ALIEN ABDUCTION & BIRTHDAY CAKE: 'THE MCPHERSON TAPE' CREATES FOUND-FOOTAGE HORROR
Way the fuck back in 1989, film-maker DEAN ALIOTO was living in the year 1999, as this, his debut feature film, laid the groundwork for the modern found footage horror movie that we all know and love/hate to this day. Cruelly forgotten to time, but not by hardcore genre fans, THE McPHERSON TAPE has a brand new chance to shine as it makes its way to U.K. shores courtesy of 101 FILMS working in association with AGFA…
THE SYNOPSIS
On a fall evening in 1983, a young man was videotaping his niece's 5th birthday party. As the night's strange occurrences took place, he kept his video camera running, recording the entire event.
THE REVIEW
Armed with a brand new video camera and the singular purpose to tape his niece’s 5th birthday party, Michael Van Heese (DEAN ALIOTO) is beset on all sides by family members who have descended upon his mother’s home to celebrate the event. His brother’s, Jason and Eric (PATRICK KELLY & TOMMY GIAVOCCHINI respectively), seldom speak to him with any degree of respect or brotherly concern, choosing instead to engage in infantile back-and-forths, and passive-aggressive displays of disdain for their siblings’ lifestyle and his seeming ineptitude in supporting their beleaguered mother (SHIRLEY McCALLA), who is recently widowed and who frequently retreats into a bottle rather than acknowledge her grief. When all the electrics give out on the property, the Van Heese brothers set to work on the fuse box before witnessing an eerie red light pass over their heads. Surmising that the light went over towards a neighbouring property, they set off through the woods to check it out only to come face to fucked-up face with three astral interlopers just casually kickin’ it in a clearing.
“We have travelled from afar in order to stick our fingers in the assholes of yokels”
At an hour and nine minutes long, THE McPHERSON TAPE, for better or for worse, has all the trappings associated with both the best and the worst found-footage movies out there in that it simultaneously feels like it’s all over and done with too quickly while also feeling like it takes an ice age to get going. All the tricks you’ve come to expect from indie filmmakers on a budget of $18.00 and a bag of Jolly Rancher candies are present and correct; long periods of time spent on the minutiae of everyday inanities, minimal visibility of the antagonist(s) etc., but, all things considered, it’s pretty staggering how confident and self-assured this production is. Imagine the steel balls it must have taken to spend 5-10 minutes at a time focused on the petty squabbling between the brothers, or to incorporate several side-plots (such as the aforementioned Mrs Van Heese’s dabbling’s with alcoholism) that take us down narrative cul-de-sac’s, when your audience wouldn’t have been able to comprehend that this was all just the standard, par-for-the-course world-building fluff prior to the real shit going down. It’s impressively fully formed. It goes without saying that some of the special effects, limited as they are, are wonky as all fuck, but special mention should be made of the alien’s craft that, when finally seen, is jaw droppingly good.
Truly the most perplexing thing about the 80’s is how anyone ever found anyone else attractive enough to breed with them.
If I was going to criticise anything about the movie, it’s the relative lack of imagination shown towards the cut n’ thrust of the story once the alien invaders have caught sight of the Van Heese brothers and their camera. Save for one or two moments that really make the skin crawl, the narrative takes a bizarre turn when Mrs Van Heese suggests that they all just forget about this alien invasion nonsense and get back to the niece's birthday celebration. As much as I love my own daughter, her 5th birthday party would come a very distant second to battening down the hatches and fighting tooth and nail to avoid an invasive anal probing.
THE McPHERSON TAPE isn’t perfect, but no found footage horror movie is. This had the unenviable task of having to beat a path for the hundreds of future contributions to the genre, and all the while it had no idea that that was what it was doing. My admiration for it is immeasurable.
THE PRESENTATION
Boy is it difficult to appraise this one. The movie was shot on VHS but, thanks to a warehouse fire, the original tape itself was destroyed. It was only through an ex-rental, Mom n’ Pop video store copy that ALIOTO was able to even begin working on a remastered edition. As such, you may be asking yourself why a Blu Ray transfer is even necessary, but why settle for a shitty DVD copy when you’re going to get the best results from another format entirely? Given that THE McPHERSON TAPE sort of stumbled into being the blueprint from which many a future found footage movie would work, Blu Ray is the best way to preserve a true historical document of this magnitude. If anything, the limitations of VHS as a format help to hammer a large chunk of the movie home, and it loses nothing of that in the transfer to a better format.
“We find your midwestern interior decoration to be highly distasteful”
THE SPECIAL FEATURES
UFO ABDUCTION: The 2017 director’s cut
Commentary track with director Dean Alioto on original cut
1989 theatrical premiere introduction
ENCOUNTERS TV segment
Fantastic Fest Q&A
Reversible cover artwork
THE McPHERSON TAPE is released on the 14th February by 101 FILMS in the U.K. and can be preordered here. The initial run comes with limited edition O-Ring packaging and a reversible sleeve.
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