Oscilloscope Laboratories has some good times lined
up for July 14 with the DVD and Blu-ray debut of director Jack Henry Robbins’ VHYes.
This quirky comedy got a limited theatrical (yeah,
yeah, yeah, we all know by now what that means … with the Covid-19 and all)
and, for the record, arrives in the home entertainment packaged media
marketplace with an ARR of 179 days.
In VHYes, we
are introduced to Ralph (Mason McNulty — Assimilate, 12 Pups
of Christmas), a twelve-year-old kid in the
time of VHS. Yes, it’s 1987 and Ralph
has just celebrated Christmas with the gift of a video camera and is eager to
use it.
He needs a tape for his project and that’s where
things go south. Ralph finds his parent’s
wedding tape and begins haphazardly recording over it … and that’s the “movie”
that we are tuned into. His “must-see” cinema verite, stream-of-conscious video
playlist … recorded from hither and yon.
A while back, Oscilloscope put out (May of 2018 to
be exact) a DVD and Blu-ray release that was simply titled Road
Movie. It
is a simply hilarious collection of Russian dash-cam videos … assembled
together featuring wrecks and other things that happen randomly on the highways
and back roads of Russia. It is
deceptively simple entertainment and yet totally mesmerizing in its viewing.
Robbins’ VHYes is
the 1987-era equivalent. Ralph quickly
learns that he can record anything from late night TV and that’s when it gets
truly weird (ignore that his father is beginning to ask questions about the
source of his tape).
The entire movie is actually recorded on the same
technology from the period and that makes it even stranger, if that is
possible. There is also a subtext that
you begin to pick up on as the “movie” progresses … this technology will
eventually become an addiction.
Bonus features include — are you ready for this —
extended scenes with “Sexy Swedish Aliens” (we told you VHYes was
weird) and two Sundance Film Festival short films from Jack Henry Robbins, Hot
Winter and Painting
with Joan (both equally weird and film
festival winners as well).
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