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The Video Watchdog Book
The Video Watchdog book book collects and updates the beginnings of Video Watchdog (1985 to 1992) from Tim Lucas' first columns in Video Times, Gorezone and Fangoria before Video Watchdog Magazine came on the scene. Hundreds of tapes appraised, feature-length articles on Jess Franco, Dario Argento, Edgar Wallace and Terence Fisher, over 650 retitlings and an index to the first 12 issues of Video Watchdog Magazine.
416 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 18, 2011
All the Tim Lucas columns that predated the magazine - I have a credit in this book because I spotted the alternate TV ending to NIGHT OF THE CREEPS! Indispensable for Horror Film Fans who want to broaden their horizons and delve into new ways of seeing the films.
November 30, 2020
Published in 1992, The Video Watchdog Book was a companion piece to the new Video Watchdog Magazine, which at the time was an indispensable publication for fans of genre films beneath, behind, and beyond the mainstream. Video Watchdog started out originally as different columns in several other fan-based film magazines such as Gore Zone and Film Comment, and the bulk of this book contains the reprints of those previous contributions before editor Tim Lucas set out on his own to publish what I've always thought of as the Fangoria for adults.
Personally, I was a big fan of Video Watchdog Magazine for a long time, until they printed a review of Sixth Sense that included what is now commonly known as a "spoiler" of the ending. This may seem petty of me, but up until that point Video Watchdog was a very serious publication that devoted much of its time to critiquing and defending obscure low-budget films that most people dismiss as garbage, and always did so with respect for both the filmmakers and the film viewers. On top of loudly defending films that most people would dismiss as trash, Lucas also made it a point of not revealing the ending of any films reviewed in the magazine, no matter how well-known or inconsequential. Soo with this in mind, when the same magazine that rallied against Mystery Science Theater 3000 for insulting great cinema like Hercules Vs. The Moon Men and refused to give away the ending to Beach Blanket Bingo suddenly decided it was not only okay to give away the ending to a mainstream film they didn't like, but to advertise doing so on the cover, I decided it was time to move on.
I still keep this vast tome of original Video Watchdog articles in my collection, however, as it represents an era before IMDB and Google when film lovers like myself needed to depend on publications willing to discuss the movies that Entertainment Weekly would never consider. Things that people search online for now like different titles and deleted/alternate scenes were hard to come by outside of the fandom scene, and despite my issues with the direction of the editorial output, Video Watchdog still remains one of the most professional and exhaustive publications of that era, and this book is a perfect representation of what made this magazine such a treasure at the time.
Personally, I was a big fan of Video Watchdog Magazine for a long time, until they printed a review of Sixth Sense that included what is now commonly known as a "spoiler" of the ending. This may seem petty of me, but up until that point Video Watchdog was a very serious publication that devoted much of its time to critiquing and defending obscure low-budget films that most people dismiss as garbage, and always did so with respect for both the filmmakers and the film viewers. On top of loudly defending films that most people would dismiss as trash, Lucas also made it a point of not revealing the ending of any films reviewed in the magazine, no matter how well-known or inconsequential. Soo with this in mind, when the same magazine that rallied against Mystery Science Theater 3000 for insulting great cinema like Hercules Vs. The Moon Men and refused to give away the ending to Beach Blanket Bingo suddenly decided it was not only okay to give away the ending to a mainstream film they didn't like, but to advertise doing so on the cover, I decided it was time to move on.
I still keep this vast tome of original Video Watchdog articles in my collection, however, as it represents an era before IMDB and Google when film lovers like myself needed to depend on publications willing to discuss the movies that Entertainment Weekly would never consider. Things that people search online for now like different titles and deleted/alternate scenes were hard to come by outside of the fandom scene, and despite my issues with the direction of the editorial output, Video Watchdog still remains one of the most professional and exhaustive publications of that era, and this book is a perfect representation of what made this magazine such a treasure at the time.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews