“Documentaries from the Edge” premiered at the Fantasia International Film Festival in 2021, and now Straight to VHS has been released on DVD with an exclusive extra: the original, seldom seen cult thriller “Act of Violence in a Young Journalist.”
Celia Pouzet said, “Navigating between Lynch’s Inland Empire and Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead, Torres blurs the lines between reality and fiction, sometimes unwillingly – the subject is just too strange. This demented investigation takes him into an unfathomable spiral, both comical and terrifying… and we’re dragged into the rabbit hole along with him.”
During the 1980s, direct-to-video oddities were in vogue. Despite the fact that VHS cassettes were inexpensive, they provided a gritty platform for filmmakers in every corner and crevice, enabling them to offer a large volume of entertainment that defied traditional cinematic convention. Take a trip back to Uruguay in 1988, when an enigmatic and mercurial director, Manuel Lamas, made an indelible mark on the industry with ACTO DE VIOLENCIA EN UNA JOVEN PERIODISTA (also known as ACT OF VIOLENCE IN A YOUNG JOURNALIST), a low-budget release that quickly gained notoriety as the country’s first direct-to-video thriller. Although the film achieved cult status in the same vein as films like Plan 9 from Outer Space or The Room, and was praised by both local cinephiles and camp aficionados, the film continued to gain notoriety, partly because of the exotic theories surrounding Lamas, about whom virtually nothing is known.
Release Date: May 17, 2022
DVD/Digital Pricing: $24.95
BONUS FEATURES
The original 1988 feature ACTO DE VIOLENCIA EN UNA JOVEN PERIODISTA (presented in Spanish with English subtitles)
Official Trailer
MOVIE TECH SPECS
Type: DVD/Digital (Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, Google)
Running Time: 77 minutes
Genre: Documentary
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Audio: Stereo
Language: Spanish with English Subtitles
