Vintage Film Restorations - the Allure of Vinegar Syndrome and Others

The Rabbit Hole of Collecting Vintage Film Restorations

In 2023 I discovered Vinegar Syndrome at a local ComicCon (the first I had ever been to!) and was exposed to the world of vintage film restoration focused on all of the weird, schlocky, forgotten films of the 90's and earlier. At the time I snagged a nice remaster of Beastmaster (a film I loved back when it came out, even as cheesy as it was compared to Conan the Barbarian) and a nice retro-themed print of Censor, one of my favorite horror movies of the last decade, which focuses on the late 70's and 80's era of "video nasties" in which the story essentially turns in to one--great movie, and its focus is why I think Vinegar Syndrome sponsored a special edition. 

I have since ordered quite a few weird vintage movies from Vinegar Syndrome, and also discovered Arrow Video, Severin Films and of course we have the ubiquitous Criterion Collection where you can find high priced but (for the most part) extremely worth it re-releases on blu-ray and UHD. I've managed to snag several of my favorite japanese films from Criterion, including some of the best of Akira Kurosawa.

The interesting thing about this corner of physical media collecting is that it's potentially successful only because the current market is trying so hard to shift away from physical media entirely. Streamers want to stream, and "sellers" like Vudu want to sell, even as Sony removes content from purchasers as a reminder that a "buy to watch" option online is never the same as ownership. In the midst of this, specialist retailers who focus on re-releasing videos (Gruv, for example) may find they are the best and only source of physical media over time. 

But this is not quite what Vinegar Syndrome, Arrow Video and Severin are doing. They aren't producing (mostly) mass market appeal films and rereleasing them for people still into physical copies of content. No, what they are doing is finding the weird, obscure, unusual and most importantly "not popular" in any conventional sense and restoring them, sometimes for posterity (to keep the movie from disappearing) and sometimes because the film either has or deserves a cult following, and this is the only way its going to happen is if the film remains available. Sometimes these aren't really good films by any stretch (not even in a so bad its good way), they're just films of note that help catalog the history of film in general. In fact, many of the actual publishers of these films are smaller groups who are then represented on Vinegar Syndrome's site, and the actual content is often incredibly obscure, films which no one likely has ever heard of, often done on zero budget, by film makers who may or may not have gone on to build bigger and better careers. 

The reason I got sucked in to it was initially just the novelty of high quality restorations of some films I loved, but I rapidly descended into a rabbit hole of fascinating and obscure filmes, many foreign, which I had never heard of before. For example: Alexandr Ptushko's films (such as Sampo and the Tale of Tsar Tsaltan) are works I have never even heard of before featuring Finnish and Russian epics from the late fifties of incredible production value for the time. Piotr Szulkin's Apocalypse Tetralogy is a masterpiece in weird cold war era scifi from behind the Iron Curtain. Other remasters are more down to home, representing unusual films such as Through the Fire, a low budget first film that manages to come just short of being a genuinely good spooky detective horror story, or Creature, an obscure Alien knock-off I remember seeing in the 80's on HBO, featuring Klaus Kinski in one of those roles where he chews the scenery with his trademark weirdness. More familiar films can be found as well, such as Road House, From Beyond, and if you go over to Arrow Films you can see bigger films get special re-treatments. Conan the Barbarian and its sequel are getting a very nice UHD collector's set I'm not crazy enough to buy for the price, but it's cool that such a thing can exist.

Anyway, this is a corner of my interests I have not written about much, but which has consumed a bit of my time. I might consider a regular blog series on this, with a twist. One of the movies I picked up was The Incredible Melting Man (which was much scarier when I was 8 years old, and much less so at 52) and my son and I both concocted a much better plot using this movie as the springboard for a scenario for Call of Cthulhu or Mothership. This could be done with quite a few other movies, and leans in to a scenario technique I experimented with a few years ago when I took the core conceits of Conan the Barbarian and turned it in to a Starfinder campaign. So...I might watch and discuss some of these movies from a gamer's context, identifying what sort of fun ideas and scenario content (and for what games) might be derived from some of these movies. We will see!

D&D 5E: Saturday Creature Factory: The corvus archos (Raven Lord)

The dire reach of the corvus archos is one which any adventurer may fear, even an avian hero of the sky…..

Corvus Archos (Raven Lord)

CR 7 (2,900 XP)

CN medium monstrosity (shadow)

Initiative +5

DEFENSE

AC 17 (leather +1)

HP 104 (16D8+32)

Resistance: necrotic

OFFENSE

Speed 35 feet

Multiattack the corvus archos attacks twice with its longbow or twice with its jagged blades.

Ranged Attack-longbow +9 attack (range 150/600.; one target): Hit: 1D8+6 damage piercing plus 3D6 poison damage from the black barbed arrows.

Melee Attack-jagged blades +9 attack (reach 5 ft; one target); Hit: 1D6+6 damage slashing plus target must make a DC 13 save vs. CON or target suffers 1D10 additional bleeding damage per round (requires a heal check DC 13 to stop). The bleed effect is cumulative. The blades appear to emerge from the arms and hands of the corvus archos and cannot be removed for use by others, though some say they can be used to forge magic daggers.

Statistics

STR 11 (0), DEX 20 (+5), CON 14 (+2), INT 16 (+3), WIS 14 (+2), CHA 11 (0)

Languages: common, ibixian

Senses: darkvision 120 feet, blindsight 60 feet, Perception+5 (Passive 15)

Skills: +8 Stealth, +3 Deception, +8 Sleight of Hand

TRAITS

Magic Resistance: the Corvus Archos gains advantage on saves against magic.

Keen Sight: corvus archos gain advantage when attempting to spot targets using shadow for stealth.

Swarm of Crows (recharge 5-6): The corvus archos can summon a swarm of ravens, crows and other large black birds which engulf a region 20 feet in diameter at a location within sight of the corvus archos. Each round he may move the swarm up to 60 feet. Any creature which begins its round in the swarm must move as if in difficult terrain, and must also make a DC 16 Dexterity save or take 3D6 piercing damage from the slashing claws and beaks of the swarm. Additionally, at the start of a caster's round who begins in the cloud, he must make a save vs. INT (DC 16) for any concentration spell in effect, and again for any spell he attempts to cast while in the radius of the Swarm of Crows. This is a concentration effect from the corvus archos, and if something that would disrupt concentration does so, the swarm dissipates into shadow and smoke at the end of the round in which the disruption takes effect.

Raven’s Disciple: The corvus archos can see through the eyes of any raven, crow, blackbird or rook within 10 miles of his position, as if he were in the eyes of the bird. He can speak with such birds with clarity and understanding when they are present and he can even whisper a message of one sentence or ten words and direct such a beast to relay the message to an intended target (which it must fly to for delivery).

Shadowflight: the corvus archos can cast fly as an at-will effect, manifesting shadow wings when he does so.

Shadowwalk: The corvus archos can as a bonus action teleport via shadow to another location within 60 feet. He may do this three times per short rest (encounter).

The corvus archos, sometimes also known as the raven lord or the crow lord, is an enigmatic denizen of the shadowfell who occasionally makes his way to the darker corners of the mortal realm to sew havoc. He is a tall, gaunt figure shrouded in darkness and usually wearing a cloak with ravenlike features or elements, who can extrude dagger-like blades from his forearms and hands and has a distinct prowess in the longbow.

Some have suspected a connection to other denizens of the plane of shadow such as dark creepers but none can say for sure. There is one theory that the native plane-dwellers of the shadow who worship Morrigan, the Raven Queen, manifest as the corvus archos when their priestly devotion reaches a certain point, but it has been remarked that precious few ever seem to exhibit any dedication or reverence for the dark goddess. Some believe the crovus archos is what happens to a shadar-kai who has lived too long and lost his ability to suffer, causing him to transform into an entity which must of necessity seek the suffering of others.

It is known that they can be bartered with, and while they tend to remain loners, on occasion packs of the beings have been encountered, especially in the shadowfell. A famous incident in Gloomwrought recalled by a dark dwarf of that town told of the day baron Vasghras took over; a horde of corvus archos descended on the town and slaughtered all who opposed the baron in his bid for control. Afterward, one particularly notorious corvus archos called Ember Eyes was seen taking a princely payment from the mayor.

Corvus archos can manifest a flock of crows and ravens out of shadow as part of their ability, and they delight in harrying foes at a distance with this trait while using lesser minions to close in on their targets. They strongly favor their barbed arrows, which are always laden with poison.

For reasons entirely unknown the corvus archos takes special delight in hunting the avian humanoids of the mortal plane, especially the tengu, and aarakocra.

Corvus archos are armed with +1 longbows and wear +1 magic leather armor. Their arm blades are magical, but are fused with bone and flesh along their arms, as if they wear flesh-grafted cestii and daggers; they can “flex” to retract and extract the blades as if drawing a weapon.