Exploitica (NSFW!) was amazing for its cheeky re-editing of clips. I Spit On Your Grave was not available at the time that they re-edited it, and subversively added tense action music to all of the revenge moments! The Phantom Empire was used in a great manner actually
as a weekly serial, even if it was dubbed and layered over with comments! And I particularly like the episode in which Just Jaeckin's notorious S&M classic The Story of O was re-told as the story of a particularly naive and trusting young lady just 'accidentally' getting into all manner of situations: The Story of D'Oh!
I liked Vids, and even though it was often rather crude I did think it looked rather fun to run a video shop! Probably the reality was not quite as glamorous as they made it look! I seem to remember that they even
introduced a season of classic Godzilla movies over the Christmas period of 1999 (NSFW), which was quite important as that was the first time that any of the films were shown in their original Japanese versions with subtitles rather than in the usual dubbed form, and for the series showing many of the early black and white titles. Though that was also the last showing of any Godzilla film in any form on UK television since that time, aside from the Roland Emmerich film.
The last gasp was the other great Pete Tombs series that tied in with one of his books, the Mondo Macabro one from 2001, which showed titles like Alucarda and The Killing of Satan. After that there just was not the space on Channel 4 for seasons of arthouse or wilder exploitation films (aside from the great Cinema Iran one in 2003 that briefly bucked the trend, and the regular Indian film series), and unfortunately Film4 did not quite pick up the slack in that respect, showing more modern arthouse offerings with the occasional brief flurry of content like the Naruse season that basically showed the contents of the BFI set. There were times in the 90s where showings of certain films on television were preceding any kind of home video or theatrical release, whereas now it seems as if the schedulers are more content to show films that are still interesting but have been already available on home video formats for a while.
I loved The Trip too and really wish there was a disc of all of the episodes. At the time I pretty much took it for granted and was watching it more for the use of the NASA archive footage that the first series was entirely built around. I felt a bit less enthused by the second series where the NASA structure fell away and it just became archive footage in general, but on later viewings of episodes I really liked those as well, especially when I approached the show more from the perspective of appreciating the music and the way it was being edited to the images, or rather the way that images are being edited to the music.
There have been three particular sequences that stuck with me from The Trip over the years. The first was the
entire second half of episode 3 but especially the end of that episode - all of the episodes of the first series did a stylistic thing of fast reversing all the way back through the entire episode of the archive footage at the very end, finishing up with the rocket with "The Trip" superimposed on the side of it coming in to land instead of taking off (sometimes it seemed that the forward running footage was occasionally put in there more for the impact it would have on being reversed at the end!), and that one particular episode featured footage of an impassioned speech about how leaders were using money for space exploration whilst doing nothing to save the "starving, poor people of Earth", just before the episode reversed to the
Roygbiv track by Boards of Canada. That was incredibly moving. I also love a whole sequence to P.E.T.R.O.L. by Orbital that intermixes footage of extreme back exercises, black and white Russian films about death, Silent Hill "You Died" footage, doctors walking purposefully in groups down hospital corridors and circuses which annoyingly seems to have disappeared on me at the moment (but
this glorious puppet show should serve well in its stead!). And I just love
the fantastic editing and flow of this three song, ten minute sequence from the second series (NSFW) with that intense final track feeling a bit like how I would want an adaptation of Gravity's Rainbow to look! (Plus I love the cheeky slam of Communist China in the "Intermission"!)
The nearest thing to The Trip now is perhaps Adult Swim's
Off The Air series, which is why I hope that, now that E4 is starting with "Adult Swim Fridays", those shows might turn up too.
