waters ...
but not in a bad way, these were just trashy but entertaining genre pieces
shot on the quick, full of consciously corny acting, transvestites,
carefully dosed political un-correctness, boobs, bad taste, and general
outrageousness. Citizen Kane these movies were not ... just a lot
of fun. About 20 years later, Hughes tracked down some of his
co-conspirators (most of his actors appeared in more than one of his
movies) to let them recount their past experiences and share their mostly
fond memories ... Everyone who's at least a little bit into
low-to-no budget movies will probably love Heart Attack!: It's such
a fitting document to a bygone era of no-holds-barred genre filmmaking,
where the game wasn't about aping movies of old, trying to follow
tried-and-true formulas to the t, or making things politically correct at
the cost of everything - instead these films look like so much fun and
much more generally open-minded than much of today's genre fair (though to
be honest, as of this writing, I haven't seen any of the Heart
Attack Theatre-movies yet. But the enthusiasm of the interviewees
alone roughly two decades after the films had been shot is enough to
really get you nto the right spirit ... and actually make you want to
watch some of these movies for yourself, the clips alone shown throughout
this film are quite amazing - now again, no Citizen Kane ... but
loads of fun!
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find Heart Attack! The Early Pulse Pounding Cinema of Kelly Hughes at adultvideouniverse.com
