★ 4 / 10
Could Have Been an Interesting Documentary
jrd_73
Straight to VHS is supposed to be a documentary on the story behind the making of an obscure shot-on-video horror film made in Uruguay in 1988, titled: Act of…
Straight to VHS is supposed to be a documentary on the story behind the making of an obscure shot-on-video horror film made in Uruguay in 1988, titled: Act of Violence in a Young Journalist.
I am not much for shot-on-video movies, but I am always intrigued by someone who is so passionately moved by a film to become obsessed by it. Therefore, I began Straight to VHS with much enthusiasm, but by the end, I was quite irritated.
The documentary begins with a story of how Emilio Silva Torres watched and became obsessed with Act of Violence in a Young Journalist. We get interviews with other fans of the movie, explaining why they were drawn to it. Then, Torres tries to track down the people who made the movie, particularly the actors and the film's obscure director, Manuel Lamas. Here is where the documentary begins to disappoint.
It is not Torres's fault that none of the actors will talk on camera about Act of Violence in a Young Journalist. Torres gets a camera technician and a person who had rented Lamas his equipment back in the 1980s. These are the only two people connected to the 1988 movie that will talk on camera. Obviously, there is only so much either person can say, since they were only tangentially related to the making of the obscure movie. So, what to do?
Emilio Silva Torres then tries to turn his documentary into a horror movie about his own obsession with the 1988 movie and about how evil a person Manuel Lamas, that unknown director, was. Straight to VHS even changes its visual style, not at all looking like the talking heads documentary that it started as. Instead, we get dream scenes, a fortune teller drawing tarot cards, and clips from what look like Manuel Lamas's home movies (admittedly, with shot-on-video entertainment, reality and fiction can get a bit blurry). Finally, in the documentary's most ridiculous scene, Torres burns the box containing all of his notes and, presumably very rare, video tapes. Torres does not take his box outside and burn it. No, he burns it in the living room of the cabin in the woods where he is staying, burning down the whole cabin with the box of material. I am sure the cabin's owner loved that!
After that idiocy, the film switches back to being a regular documentary with comments from someone who knew Manuel Lamas in his last years. The sequence is probably the most affecting section of the documentary. Unfortunately, it comes too late to save the film.
After watching Straight to VHS, I have no idea what to think of the long-gone Manuel Lamas. Like many low budget filmmakers, he seems to have used others to get his projects made. He also seems to have had some issues with women. Maybe Lamas was not a very nice person, but does that justify turning him into some supernatural, Faustian boogeyman? I think not.
In the end, Emilio Silva Torres did not have enough material for even a feature length documentary. This should have been a short film. Torres also clearly aspires to be a filmmaker in the horror and thriller genres. However, by grafting that style onto this documentary, Torres does a disservice to both himself and to his subject matter.
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