Issue 25: Special Effects

“This thing doesn’t want to show itself, it wants to hide inside an imitation.”VHS Tracking is a zine of movie recommendations, and Issue 25 holds the theme of Special Effects. A variety of writers examine the glory days of practical effects, from stop-motion skeletons to gloop-covered bodies, dated CGI animation and traumatic freeway crashes, and […]

Special Effects (1984)

What I enjoy about Larry Cohen is how he approaches things as a writer: the story’s gotta have a hook! Released in the same year as Brian De Palma’s Body Double, Cohen’s film Special Effects (1984) is a comparable twist on a Hitchcockian thriller. The hook: What if a movie director was a murderer? (A […]

Johnny Mnenomic (1995)

I distinctly remember seeing Johnny Mnemonic (1995) at the cinema when I was a teenager and afterwards trying to convince myself it was good. That it was worth the pocket money I spent on the ticket. Like most people, I was hoping for a great Keanu action movie like Speed. It wasn’t that; it was […]

eXistenZ (1999)

Continuing the cyber-punk run I’m on by firing up a rewatch of David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ (1999), which is up there with Dark City with cult movies overshadowed by The Matrix’s box office success. Pre-millennium video-game inspired noirish narratives about the nature of reality and its confusion with fiction; the type with strong fans who will […]