BrutalMoose - Tupperware Tapes

Brutalmoose watches VHS tapes about how to throw a Tupperware party.

My grandmother was the queen of Tupperware. One of things of hers that I inherited is the "How to Throw a Tupperware Party" book, which was probably the forerunner of the tape. But I never realized the multi-level marketing aspect to it before. We were constantly bombarded with new Tupperware but I don't remember ever hearing a pitch about becoming a salesperson once.

The "Manners: Who Needs Them?" Rap

 

Well I Sent a Nukie Tape and It Was Destroyed

 

An examination of value, collectibles and mania. During the Gold Rush, the people who most often made  money were the people selling the mining supplies. I have a feeling the people making the real money off of VHS's is the people grading the tapes.

The ebay auction, in case you want to collect Nukie, is at $35,100 as of this post.

Mr. T in Goldy 3: The Search for the Golden Bear (1988)

When was the last time you put a VHS tape into the VCR and watched a movie? At some point in your past, you watched a VHS movie for the last time and nobody knew it. 

In 1988, Mr. T appeared in the movie "Goldy 3: The Search for the Golden Bear" and it's perhaps so bad that it's not available to watch anywhere - even bootlegged. So I spent actual money to buy an actual VHS copy on actual eBay... actually paid to have it sent through the physical mail for days and actually sat down and watched it.

It should be noted that Mr. T's imdb filmography lists "Goldy 3: The Search for the Golden Bear" as coming out in 1988 and "The Magic of the Golden Bear: Goldy III" as coming out in 1994. You'd assume they were the same movie - the information is 90% the same - but they each list different leads. I have to assume they're the same and imdb is just inaccurate.

So this is a "frontier times" kids' movie where a female Tom Sawyer-type (Jessie) has a bear for a pet. Full disclosure: I did not watch "Goldy 1" and "Goldy 2" in preparation for this "review."

Mr. T plays a Native American who lives in the wilderness, communes with nature and specifically talks to the animals. Periodically the animals visit him and give him updates on what's happening to Jessie. Watching Mr. T talk to animals in Native American garb is a trip. Though... Here's one for the record books... This may be the only role Mr. T has ever played (other than himself) where his mohawk is completely appropriate for the character.

Cheech Marin is also in this movie and he plays a terrible magician whose show is failing. In desperation, he looks into a crystal ball, sees the town where Goldy lives, sees Goldy and is shown that Goldy is the key to making a great show. He sets out to obtain her. The main thing I want to point out here is that, in the reality of the movie, Marin is a completely inept magician and also possesses real magical powers.

So Cheech tries to buy the bear from Jessie's family and when they refuse, he uses tricks and magic to try to steal Goldy. The plot gets somewhat convoluted from there... in fact at one point I realized I had spaced out partway through and didn't know what was happening anymore and had to rewind it and re-watch a sizable chunk of "Goldy 3." That was a hard pill. I sum up: Jessie and Goldy run away into the woods, Goldy appears to be shot, turns out to be ok, they meet Mr. T, Cheech Marin regrets being evil and everything works out. Also in the end, they all agree to hypnotize Goldy to make her go back to living in the wild. So there will definitely be no "Goldy IV." Bear hypnotism!

The movie has a "Fall" look and feel and an "Ashokan Farewell"-esque soundtrack. It's a great world. But that's it for the positives. The plot is boring made-for-kids oatmeal and the acting is amazingly horrendous. There are a few kid-acting moments that are so bad, it occurred to me they would be wonderful memes for the Information Superhighway. After all, this movie doesn't exist on the internet, I could be the first to release them. But I just can't work up the energy to figure out the VHS-to-GIF conversion. Plus, it's Saturday night and I'm watching a children's movie alone - I'm not sure I get to laugh at anyone.

BrutalMoose - Mystery VHS Tapes 5

 Uh, Merry Christmas???

Rad Deleted Scenes - Epilogue

I thought I'd make just one more post about this since I'm sure everyone other than me is tired of it.

About 20 years ago me and a friend bonded over our mutual love of "Rad".

"I know 'Rad', he gets the Murray from the store!", I confidently told him.
"What? That's not in the movie."

And he was right, it wasn't in the movie. But I felt sure that there was something going on - surely I hadn't just made up a movie scene in my mind. There must be multiple versions. The version I rented from the video store must have had scenes that other VHSs didn't. Years later I started buying up tapes, trying to find another one like the one I had seen.

It didn't take too long before I was investing more money in Rad VHSs than I hoped to. I'm a pretty cheap guy and it's not a cheap habit, for anyone. The next phase was contacting Rad VHS sellers on eBay and simply asking them if the copy they were selling had extra scenes. I told them I'd pay more if it did, but this also was fruitless. Many, many messages to many, many people and no one had a special copy like the one of my youth.

The recent news proves that my memory was real, the scene was real and I was not crazy. So I have that. But it does raise another question. If my local video store's copy of Rad had a deleted scene and no other similar copy seems to exist... where did it come from? How?

Well someone on facebook might have a clue:

Is it a coincidence that this took place in the Philadelphia area and that's where I am too?

So the video store recorded a movie off of TV and offered it for rental? Keep in mind, this is before the widespread use of home printers so they can't just make a professional cover and put a VHS in it and pass it off as the real thing. I guess my best theory is that they had a real copy, someone didn't return it and they replaced it with a bootleg.

The funny thing about this idea, if it is what happened, is that my friend had watched his VHS so much he even memorized the movie advertisements before the movie and I... I don't remember any ads before the movie.

Rad - The Deleted Scenes

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is finished. The end has come. The fifth and last Golden Ticket has just been found right here in Paraguay. The Rad deleted scenes have surfaced on The Facebook.

Many thanks to Corey Kearns of facebook who writes:
"Hi guys, these are the cut scenes from the movie. I recorded this in 1989 from Canadian cable. These scenes are not in the American release. Sorry for the quality but this tape is almost worn through from me watching it so much lol, LETS WALK THIS SUCKER"

And many thanks to Victor for sharing the link.

It feels like the end of an era. I can't believe it's over. Not only did we get the deleted scenes back but I HAVE CONFIRMED THAT THERE WAS THE MURRAY FROM THE STORE. I hope to ruminate on that in a future post.

I would venture to say historians will be examining and picking apart every detail of these scenes for decades. But here are a few initial observations:

• Every actor in these scenes appears to be an alien or android. Is this how the rest of the movie appears to people who haven't seen it a million times?
• Luke's parents appear to be his grandparents. Did they skip a generation?
• Luke's dinner scene with his "parents" mirrors the scene in Star Wars where Luke has dinner with his aunt and uncle on Tatooine. In fact it's very similar. Is it coincidence? Luke/Luke!
• More character development for Amy. She likes WHAM and Duran Duran and she has a waterbed. Whoah.
• When your parent confronts you in your room and you storm out, where do you go?
• Imdb describes the third scene as "An unnamed boy storms out of his house late at night." The unnamed boy looks so familiar, I thought I could name him, is it possible it's the guy who says "how about a hand for our rad dude?"... It could be the character Harold or Miles but I can't figure out which one is which.
• Bart Taylor doesn't know how to act drunk. The filmmakers were perhaps unsure of the effectiveness themselves and perhaps just decided to have actor just announce that he's "smashed". We can't compare to the script because that's been taken down though we know this scene is in the script in some form.
• The couple who announce that he's smashed is interesting - Rick and Katie. It looks like the guy from the beginning who's listing off colleges he's applying to is with Katie, Cru's fantasy. Is this coupling seen anywhere else?
• Blob is standing in the back of the drunk scene. What is he doing?
• There could have been an alternate timeline where Sgt. Smith arrests Bart for public drunkenness and Cru wins Helltrack because Bart's still stuck in jail. But events would change further because without Bart in the race, the Reynolds Twins would try to win themselves instead of taking Cru out. Perhaps in this alternate timeline Cru loses.
• Sgt. Smith charges Bart $1.05 but I'd like to think it's not for his sundae, it's the cost of not getting arrested - freedom costs a buck-o-five.
• Did Bart lose Helltrack because he was hungover? Did Bart almost win Helltrack whilst hungover?
• Mr. Pratt has the mannerisms of some sort of bicycle priest. He seems to say "Go now, my child... and ride in peace."
• Cru receives the bike of his dreams and his reaction is as if someone just died. Shouldn't this be a happy moment?
• Unrelated to the deleted scenes.... but I just noticed that an actress is credited as "Katie's Friend" but no one is credited as "Katie".

Again, it's not much, just my initial thoughts.

BrutalMoose - Mystery VHS Tapes 3

I can't get enough of these. Though, I don't know who to recommend them to.

BrutalMoose - Mystery VHS Tapes 2

BrutalMoose continues to explore VHS tapes with unknown content.

BrutalMoose - Exploring an Unlabeled VHS Tape

I don't want to spoil anything but do you remember "Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman"? When was the last time you saw a commercial for door knobs?

Best of the Worst - Halloween Episode

In this year's Halloween episode of Best of the Worst, the gang watches "Vampire Assassin", "Hack-O-Lantern" and "Cathy's Curse".

Even though it's a Halloween episode, the scariest thing about it is alcoholism.

Rad - Where Are The Deleted Scenes?

Prologue

"Rad" is a BMX racing movie made in 1986. The people who witnessed it generally divide their lives into two parts: pre-Rad and post-Rad. Critics and scholars have widely hailed it as man's greatest achievement. If you don't know what I'm talking about, stop now. Go rent it and then continue.

Backstory

In the early 2000s, me and a friend started talking about the movie "Rad". After going back and forth with dueling quotes and reminiscences of the movie, I remembered, "Yeah, and before the big race Cru gets the new Murray from the guy's store."
"No."
"What?"
"That's not in Rad". My friend was absolutely unequivocal.
"Yeah, sure it is. He's going into the big race and he gets a new bike for free."
"No. Trust me. I basically have the entire movie memorized and I'm telling you, that doesn't happen."

It had been years since I saw the movie so I relented. An additional watch of the movie revealed he had every reason to be so confident - there is no such scene in the movie. It was an open and shut case, yet if that's not in "Rad", what was I remembering?

Mystery Solved

Some time later, we looked up "Rad" on IMDB and the situation became apparent. IMDB has an  "Alternate Versions" entry for "Rad" which says the following:

"Scenes included in the final airing on the Canadian cable movie station Superchannel, but absent from the home video version; a short sequence, actually made up of three different scenes, right after the confrontation at the Rad Racing T-Shirt stand. These scenes are:

• Luke is sitting at the dinner table with his parents. His father tells him it isn't the end of the world. He excuses himself from the table.
• Amy is sitting in her room listening to music when her mother comes in. They have a short exchange where her mother scolds her for acting childish. An unnamed boy storms out of his house late at night.
• A drunken Bart Taylor stumbles into the restaurant where Cru works just as it's closing. Shouting, Bart challenges him to a one-on-one race, since Cru has been disqualified from HellTrack. Bart winds up falling over and doing a face plant into a piece of pie on the table where Sgt. Smith is sitting.
• Cru thanks Mr. Pratt for him and the town getting behind him and supporting Rad Racing. Mr. Pratt gives Cru a brand new bike from his store.

All of the characters from the deleted scenes are listed in the credits on the home video version."
[Erroneous "deleted" scene removed, spelling mistakes corrected, etc.]

Note: For what it's worth, I even remember an additional detail not listed on IMDB - the "bike" was a Murray.

The Missing VHS Link

That scene wasn't an invention of my imagination - I had simply seen a version of the movie with the "deleted scenes" still intact. Except the IMDB page says those scenes were only on Canadian Cable and absent from the VHS version. The problem is, I wasn't watching on Canadian cable. I've never seen Canadian cable. I've never been to Canada. I saw those scenes on a VHS copy from a local video rental store.

The key to tracking down the "extended" version of the movie would be to simply go back to that store. Unfortunately, like most small video rental businesses, it went out of business long ago.

But I have no reason to believe some local yokel video place is special (REAL special). If they had an alternate version of the movie, surely there are others out there? I'd think so but despite lots of searching, I've never found one. I've not found one, I've never even talked to anyone that saw one,  I've never even talked to anyone who knew anyone else that saw one. Nothing on youtube. No results even from Google There are entire websites devoted to the movie that don't have one word to say on the subject. The only source of information that a VHS version of "Rad" with the deleted scenes even exists is my memory.

A Call To Break The Ice

As a "Rad" fan, I really want to recover the lost footage and see those deleted scenes. I imagine every fan would. But randomly buying VHS copies of the movie and hoping to buy just the right copy (though awesome), would be ridiculously expensive. I don't know what the odds are (or even if there are any odds at all), but I have to imagine it's like playing the lottery. In short, finding this tape on chance alone would take a radical miracle.

Other than the aforementioned IMDB page, this blog is the only other page on the internet about this subject. So I'm throwing it out to anyone with any information. Have you ever seen the deleted scenes? Do you know someone who has? Do you have any information whatsoever about the existence of VHS versions with the deleted scenes included? Do you own a copy? Could I buy it? Do you have any information about this subject whatsoever?

Leave a comment. Let's find this sucker.