The Ethos of the Video Mixtape....Part I

What exactly is a video mixtape?  I talked about the "definition" in my previous post, so I thought why not try and explore the requirements and traditions of these tapes.

Homemade Madness

Video mixtapes are made by people who love the bizarre, strange, obscure bad films, bad TV, bad music videos and the down right weird.  They/we celebrate the oddballs creating in the margins of film and TV and the outsider.

The video mixtape is not created for a legitimate general release.  They are made to circulate between friends, like minded folk, traders of the obscure and collectors of rare unseen footage and trash (and I mean that in the most endearing way).  A subversive alternative to the mainstream.

With regards to what should be in a mixtape (be it film, TV, commercials etc) I believe there should be no rules.  Having said that, they do tend to include clips from -

Foreign TV/Film - (Crazy Russian kids TV, crazy Czech animation, Japanese game shows ) 
Religious TV/Film - (Mormon cartoons, crazy preachers, anti-heavy metal videos)
Children's TV/Film - (Cartoons, moral dilemmas, retro shows)
Public Access TV - (all singing, all dancing, always entertaining)
Movie Trailers - (Exploitation film trailers, retro action, sex, sc-fi)
TV Movies - (Badly made TV movies with bad acting)
Commercials - (Infomercials, home shopping channels, retro ads)
Found Footage/Home Movies - (Birthday parties, metallica drummer, skateboarding) 
Music Videos - (Jan Terri, Harvey Sid Fisher, bad hip-hop)
Training Videos - (Health and safety, workout videos)
Bad Film - (Badly made films with bad acting like Strike Commando or any Bruno Mattei film)
Bad TV - (Star Wars Christmas Special, After School Special)
Educational Videos - (Sex ed, driving safety, public information ads)
News Footage - (Odd stories, strange people)
Documentary's - (Outsiders, strange topics) 
Out Takes - (Bloopers, accidents that occur live on air)

and the more extreme video mixtapes also contain - 

Gore/Death - (Real life accidents, death)
Pornography - (Scat, enemas, extreme porn)

This is in no way a definitive list.  But it is pretty close.

You may have also noticed that I have used the term "Bad" a number of times.  So what exactly do I define as "Bad"?  After all, my perception may be completely different to yours.  And just to fuck you up a little more, "Bad" is good.

My definition of "Bad" is something that was made with the intent of being taken seriously...but is devised and delivered so badly, it completely misses and becomes laughable.  It is something that has no idea of how strange, funny and ridiculous it is.  It is completely oblivious.  The more seriously it takes itself, the more "Bad" it becomes.

I had a hard time writing that...it's a hard thing to define.  I'm also aware that if this post is too long it will get boring!!  Here is a link to a thread I found where people try to define Bad Films.

And here is a scene from Strike Commando....track this film down and you should have a better understanding of what I'm talking about!!

What The Internet Says.......

I searched high and low to try and discover the origins of the video mixtape.  To be blunt...I found absolutely fuck all about it.

Wikipedia has a very short entry which is self explanatory.  It also looks like whoever wrote it borrowed a lot of it from Retard-o-trons web site or it was written by the same person.

So, just in case you are not familiar with what a video mixtape is, I thought I would share what it has to say...

"A video mixtape (VMT) is a stock footage movie consisting of clips from movies, television or home videos that are generally circulated as bootleg videos.  Also called party tapes or video compilations, this phenomenon comes from the days of Betamax and VHS, when home editing and duplication became possible for the masses" - Wikipedia

But how and when did it all start?  As I talked about in my previous post, the first video mixtape I saw was a collection of horror film clips.

It is also well documented in the UK that British television VT editors would edit together blooper reels and film parodies of their shows to distribute internally among staff during the late 1970's and early 1980's (usually in time for the office Christmas party). Could this be classed a very early video mixtape?

(A dirty version of kids TV show "Rainbow" made specifically for one of these tapes)

When and where did they evolve from compiling unseen and banned clips to what the video mixtape is today.

My 1st Video Mixtape

I'm from the U.K.  Wales to be precise.  I was born in 1976 and can remember the media "Moral Panic" over the Video Nasty debacle back in 1984.  It fascinated me.

I was already a fan of horror through books like "The Hamlyn Book of Horror" and abridged versions of horror classics for children (Dracula, Frankenstein and Edgar Allen Poe).

As I grew older and watched TV shows like "The Son of the Extremely Strange Film Show", the excellent film series "Moviedrome" and started to read horror film magazine "Fangoria", my fascination increased for the so called Video Nasty.  I desperately wanted to see these films.  I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Were these films as horrifying and as disturbing as we were being told?

Skip forward to 1992.  The only Video Nasty I had managed to get my hands on was "The Exorcist" (which was banned in the UK until 1998).  I was a drummer in a band and we auditioned for a new bass player (the previous one had tried to hi-jack a public transport bus to take him to "Monsters of Rock"....he ended up in jail).  Turned out the new guy was a horror film fanatic and owned most of the banned films I had been searching for.

One of these videos was called "Fillet O' Flesh".

"Fillet O' Flesh" was a video mixtape comprising of gory scenes from banned horror films as well as uncut scenes from films that were available, but only in their censored format.  It was the 1st time I saw the "eye ball" shot in "Zombie Flesh Eaters" (or "Zombi" if your from across the pond) and it scared the living shit out of me.

It was a 5th or 6th generation VHS copy, so all the gore and effects looked completely real.  It included the decapitation scene from "Nightmare in a Damaged Brain" and the electric drill to the head from "Driller Killer".  The "Fillet O' Flesh" titles on the video were very blocky, like BBC computer graphics, and it was obvious that it had been put together by someone with a home video editing suite.  It looked like it was made in the 1980's and, I can only speculate, that it was created after 1984 by a fan of horror and gore.

Has anyone else ever seen or heard of this?  I am aware there were other gore video mixtapes circulating at this time on the black market (If anyone stumbles across this blog then please email me any info you have).

So...that was my 1st video mixtape.  What was yours?

The Beginning.......

I've always found video mixtapes (or VMT's) fascinating, outrageous, bizarre and just good old fashioned fun!!.

I tried to search for the birth of the VMT and it's evolution, but have found very little on the subject.

With this blog, I intend to document and ask as many people as I can about their involvement, love and knowledge of the VMT.

Wish me luck!!