'Videoman' is one of the all too rare films featuring a greatly flawed middle-aged male protagonist I can readily relate to, which, quite frankly, also made for frequently uneasy viewing! Ex-video-shop proprietor Ennio Midena (Stefan Sauk) is a disenfranchised, heavy-drinking divorcee, an increasingly bitter loner, wholly unwilling to connect to the self-absorbed swill of social media, an analogue diehard in a disorientating digital age of instant gratification, constantly obsessing about once again opening a niche video emporium; his dream one step closer to corporeal reality as he has secured a mysterious high-paying customer for his rare, mint-condition VHS copy of maestro Lucio Fulci's legendary video nasty 'Zombie'. The strangely charming 'Videoman' is an engaging, appealingly retro-flavoured, darkly tinged, character-based drama about the murkier side of life-consuming collector-mania, metropolitan loneliness, boozy existential despair, all blissfully bathed in the neon-hazed hue of lovingly synthesized 80s nostalgia!
The fitfully likeable, irksomely opinionated Ennio's maddeningly circuitous path to desperately locate a valuable missing tape, finally get free of debt, and find love is rarely less than compelling cinema. Ennio's stultifying insular, basement-dwelling inertia is considerably brightened by the arrival of 80s music fan, Egypt-loving dipso Simone Karlsson (Lena Nilsson). And the film's elusive nemesis 'Faceless' makes for an eerie peripheral presence, and the Giallo pastiche is amusingly staged, and the slew of euro-cult references are a delight, especially edifying is the lurid discussion over Rosalba Neri's 'body part' double in Fernando Di Leo's gruesome Giallo 'Slaughter Hotel'. An additional B-Movie bonus is the spot the-cult-movie game director Kristian A. Söderström clearly wants us to play, as 'Videoman' features 'Eye-Patching' excerpts from Bo Arne Vibenius's iconic 'Thriller: A cruel picture', and his lesser-known grindhouse classic 'Breaking Point', with a splendidly grisly 'insert' from Carlo Vanzina's cult 80s slasher 'Nothing Underneath'. Metalheads might also appreciate the brief cameo by writer/musician Daniel Ekeroth as fellow video collector Jonas 'Franco' Karlsson. 'Videoman' is a delightfully vivid, deliciously downbeat drama that is well worth 'tracking' down!'
