Mark Johnston's Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

by Phil Hall

If your concept of the world cinema consists of the likes of Truffaut, Fellini, Kurosawa and Tarkovsky, then you seriously need to meet Mark Johnston. For Johnston's take on world cinema is, shall we say, a little bit different.

A movie-buff who turned his passion into a career as a film historian, Johnston presents a wild world of cinema through his company Shocking Videos. Rather than The 400 Blows or La Strada, Johnston prefers to serve up such unlikely titles as W, a Philippine thriller about a policeman who seeks revenge on a mob after he is castrated on his wedding night; Queen Kong, a British gender-bending remake of the 1933 classic with an oversized female ape falling in love with the lovely Ray Fay; Legendary Panty Mask, a Japanese action flick about a female crime-fighting superhero whose costume consists of an Indian sari and leather undies worn on her head; Shame of the Jungle, a Belgian animated Tarzan spoof where Jane is kidnapped by a tribe of bouncing penis monsters while Cheetah swings off Tarzan's manhood; Bad Boy Bubby, an Australian wonder about a 35-year-old retarded man who wanders through the world with his dead cat and becomes a rock star; and Gran Bollito, an Italian horror/revenge tale with Shelly Winters chopping up and boiling people in an oversized cauldron.

Johnston is perhaps best known as the man who brought the insanity of Turkeywood into the VCRs of America. Turkeywood, for the uninitiated, is the genre of Istanbul-based filmmaking that takes Hollywood classics and remakes them (sometimes scene for scene) with approximately 1/100th of the original's budget and even less style and imagination. The result is always a Dadaist experience, ranging from the over-the-rainbow flight of The Turkish Wizard of Oz (complete with a glamourous Dorothy, an effeminate Scarecrow and a Cowardly Lion with a very hairy groin") to The Turkish Star Wars (which actually scissored the FX of the Lucas classic into a new tale involving killer mummies and a big blue robot with an ambulance light on his head).

 The Shocking Videos collection certainly won't be mistaken for the Criterion collection. Dividing his extensive offerings into easy-to-follow genres (Women in Prison, Eurotrash, Mondo Macabro), Johnston is constantly searching the world for the most extreme, eccentric and exotic films imaginable.

Johnston works from his home in rural West Virginia, and found time to discuss his mission for bringing the lost continent of world cinema to the forefront.

Phil Hall: How and why did you first get involved in the film and video business? And what inspired you to aim for the more extreme and edgier titles versus, say, the classic and artistic offerings?

Mark Johnston: There were a lot of factors and influences that led up to this, not the least of which being a life long love of weird movies. As a kid growing up in the PC (Pre-Cable) era I cut my teeth on stuff like Attack of the Mushroom People, Kitten With a Whip, The Frozen Dead, The Brain from Planet Arous, Planet of the Vampires, and The House That Screamed. Years later, books like Michael Weldon's seminal "Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film" and Re/Search's "Incredibly Strange Films" helped bring things into even sharper focus (so to speak). The zine revolution of the 80s provided access to fan-made publications like Rick Sullivan's "Gore Gazette" Steve Puchalski's "Slimetime" (now the excellent "Shock Cinema") and Weldon's offshoot from his book of the same name, "Psychotronic." These were where I first discovered the DIY world of "collectors videos." I ordered all of the early catalogs from all of the various "companies" most of which have long since gone by the wayside.

Many crappy multi-generation tapes later it started to dawn on me that if I had a 12th generation copy of Jackie Chans "Armour of God" someone else must have the 11th and someone else the 10th and so on back down the line. Yeah, I know. Im a little slow. The bottom line is, that after a lot of unintentional market research, I looked at what was available and said, "I can do this. And I can do it a lot better than most of these bozos." So I did.

Why do I aim for the "more extreme and edgier titles"? Well, as Manfred Mann said, "thats where the fun is." Its not all perversion and debauchery though. In fact, if you take a look through my website at www.revengeismydestiny.com   you'll see that I cast a pretty wide net. I've got everything from biker and women in prison flicks to naughty nuns, spaghetti westerns, martial arts, film noir, British sex comedies, documentaries, you name it. If its overlooked, out of reach or currently unavailable and its weird, wild or wonderful, I'm all over it like a cheap suit. I think its pretty safe to say that mine is the only site on the net where you can buy the Turkish version of The Wizard of Oz, the necrophilia soap opera Love Me Deadly AND Luis Bunuels The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz.

PH: From a geographic standpoint, which countries put out the strangest and most peculiar films? Can you provide some examples?

MJ: Its all relative isn't it? I'm sure Die Hard or End of Days must seem just as strange and peculiar to someone in Jakarta as anything that's come this way from there might be to us. But speaking as your typical arrogant, White, ethnocentric American, Id say Turkey and Indonesia are definitely at the top of the list. Japan and Mexico are no slouches either.

Thanks mostly to word of mouth, in the past few years Turkey has become known as the "go to" country for crazed knock offs of Hollywood product, giving us bizarre, no-budget variations on everything from Star Wars, "Star Trek", ET, The Wizard of Oz and Superman to Conan the Barbarian, The Exorcist and even Young Frankenstein and The Sting. They also have put out some of the most wildly over-the-top kung fu, action and crime films to ever see the light of day. Take for example one of my current faves, The Biggest Fist (original title En Buyuk Yumruk). It stars my main man, Cuneyt Arkin, a chain-smoking karate expert and human dynamo who's sort of a Turkish Jackie Chan, Errol Flynn and Ed Wood all rolled into one. In The Biggest Fist you get: A man set on fire and thrown out of a high rise window, a car bombing, a high speed chase and FIVE fiery car crashes. And that's just during the opening credits!

Meanwhile Indonesia with its rich tradition of sorcery and superstition continues to startle and amaze with masterpieces like Mystic in Bali which features a flying head (with spinal cord and internal organs still attached) that swoops between pregnant women's legs and sucks out their fetuses; and Barry Prima's The Warrior, a mind-boggling hodgepodge of martial arts and black magic where during the final climactic duel the villain gets his arms, legs, and even his head lopped off and the various body parts just hop right back onto the guy and he keeps on fighting.

As for Japan and Mexico, well, with countless generations of brutality, cruelty and bloodlust to draw from, lets just say these folks know how to party.

PH: How did you first learn of Turkeywood, the Turkish genre of Hollywood rip-offs? And when you finally got to see these films, did they live up to your expectations? And...do you know why the Turks, of all people, create such weird films?

MJ: I have to give credit where credit is due. The whole weird Third World cinema thing was inspired by the book "Mondo Macabro" written by UK author and authority Pete Tombs. Thank God for that guy because I for one was getting pretty burned out on Lucio Fulci, Dario Argento and HK pistol operas. Did the Turco stuff live up to my expectations? Yes! Yes! A thousand times yes! I can honestly say that anyone who sits down and watches something like The Turkish Star Wars will have their concepts of what a "movie" is and should be forever changed. And that, as Martha Stewart would say, is a GOOD thing.

Why do the Turks make such weird movies? I don't think its necessarily intentional. I think they're just some vibrant "can do" motherfuckers who don't let little things like lack of budget or ability (much less copyrights) slow them down.

PH: How do you go about tracking down the films in the Shocking Videos collection? And how do you determine what makes the cut and what doesn't?

MJ: I don't think you want me to answer that first question because if I did Id have to kill ya. Seriously though, aside from my own excavation efforts I've got scouts around the world who keep an eye out for stuff for me and let me know when things turn up. These are the people that make me look good and Id love to be able to give them props publicly but it just wouldn't be good business. So Ill just have to say "Thanks, guys! You know who you are." and leave it at that. One thing I DON'T do is buy from my competitors and then turn around and resell copies of their copies. I HATE that!

What makes the cut? Whatever I feel is amazing, wonderful, bizarre, shocking, insane, jaw-dropping, mind-bending and/or too stupid to ignore. What doesn't make the cut? Everything else.

PH: Which films are your personal favorites in the Shocking Videos collection?

MJ: Wow. So many to choose from. Okay, here are a few that I think truly embody the spirit of what Shocking Videos is all about. I wont try to describe them all, Ill just list the titles and the categories they can be found in and your readers can go and check 'em out for themselves:

The Boxers Omen (Asian Invasion)
Darktown Strutters (Blaxploitation)
Death Warrior (Mondo Macabro Turkey)
Enter the Seven Virgins (Women In Prison)
Forty Deuce (American Trash)
Ghosts of the Civil Dead (Aussie Trash)
If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? (Hicksploitation)
Insan Avcisi (Mondo Macabro Turkey)
Killers on Wheels (Asian Invasion)
Lady Exterminator (Mondo Macabro Indonesia)
Mad Foxes (Bikers)
Metal Skin (Aussie Trash)
The Telephone Book (American Trash)
The Turkish Star Wars (Mondo Macabro Turkey)
Virgins From Hell (Women in Prison)
The Zebra Killer (Blaxploitation)

And that's just the tip of the proverbial snow cone. I could go on all day about movies like They Call Her Cleopatra Wong, Dynamite Johnson The First Bionic Boy, Alex Joseph and His Wives, The Stabilizer, Joe Caligula, Katharina and Her Wild Stallions, etc., etc., etc.

PH: Have there been films that you've tried to track down but have not been able to locate? If so, what are you looking around for?

MJ: Here's the short list of stuff I'm still looking for. Anyone who has access to any of these in any format should definitely get in touch.

Bald Headed Betty (original version, not the upcoming remake)
Black Lolita
Body of a Female
The Day the Clown Cried (Hey, I can dream cant I?)
Death May Be Your Santa Claus
The Farmer (aka Killer Farmer; Blazing Revenge)
Hard Women
International Guerillas
Macabro
Malatesta's Carnival of Blood
Movie Star American Style (aka LSD, I Hate You)
The Naked Ape
Nest of the Cuckoo Bird
Rat Fink (aka My Soul Runs Naked; Wild and Willing)
Riot on 42nd St.
Sadismo
The Smut Peddler
Super Spook
Whirlpool
Women For Sale
Work is a 4-Letter Word

PH: On the flip side, have there been films which sound too good to be true...and turn out to be simply terrible?

MJ: Just about anything from Jerry Bruckheimer.

PH: What comes next for Shocking Videos? Are you moving into DVD versions of your titles? And would you consider trying theatrical release?

MJ: More, more, more. More rarities uncovered. More value for your dollar. More fun in the new world. Over 100 of our rarest, most collectible and most popular titles are currently available on DVD-R, with more on the way. Theatrical releases? Not unless drive-ins or grindhouses come back in a big way. In the meantime be sure to check out the Shocking Videos website.