What do you think?
Rate this book
Video Dungeon
Ripped from the pages of Empire magazine, the first collection of film critic, film historian and novelist Kim Newman’s reviews of the best and worst B movies. Some of the cheapest, trashiest, goriest and, occasionally, unexpectedly good films from the past 25 years are here, torn apart and stitched back together again in Kim’s unique style. Everything you want to know about DTV hell is here. Enter if you dare.
- GenresNonfictionFilmHorror
560 pages, Paperback
First published October 11, 2016
10 people are currently reading
359 people want to read
About the author
Kim Newman
288 books949 followersNote: This author also writes under the pseudonym of Jack Yeovil.
An expert on horror and sci-fi cinema (his books of film criticism include Nightmare Movies and Millennium Movies), Kim Newman's novels draw promiscuously on the tropes of horror, sci-fi and fantasy. He is complexly and irreverently referential; the Dracula sequence--Anno Dracula, The Bloody Red Baron and Dracula,Cha Cha Cha--not only portrays an alternate world in which the Count conquers Victorian Britain for a while, is the mastermind behind Germany's air aces in World War One and survives into a jetset 1950s of paparazzi and La Dolce Vita, but does so with endless throwaway references that range from Kipling to James Bond, from Edgar Allen Poe to Patricia Highsmith.
In horror novels such as Bad Dreams and Jago, reality turns out to be endlessly subverted by the powerfully malign. His pseudonymous novels, as Jack Yeovil, play elegant games with genre cliche--perhaps the best of these is the sword-and-sorcery novel Drachenfels which takes the prescribed formulae of the games company to whose bible it was written and make them over entirely into a Kim Newman novel.
Life's Lottery, his most mainstream novel, consists of multiple choice fragments which enable readers to choose the hero's fate and take him into horror, crime and sf storylines or into mundane reality.
An expert on horror and sci-fi cinema (his books of film criticism include Nightmare Movies and Millennium Movies), Kim Newman's novels draw promiscuously on the tropes of horror, sci-fi and fantasy. He is complexly and irreverently referential; the Dracula sequence--Anno Dracula, The Bloody Red Baron and Dracula,Cha Cha Cha--not only portrays an alternate world in which the Count conquers Victorian Britain for a while, is the mastermind behind Germany's air aces in World War One and survives into a jetset 1950s of paparazzi and La Dolce Vita, but does so with endless throwaway references that range from Kipling to James Bond, from Edgar Allen Poe to Patricia Highsmith.
In horror novels such as Bad Dreams and Jago, reality turns out to be endlessly subverted by the powerfully malign. His pseudonymous novels, as Jack Yeovil, play elegant games with genre cliche--perhaps the best of these is the sword-and-sorcery novel Drachenfels which takes the prescribed formulae of the games company to whose bible it was written and make them over entirely into a Kim Newman novel.
Life's Lottery, his most mainstream novel, consists of multiple choice fragments which enable readers to choose the hero's fate and take him into horror, crime and sf storylines or into mundane reality.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
October 7, 2017
You may know Kim Newman from his Anno Dracula books, those culturally dense stories of an alternate history, combining fictional characters with real people and events, as well as his other fictions. I liked them a lot.
But this book is about one of Kim’s other jobs, as a film critic. He has been writing reviews for magazines since the 1980’s and in Empire Magazine each month since 2000. This is a collection of his film reviews from Empire's The Video Dungeon – not the big hitting movies like Stephen King’s IT (2017) but the oft-forgotten horror B-movie ones, the ones that in the good old days you’d rent from the video store on a bad VHS tape as a cheap gamble to watch on a Saturday night. These days they’re probably to be found, if they’re found at all, late at night (or early morning) on the Syfy channel, and shown once in a blue moon before disappearing back to obscurity. In other words, you’re more likely to find Sharknado here than The Shining. (Actually, the first 4 Sharknado movies are here.)
So what we’re doing here is celebrating the cheap and the nasty or the video direct market stall. What Kim does here, in as entertaining a way as possible, is highlight the worthy or eviscerate the dross. For example (I won’t name the movie!):
Ouch. I must admit most of these movies in the book I’d never have heard of, but Kim’s reviews here have made me want to see some of them.
The book has divided the reviews into ten groups, such as ‘Famous Monsters’, ‘Cryptids and Critters’, ‘Wildlife’, ‘Secret Men (and Women)’ and even ‘Weird Hippie Shit’. There is an Index at the back, but I’m not sure that this grouping works for me. If you’re trying to look up a movie you’re going to watch, then you have ten sub-categories to go through before you realise you might find it. Personally, I would have preferred either a full alphabetical order, allowing it to be used for easy reference, or a chronological order, either based on the date of the movie or the date the review was published in Empire.
But this is a minor quibble. What makes this work is the detailed yet pithy reviews Kim gives each movie, combining his considerable movie knowledge with a knowing wink and more than a few grumps. Although admittedly they are in small print, most of the reviews are less than half a page in length, which makes this hefty 500+ page tome a dense read. It’s a great book to pick reviews at random, or read a set together and very good entertainment value. Every time I read a review I felt I came out of it better informed, which is not a bad thing in my opinion. (There were a few that I laughed out loud at, too.)
For genre readers who are already fans of Kim’s reviews, this is a very welcome collection of his work-to-date. I can see this one being dipped into regularly here in Hobbit Towers. For anyone else, it’s like a wonderful delve into the grubbiest parts of a friend’s video/digital download collection. Great fun and highly recommended for choosing those bad movies to watch at Hallowe'en.
But this book is about one of Kim’s other jobs, as a film critic. He has been writing reviews for magazines since the 1980’s and in Empire Magazine each month since 2000. This is a collection of his film reviews from Empire's The Video Dungeon – not the big hitting movies like Stephen King’s IT (2017) but the oft-forgotten horror B-movie ones, the ones that in the good old days you’d rent from the video store on a bad VHS tape as a cheap gamble to watch on a Saturday night. These days they’re probably to be found, if they’re found at all, late at night (or early morning) on the Syfy channel, and shown once in a blue moon before disappearing back to obscurity. In other words, you’re more likely to find Sharknado here than The Shining. (Actually, the first 4 Sharknado movies are here.)
So what we’re doing here is celebrating the cheap and the nasty or the video direct market stall. What Kim does here, in as entertaining a way as possible, is highlight the worthy or eviscerate the dross. For example (I won’t name the movie!):
"Among the shoddiest Dracula movies ever made, this looks and sounds like shot-on-video porn: in fact, it’s less well made than Intercourse with a Vampyre or Muffy the Vampire Layer.”
Ouch. I must admit most of these movies in the book I’d never have heard of, but Kim’s reviews here have made me want to see some of them.
The book has divided the reviews into ten groups, such as ‘Famous Monsters’, ‘Cryptids and Critters’, ‘Wildlife’, ‘Secret Men (and Women)’ and even ‘Weird Hippie Shit’. There is an Index at the back, but I’m not sure that this grouping works for me. If you’re trying to look up a movie you’re going to watch, then you have ten sub-categories to go through before you realise you might find it. Personally, I would have preferred either a full alphabetical order, allowing it to be used for easy reference, or a chronological order, either based on the date of the movie or the date the review was published in Empire.
But this is a minor quibble. What makes this work is the detailed yet pithy reviews Kim gives each movie, combining his considerable movie knowledge with a knowing wink and more than a few grumps. Although admittedly they are in small print, most of the reviews are less than half a page in length, which makes this hefty 500+ page tome a dense read. It’s a great book to pick reviews at random, or read a set together and very good entertainment value. Every time I read a review I felt I came out of it better informed, which is not a bad thing in my opinion. (There were a few that I laughed out loud at, too.)
For genre readers who are already fans of Kim’s reviews, this is a very welcome collection of his work-to-date. I can see this one being dipped into regularly here in Hobbit Towers. For anyone else, it’s like a wonderful delve into the grubbiest parts of a friend’s video/digital download collection. Great fun and highly recommended for choosing those bad movies to watch at Hallowe'en.
April 2, 2022
Why does this book even exist? Kim Newman's NIGHTMARE MOVIES, written in the late '80s, is an excellent survey of post-NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD horror cinema, but VIDEO DUNGEON merely collects capsule reviews for various categories of genre films. Theoretically, it's interested to read about a spy film starring Sean Connery's brother as James Bond's, but most of these were mediocre at best, and long forgotten by now. Newman didn't even recognize the greatness of LAKE MUNGO or JNFRIENDED at the time. The fact that it runs over 500 pages, rather than culling these reviews down to the most notable films, makes it a total slog.
April 9, 2018
Gives away any plot surprises you might not want to know. There's no quick reference to the best films reviewed here. You'll have to suffer through a great deal of chaff. Bit of a tedious read unless you're an obsessive horror fan that loves bad horror films.
August 30, 2023
An absolute chore to get through. If you're going to review mind numbing movie after mind numbing movie can we get a little more humour? I'm completely here for the old noirs and the Italian exploitation (probably more than I should be) but the bottom of the barrel streaming movies are a waste without the comedy. Glad he shares my feelings though to Syfy and The Asylum. They're borderline offensive if you grew up on a particular type of creature feature. Still, most of these reviews are a little dry and could have done with the main films of genres representing them all. Maybe it's fine in small doses but clumped together it's near psychotic. Joe Bob Briggs really worked that one out with his tales of his girlfriends causing him drama which made it fun and was way more interesting than any of the movies, celebrating the act itself of moviegoing. Can we get some gonzo please, Kim? Wanna hear about you getting the kettle on and the brews made, polishing Dracula toy figures or whatever it is you do watching this shite.
Perhaps, the main joke here is that Kim Newman is so blatantly over qualified. His knowledge shines through but I do believe this has way too much on retelling of plot and not enough reviewing. I may be alone here and I'm sure conservative critics would disagree but unless you're going over character arcs and narrative troubles, plots are redundant in reviews now cause you can just Google them. So I don't really see any point in them appearing for purely functional reasons. I'd always include them but it has to be for critiquing the narrative not rettelling it. There's occasions he's overdoing it here with no gain but when he uses it to compare the weirdest takes on something he knows well I'm here for it. Cause the dudes clearly seen a lot and I love seeing him getting his head blown off by some really obscure porn take on Dracula that is somehow even weirder than the other 20 obscure porn takes on Dracula he's seen.
Annoyingly though the random comparisons don't happen enough. He's too restricted in this format. The synopsis for the book advertises that this displays Kim's unique style. Can't fully agree. In his other more academic books he has demonstrated a style which is that rapid fire analysis of like 5 films in 10 seconds. Taking them down at an alarming rate like John Wick takes down bad guys. However, on a single film basis I'm not feeling that so much. Could it be he's a better film historian than reviewer?
Perhaps, the main joke here is that Kim Newman is so blatantly over qualified. His knowledge shines through but I do believe this has way too much on retelling of plot and not enough reviewing. I may be alone here and I'm sure conservative critics would disagree but unless you're going over character arcs and narrative troubles, plots are redundant in reviews now cause you can just Google them. So I don't really see any point in them appearing for purely functional reasons. I'd always include them but it has to be for critiquing the narrative not rettelling it. There's occasions he's overdoing it here with no gain but when he uses it to compare the weirdest takes on something he knows well I'm here for it. Cause the dudes clearly seen a lot and I love seeing him getting his head blown off by some really obscure porn take on Dracula that is somehow even weirder than the other 20 obscure porn takes on Dracula he's seen.
Annoyingly though the random comparisons don't happen enough. He's too restricted in this format. The synopsis for the book advertises that this displays Kim's unique style. Can't fully agree. In his other more academic books he has demonstrated a style which is that rapid fire analysis of like 5 films in 10 seconds. Taking them down at an alarming rate like John Wick takes down bad guys. However, on a single film basis I'm not feeling that so much. Could it be he's a better film historian than reviewer?
April 16, 2018
This collection of Kim Newman’s movie reviews from his Empire magazine column Video Dungeon is grouped into chapters covering Confinements and Dangerous Games (stories where someone is held captive or hunted), Cryptids and Critters (lots of Bigfoot movies, plus some mermaids, etc.), Famous Monsters (Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster), Found Footage, Hard Case Crime (lots of gangsters), High Adventure (lots of quests for lost cities), Secret Agent Men (And Women), Serial Killers and Cops, Weird Hippie Shit, Wildlife (mostly shark and crocodile movies). The subtitle “The Collected Reviews” led me to believe that it was a complete collection, but in the Acknowledgements at the end of the book he says that it “represents a tiny selection of the material I have gathered - many, many other categories remain to be explored, from Aliens to Zombies.” So it sounds like a follow-up volume may be a possibility.
At first I was a bit disconcerted by how much of the plot Newman gives away of some the movies he reviews. He usually avoids actual endings, but will give away a few things it would probably help not to know when going in. Eventually I just decided to trust to poor memory. If a film sounds intriguing hopefully that will stick but the details of the review will be forgotten by the time I watch it. Though it has to be said that there is a preponderance of films covered which I'm sure are more fun to read about than they are to watch. Who knew there were so many silly high-concept shark movies that had been churned out by the likes of The Asylum and Roger Corman. We’ve all heard of Sharktopus and Sharknado, but what about Avalanche Sharks or Shark Exorcist?
While Newman reviews plenty of films that were not really worth his time, he does dig up some rare gems. And, in a few of the chapters, he digs deep into films of the past, some treasures, some trash of a more interesting variety than the bad CGI monsterfests.
The reviews are thoughtful and sometimes quite amusing, and I like the layout with outrageous quotes from its dialogue sometimes included before a film’s review.
At first I was a bit disconcerted by how much of the plot Newman gives away of some the movies he reviews. He usually avoids actual endings, but will give away a few things it would probably help not to know when going in. Eventually I just decided to trust to poor memory. If a film sounds intriguing hopefully that will stick but the details of the review will be forgotten by the time I watch it. Though it has to be said that there is a preponderance of films covered which I'm sure are more fun to read about than they are to watch. Who knew there were so many silly high-concept shark movies that had been churned out by the likes of The Asylum and Roger Corman. We’ve all heard of Sharktopus and Sharknado, but what about Avalanche Sharks or Shark Exorcist?
While Newman reviews plenty of films that were not really worth his time, he does dig up some rare gems. And, in a few of the chapters, he digs deep into films of the past, some treasures, some trash of a more interesting variety than the bad CGI monsterfests.
The reviews are thoughtful and sometimes quite amusing, and I like the layout with outrageous quotes from its dialogue sometimes included before a film’s review.
November 12, 2018
This whopping great collection of something like 600 film reviews Newman - a man who's suffered through, but still found something to enjoy about, more awful films than probably any critic in the world - wrote for his Video Dungeon (always, always the first thing I read when I was an Empire subscriber) is divided into ten distinct, schlocky sections.
Covering all sorts of genre films from cryptids to found footage to serial killers to perhaps my favourite part, Weird Hippie Shit, Newman has seen (and knows a great deal about) a staggering number of films. He's even watched them all the way through, something critics don't always do. How do I know that? Because, in the only thing I didn't like about this mammoth, sometimes loving, sometimes brutal but always entertaining and informative, he just can't help himself but give gigantic spoilers, ruining dozens and dozens of endings, revealing twists and even summarising the entire plot at times.
That annoyance aside, this is one of the most enjoyable books I've read all year. It's entertaining AND useful, giving me a massive watchlist of films to track down and enjoy/endure. As readable as any critic in the business - yes, even Mark Kermode - a disappointed Newman is a brilliant Newman. He sums up Rob Zombie's film career savagely:
"[Zombie] can frame an interesting shot or layer in an unusual and affecting snatch of music, but after six features he still can't come up with a fresh story, write characters with more depth than their makeup or direct suspense... His enclosed, self-referential universe... [is] wooden people jerking repetitively and hacking each other to bits."
Ouch.
At the same time, Newman will aggressively defend genre films against their snobbish detractors. "The show-your-superiority-by-laughing-at-miserable-rubbish approach to cinema has always stuck in my craw. Personally, I despise Top Gun or Moulin Rouge more than any famous schlock picture - and I'd rather watch Plan 9 From Outer Space than the average Academy Award Best Picture winner."
Top man, that Kim Newman.
Covering all sorts of genre films from cryptids to found footage to serial killers to perhaps my favourite part, Weird Hippie Shit, Newman has seen (and knows a great deal about) a staggering number of films. He's even watched them all the way through, something critics don't always do. How do I know that? Because, in the only thing I didn't like about this mammoth, sometimes loving, sometimes brutal but always entertaining and informative, he just can't help himself but give gigantic spoilers, ruining dozens and dozens of endings, revealing twists and even summarising the entire plot at times.
That annoyance aside, this is one of the most enjoyable books I've read all year. It's entertaining AND useful, giving me a massive watchlist of films to track down and enjoy/endure. As readable as any critic in the business - yes, even Mark Kermode - a disappointed Newman is a brilliant Newman. He sums up Rob Zombie's film career savagely:
"[Zombie] can frame an interesting shot or layer in an unusual and affecting snatch of music, but after six features he still can't come up with a fresh story, write characters with more depth than their makeup or direct suspense... His enclosed, self-referential universe... [is] wooden people jerking repetitively and hacking each other to bits."
Ouch.
At the same time, Newman will aggressively defend genre films against their snobbish detractors. "The show-your-superiority-by-laughing-at-miserable-rubbish approach to cinema has always stuck in my craw. Personally, I despise Top Gun or Moulin Rouge more than any famous schlock picture - and I'd rather watch Plan 9 From Outer Space than the average Academy Award Best Picture winner."
Top man, that Kim Newman.
May 29, 2020
Fun but a bit slight. These aren't so much reviews as they are plot synopses. Still, they are engagingly written synopses and the book pointed me in the direction of several flicks I now want to check out. Recommended for cult film fanatics.
December 10, 2022
An entertaining read but if you go cover to cover, it starts with a wearying number of torture movies and ends with a tedious number of shark movies. I’m sure it was much more tiresome to watch them all than to read about them, so hats off to Kim Newman for remaining chipper throughout.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews