Thanks for the tapes, Bill

Whenever you see the cover for a Greek video tape on this site (and you'll see A LOT of those!!!) I would say there's a 50 pro-cent chance that that tape came from DEATHLAND on eBay!!

Deathland was BILL BAROUNIS in Athens, Greece. Yesterday, Bill Barounis died.

I never met Bill in person but thru our many eBay trades I got to know him. But not just from trading tapes, he was also part of the Cinehound gang (which is a film forum run by Bill's friend in Greece, Miltos). And Bill was the lone wolf behind the awesome one-man video label ONAR FILMS which exclusively released very rare / forgotten / lost Turkish cult movies.

When hardly anybody in Turkey could be bothered to save these films Bill was there and did just that. I knew him well enough to call him a friend but we weren't close as such. The odd short PM and piece of forum dialogue here and there. But he knew I held his work and him as a person in the highest regard.

One of the fond memories I have of him is his always fun descriptions of the tapes he auctioned. Unless someone has copied them they're probably gone for good but at least one is saved; In 2009 I won his auction for RAIDER PLATOON and since I could not find any info on the film I posted his entire eBay description. I'm glad I did. Here it is:

SYNOPSIS: VERY RARE Greek VHS of a 1988 Filipino ultra bloody and mega nasty war [movie], with tons of atrocities, tortures etc! highly recommended!! with Jerome Leo, Frannkie Catas and Doris Mann!! dir. by FEDERICK MOSES!!

SYNOPSIS: Super obscure film, ignored by imdb AND google!!! It's an 80's Filipino Marines squad vs evil guerrillas! And the latter are the nastiest and most sadistic scumbags I can remember! Check the intro sequence with the villains torturing their captives. they chop hands, slash necks, pull out intestines etc, in a gruesome opening sequence. The rest is equally brutal... check what they do to a woman they just killed over her killed husband! While I was checking this out, my wife in the next room commented ironically: "such a quality film... just bang-bang bang and aargh!!"

Bill was a fighter. He fought against bootleggers, torrent sites, people who didn't care, shops that didn't wish to stock just a few of his DVDs - he fought them all by trodding on. He refused to let any of that stop him. Unfortunately he lost the fight against the cruel big C. Bill was only 48 and leaves a wife and child. He will be sorely missed. Rest in peace, my friend.