Vinegar Syndrome Announces Five New DVD And Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack Releases For Delivery To Retailers On Sept. 26

Vinegar Syndrome announced this past week that Sept. 26 will be the street date for its next array of restored Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack and DVD product offerings.   Five in all … a trio of Combo Packs and two DVD pleasures, including the latest installment in the company’s popular “Peekarama” adult-themed series.

So let’s get to it and what better place to start than a new 2K restoration of director Gorman Bechard’s 1986 direct-to-video serial killers in love classic, Psychos in Love.

This over-the-top bloodfest teams a strip club operator named Joe (Carmine Capobianco — Cemetery High, Bikini Bloodbath, Model Hunger, etc.) with an adorable manicurist by the name of Kate (Debi Thibeault), who indulge in a common passion … they are serial killers.   They don’t like grapes either.  They fall in love.

After piling up bodies left and right the two find happiness in married life and trade in their need to kill, kill, kill for a steady dose of horror flicks … until a certain plumber named Herman (Frank Stewart — Death Collector) comes knock, knock, knocking and tries to lure them back into the life to satisfy his cannibalistic desires!

Bonus features include two separate commentary options, one with filmmaker Gorman Bechard and the second featuring Bechard and actor Carmine Capobianco, a making-of featurette titled “Making Psychos” and three video sessions variously titled “Directing the Psychos,” “Playing a Psycho” and “Discussing Psychos.”

There are more goodies … an alternative opening sequence, highlights from the stage play adapted from the film, a 2016 Q&A sessions featuring Carmine Capobianco and a “Director’s Introduction.”

It was a dark and stormy night.   No, seriously, it was a dark and stormy night when a young couple — and we are not talking about Brad and Janet here — named Bob (William Bates) and Shirley (Pat Barrington) get in a wreck and soon find themselves bound to stakes in the spooky woods.   They are to be witnesses to the judgments of “The Emperor,” played by Criswell, who also delivers the introduction at the film’s beginning, which is almost word for word from Ed Wood’s 1959 horror opus, Night of the Ghouls.   

Did we just say the magic words, “Ed Wood?”   Why yes we did, this new 2K transfer from the film’s original 35mm camera is Vinegar Syndrome’s Sept. 26 Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack release of none other than director A.C. Stephen’s 1965 film treasure, Orgy of the Dead, which is derived from a script by none other than Ed Wood.

What a night as “The Emperor” and his mistress, The Princess of Darkness (Fawn Silver) — sort of a forerunner to Elvira, Mistress of the Dark — judge various nubile young women with a history of doing very bad things!   Horror and scantily clad women … Ed Wood sure knew his stuff!

Bonus goodies here include commentary from Ed Wood biographer, Rudolph Grey (“Ed Wood: Nightmare of Ecstasy”), who is joined by filmmaker Frank Henenlotter (Basket Case, Frankenhooker, etc.), there’s a video session with actress Nadejda Dobrev (the “Slave Dancer”) titled “Impressions of Nadejda,” and a second video session with AD Ted V. Mikels titled “Orgy of the Ted.”

Rounding out the selections of Blu-ray/DVD Combo Packs from Vinegar Syndrome on Sept. 26 is director Earl Barton’s 1975 sexploitation/horror tale, Trip With the Teacher, which followed in the wake of Wes Craven’s summer of 1972 breakout film, The Last House on the Left.

A new 2K restoration from the original camera negative is planned.

Miss Tenny (Brenda Fogarty — The Beach Bunnies, Chesty Anderson U.S. Navy, etc.) is on a field trip with four of her students to investigate Indian ruins in the desert on their way to the Grand Canyon.   The four students just happen to be young women named Julie (Cathy Worthington), Pam (Susan Russell), Tina (Jill Voight) and Barbara/Bobbie (Dina Ousley)  — aka: the victim pool — with Marvin (Jack Driscoll), the only male member of the entourage, serving as the bus driver.

After some flirting with a trio of bikers — brothers Al (Zalman King) and Jay (Robert Gribbin), plus a guy named Pete (Robert Porter) —at a remote gas station (where the attendant is murdered by Al), the bus breaks down and the three bikers soon arrive to offer help.   Help?   Help in the form of murder, torture and rape … when the final credits roll we have several brutal rapes, one dead student, one dead bus driver and two dead bikers.

This Crown International theatrical release is often dismissed as a simply a drive-in sexploitation flick, but in light of it following The Last House on the Left, and both the construct of the film and the violence that it contains, Trip With the Teacher has to be viewed as more of a combination of sexploitation and terror.

Bonus nuggets include commentary with director Earl Barton and “students” Cathy Worthington and Dina Ousley and a video session with Miss Tenny (actress Brenda Fogarty) titled “Taking the Trip.”

On the DVD front is an adult film before its time.   This would be director Roger Guermantes’ 1971 film release of Dark Dreams, which is on the Sept. 26 release schedule from Vinegar Syndrome as a 2K film restoration from the original 35mm film negative.

Adult filmmakers in the late 1960s and early 1970s had to more and more be conscious of having a plot — a coherent storyline — to go with the hardcore adult action.   A legitimate story gave these filmmakers legal cover, but in the summer of 1972 adult filmmaker Gerard Damiano changed all of that with the crossover release of Deep Throat.   Hardcore was now mainstream — the bigger battle within the adult industry would come with controversy over shooting on film or video (see: director Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1997 film release of Boogie Nights for that story).

Dark Dreams — making its DVD debut here — was released the previous year and even though it had a coherent horror plot, with good production values, it has been relegated to being simply an interesting adult film with a cast that included Tina Russell and Harry Reems.   Perhaps this release will change thinking on the matter.

It is interesting to note that Herschell Gordon Lewis’ The Gore Gore Girls came out in December of 1972 (after Dark Dreams) and it was rated X.   And certainly the two Paul Morrissey/ Joe Dallesandro/Udo Kier horror films of the period — Flesh for Frankenstein (1974) and Blood for Dracula (1974) — pushed the limits, but they too came after Dark Dreams.

Lastly, Vinegar Syndrome’s popular adult showcase series on DVD, “Peekarama,” gets a new entry with the triple feature release of adult filmmaker Charles DeSantos’ The Sinful Pleasures of Reverend Star (1977 with Herbert Wong as Reverend Star), Kinky Tricks (1977 with Candida Royalle) and China Lust (1977, aka: China de Sade … with Linda Wong).