Regardless of its state-of-the-art movie projection system, River Oaks Theatre nonetheless appreciates the aesthetic and cinematic joys to be discovered with a VCR.
Houstonia’s The Should Listing tells you about one thing happening in Houston that you simply completely can not miss.
By no means belief a British lawyer in a gimp swimsuit. That’s probably the most priceless life classes one can study on a Thursday evening on the reopened River Oaks Theatre, courtesy of a brand new month-to-month sequence that brings just a little thriller to the showtimes listing. Dubbed “Tape Worms,” it guarantees viewers an opportunity to look at a VHS rarity on the silver display. The catch: They received’t know what they’re watching on any given evening till the theater’s program supervisor, Rob Saucedo, steps up and provides the introduction.
The thought happened early on in River Oaks Theatre’s reopening programming plans, as an surprising means for cinephiles to each have a good time bodily media as a group and luxuriate in films they might not in any other case have a possibility to look at anyplace else.
“VHS tradition has actually grown within the final decade or so. Collectors are actually making this VHS tradition thrive. I’ve a fairly large assortment of VHS tapes, films that haven’t formally ever been launched in America, or have been do-it-yourself movies that have been being made by filmmakers of their hometowns and have been by no means given extensive launch,” Saucedo says. “I assumed that the Tape Worms is perhaps a good way to showcase a few of these movies, and added the acute novelty of letting visitors watch a film on VHS in a movie show on this, our 12 months of 2025.”
Proper now, Tape Worms picks come from his personal archives. Saucedo estimates that he owns sufficient VHS to run for a number of years earlier than needing to name in different collectors, although he’s open to inviting what he calls “visitor programmers” to share their very own hidden gems.
The primary entry within the sequence was in October 2024, when the River Oaks Theatre lastly reopened to the general public after a three-year renovation. The Killing of Devil, a religion-based motion film from the Philippines pitting a magical ex-con in opposition to the Prince of Darkness himself, was chosen to align with the Halloween season. In November, Saucedo went with the completely entertaining Shotgun, a jingoistic revenge thriller involving a serial killing English gentleman sporting a BDSM theme and a penchant for surroundings chewing.
Tape Worms picks are normally supposed to coincide with seasonal occasions or upcoming extensive releases. For instance, Saucedo screened the Turksploitation movie 3 Dev Adam this previous January as a lead-in to the upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe entry Captain America: Courageous New World. The film options fully unlicensed variations of each Cap and legendary luchador and actor El Santo saving the world from none apart from family title supervillain…errr…Spider-Man?
It is foolish stuff, and that’s precisely why Saucedo desires to share all of it with the Tape Worms audiences. Earlier than every displaying, he reveals the title of the night’s thriller film and asks guests to genuinely contemplate what they’re viewing as artwork. Even with the flicks’ low budgets, technical points on the forged and crew degree, and flagrant mental property legislation violations, Saucedo makes the request to understand the earnestness and confidence with which these works have been crafted. He makes the purpose that there are “plenty of nice filmmakers on the market who didn’t essentially have the assets of Steven Spielberg or George Lucas,” and needs viewers to embrace his picks “at face worth” moderately than grading them in opposition to slicker productions.
“I’m probably not an enormous fan of the entire so-bad-it’s-good mentality that some movie followers embrace. My method has been [that] there’s no such factor as a responsible pleasure. When you’re having fun with the film, which means it’s an excellent film,” Saucedo says. “Why would you need to put your self above that movie and make your self really feel such as you’re higher than the movie?”
In truth, audiences aren’t allowed to ship a stay commentary on the flicks. This isn’t a free-for-all public efficiency of Thriller Science Theater 3000 (which, it must be famous, at all times held a real affection for the flicks it skewered—a major comedic issue that imitators usually overlook). Guests should adhere to the identical etiquette as in the event that they have been watching the rest on the River Oaks Theatre. The rule helps get viewers to interact carefully with the artwork projected onto the display, and Saucedo notes that even with a rotating month-to-month date, the Tape Worms exhibits virtually at all times promote out. In any case, the theater is offering a novel, social cinematic expertise, as lots of the films themselves didn’t make it stateside, solely launched in a small geographic area, or fell out of print a long time in the past.
“You could by no means discover a copy of this film anyplace, and you need to preserve that reminiscence of watching within the theater,” Saucedo says.
Know Earlier than You Go
Tape Worms is a month-to-month sequence, although it’s held on completely different Thursdays moderately than a set date. Tickets are $15. For extra details about when Tape Worms shall be showing on the schedule, go to the River Oaks Theatre web site.
Disclosure: Previous to becoming a member of Houstonia’s employees, the writer of this text edited one in all Robert Saucedo’s comedian books and carried out voice-over for the trailer.
