THE ARCHIVE BRIDGEPORT MOVIE
The movie had been re-edited a number of times, Upson said, and had a reputation for being financed, not unlike other quick and cheap exploitation films of the era, by mafiosos looking for a tax write off.īut the store’s eccentric cinematic holdings go well beyond the movies themselves. Kino’s shelves stocked the silent German film Sex in Chains (1928) as well the 1970s vampire films of director Jean Rollin.īrown, 28, who has been collecting horror movies and ephemera since he was 10, pulled a Blu-Ray of 1971’s The Zodiac Killer from the shelves and confessed that, while this grindhouse version’s accuracy and cinematic prowess pale in comparison to David Fincher’s 2007 take on the same story, he had no compunctions about giving it a second, third, or fourth watch.Ī few shelves down, Upson pointed to a recently restored version of The Undertaker, the last film by Maniac star Joe Spinell, which was finished but has never before been released. John over the relative merits of Alien³ and Alien: Resurrection.)īut the movies for sale range far and wide, spanning the history of exploitation cinema, and therefore the history of cinema itself. (As this reporter walked in last Sunday afternoon, Upson had just popped in an unmarked VHS that turned out to be Ridley Scott’s 1979 Alien, leading to a friendly debate between Upson, Brown, and their mutual friend Ian St. Old film reels, film canisters, movie box sets, and framed promotional posters fill out the rest of the wall space alongside a monitor continually playing the exploitation flick or sci-fi caper or monster movie of the clerk’s choosing.
The Bridgeport Post was published in Bridgeport, Connecticut and with 456285 searchable pages. The walls are lined with shelves of DVDs and Blu-Rays from distribution companies like Vinegar Syndrome, Arrow, Kino, Severin Films, and Mondo Vision, while aisles of one-dollar records, LaserDiscs, CEDs, record players, and first edition movie memoribilia fill the room’s center. Explore the The Bridgeport Post online newspaper archive. The Archive is good for that too: making the fun, floundering, and grotesque aspects of movie history available for all to consider, the more misshapen and entertaining the better.Ī few blocks from Bridgeport’s train station, fire department, the old Majestic Theater, and wide swaths of desolate urban terrain, The Archive’s unassuming concrete exterior, emblazoned by a bright red door, gives way to a small space overflowing with the physical presence of movies. “I’ve been thrifting for years, and I’ve never found a player for one of those.”
“This is the worst format that ever existed,” Upson’s friend Bryan Brown said with a smile, gesturing towards the stack of all-but-obsolete VideoDiscs cataloged alongside rows of used records ( Highway 61 Revisited, The Best of Dolly Parton) and genre-film LaserDiscs ( Chinatown, Dead Alive).
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