The Psychotronic Video Guide: Straight to Video but a Long Time to Letterboxd

[This post has been published simultaneously here and on my new film book website – V for Voluminous, C for Cinema. To read this post on that site instead, go to https://vforvoluminous.wordpress.com/.]

The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film

by Michael Weldon
St. Martin's Press/Griffin | 1996
Trade paperback | 646 Pages

1st U.S. edition

My love for Michael Weldon's 1983 book, The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film, is well-known to my friends and longtime readers of my websites. Much of the early drive of my original blog, The Cinema 4 Pylon, was dedicated to playing catch up (in a series of posts that went by the title "Psychotronic Ketchup") in trying to see all of the films within that book, a volume which contained roughly 3,000 film titles of the not exactly middle of the road variety.

If there is a book within my library that I consider to be a "bible," though not in a truly religious sense of course, it is Weldon's Encyclopedia. As rough hewn and lowbrow as it is, for a fan of so-called "trash" cinema, it is indispensable. Before that book, which was published by Ballantine Books at roughly the same time I started working for a book chain in Anchorage, Alaska, Weldon put out a fanzine (that I never saw back in the day) called Psychotronic TV. After the Encyclopedia came out, he transformed his fanzine into a more widely distributed publication (though still pretty much tied to its fanzine roots in its sporadic publishing schedule and DIY aesthetic) titled Psychotronic Video. I grabbed a copy any chance that I got, and sure enough, just like with the book, I was always certain to read about films that made my head spin. I couldn't fathom that some of the titles could even be considered, let alone actually filmed and put into theatres or on video.

The magazine ran until 2006, when Michael Weldon finally closed the doors on the psychotronic world for good, but before that he put out a sequel to his first book. In 1996, Weldon published The Psychotronic Video Guide, an even larger book than the Encyclopedia in dimensional size, but it has a couple of hundred less pages and the rough movie count comes out around the same (at least according to Weldon's foreword) to somewhere around 3,000 films.

Since the Encyclopedia was published, the home video market really blew up throughout the eighties and into nineties, and straight-to-video titles became a really big seller, especially in the genres in which Weldon specialized: science-fiction, horror, martial arts, and action... tons and tons of action films. The Video Guide came out just before DVD hit the United States and started to slowly take over as the primary video format within the next few years. Like the first volume, which concentrated heavily on the '50s through the '70s – the prime years of exploitation and drive-in classics – the Video Guide does a fairly thorough job of snapshotting the bulk of the '80s output up through the mid-'90s. A big difference this time, though, is the inclusion of actual video compilations in the mix (many of them by Johnny Legend and Rhino Video, for example), once video started to become a home for original content and not just a second-run arena for former theatrical titles. Hardcore porn titles – well, a good handful or two of them, when they have content that goes beyond just bedroom antics – are represented as well.

Weldon also took the time to class things up just a little bit with the inclusion of certain directors who were renowned for their flirtations with genre form, even when they were considered general masters of film itself, e.g., Alfred Hitchcock and Fritz Lang. Weldon did a similar trick in the first volume by including nearly every film starring Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Bela Lugosi, and Peter Lorre, whether or not the films were genre flicks or not. The assumption was that the very inclusion of these actors within any cast placed that film automatically within the psychotronic category.

Something I have noticed that is a slight difference between this book and the first is that Weldon seemed more intent on actually reviewing many of the titles on the second go around. In the Encyclopedia, he seems mostly content with saying "This film is loaded with zombies. And Nazis. And tons of gore and blood. And Christopher Lee is in it!" and leaving it at that. (That is a completely made up example, but it strikes the tone of many an entry.) Very rare is the paragraph that really rips into a film, though there are a handful of entries where either his disdain or his high regard for a film is pretty clear. In the Video Guide, he seems more comfortable with telling his opinion on whether not a film stinks, and really lets go on many films. It is an attitude that I really wish the first book had, and perhaps he was less comfortable with striking such an attitude when he was younger and more freshly excited about the "B" genre.

Now, because my life turned to one of married discord for many years in the late '80s and early '90s, when the second book came out, I was freshly divorced in my early thirties, and suddenly not worrying so much about watching 37 movies a day. As a result, even though I really enjoyed going through the Psychotronic Video Guide when I first bought it, I have never really used the second book as much as the original volume. It is odd for me to say this, but movies, for a brief period, went to the back-burner as I readjusted myself to single life, and so the Weldon books went by the wayside for a good while. And unlike the first book, where the enjoyment I experienced as an 18-year old was in playing catch up with psychotronic history up to that point in time, the bulk of the films in the Video Guide are titles that came out after I had just reached my (presumed) adulthood. So, when this guide was released, by my own misguided accounting, I had pretty much seen the ones listed in it that I really wanted to see (with a few glaring exceptions), and so never really pressed myself to play catch up (at the time) like I did The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film.

Then Letterboxd came into the picture...

When Letterboxd started up online a few years ago, after my initial flirtation with Flickchart (another movie site that I love), I created an account and started using Letterboxd to maintain my regular film diary, something I was already doing (and still do) via spreadsheet (there are still many titles, mostly shorts and cartoons, that I watch that do not show up in Letterboxd.) The site allows you great flexibility in creating lists of any size, and after they have been published, it shows you the percentage of films that you have seen and fades the title images as well, so you can focus on what remains to be watched. Pretty groovy function and the site looks nice as well. 

One of my first goals was to transfer the titles from The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film to Letterboxd so that I could not only easily figure out what I still needed to see, but so that others that might happen upon the list could use it for their own guidance through the "B" movie world. It took me a while to build those lists and when I was done, I sat back and thought, "There is no way that I could do this again." And then I started up on The Psychotronic Video Guide. I got a quick early start on the first couple of letters... and then let it sit for a year or two. Maybe even three. 

I kept getting remarks from users who liked the other Psychotronic lists begging me to create the rest of them. Finally, I decided to start using the last hour or so before bedtime to knock in a few more pages each night, and then took the giant book with me on my Alaska trip, knowing that I would have several hours each morning before my friends were up and ready to do things where I could make a pretty severe dent in the book. And now, two months after returning from that trip, I just put the finishing touches on the final letter, "W", and the entire book, save for a handful of titles not yet on Letterboxd under each letter (which are recounted in my notes), is now live on the site.

My Lists for The Psychotronic Video Guide on Letterboxd.com:

• Films Beginning with "A"
• Films Beginning with "B" 
• Films Beginning with "C"
• Films Beginning with "D"
• Films Beginning with "E"
• Films Beginning with "F"
• Films Beginning with "G"
• Films Beginning with "H"
• Films Beginning with "I"
• Films Beginning with "J"
• Films Beginning with "K"
• Films Beginning with "L"
• Films Beginning with "M"
• Films Beginning with "N"
• Films Beginning with "O"
• Films Beginning with "P"
• Films Beginning with "Q"
• Films Beginning with "R"
• Films Beginning with "S"
• Films Beginning with "T"
• Films Beginning with "U"
• Films Beginning with "V"
• Films Beginning with "W"
• Films Beginning with "X,Y, and Z"

And if you enjoy using these lists, feel free to leave a comment on Letterboxd or follow my page there if you decide to join yourself. It's a really wonderful website.

Catchin' Up with the Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film...

Almost a year ago, I related to you my love for a book by Michael J. Weldon called The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film. I have had a copy in my possession (the same ragged, dog-eared, spine-ravaged copy) since it came out in 1983. One of the benefits of working for a bookstore is that you get to jump on these things when they first premiere, sometimes even earlier, and this was a title that simply leaped out at me. Hard not to, considering the insane cover (see cover at right), and I was hooked immediately.

You see, up to about 1980, my movie obsession had been primarily TV-based, and network and local TV, at that. The movies that I saw were those that I caught on late night broadcasts, or afternoon matinee shows. I had cable at home with my parents by 1980, and we also had a VCR. Not only weren't there a tenth as many cable channels as there are now, Anchorage itself had a single cable channel at the time called Visions, which carried HBO between this hour and that in prime time, and WTBS and WGN stuff in the mornings and afternoons so you got Cubs and Braves games, Calliope, Bill Tish news reports, and Space Giants. At midnight, on certain nights, full-on hardcore porn would be shown on Visions (the listings would go from “10:00 pm – The Island of Dr. Moreau – PG” to "12:00 am – Tigresses and Other Man-Eaters – XXX) and the only parental block was to make sure the kiddies weren’t awake by that time of the night. (And, of course, I found every possible way of seeing that porn.) So even with the addition of a cable channel, I still had limited choices for movies. 

The world at that time was bombarded with fly-by-night VHS (and Beta) rental places, and as a kid who was just barely old enough to rent much of the good stuff, i.e. the junk with mucho sex and violence and gore, I was in heaven. The problem? What the hell to rent... there was so much easily available for the first time, that it was often hard to find out what was worth your while and what sucked. You've heard the phrase "can't tell the players without a scorecard"? Well, within a couple of years, after I had moved out of the house and gotten a job and started serving time in the real world as a somewhat functioning young adult, The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film become that scorecard for me. Weldon’s tome wasn't really a book of critical reviews, however, but more of a catalogue of, well, the cover states "Over 3,000 of the wildest movies ever made!!" The keyword was "weird,” and the Encyclopedia delivered weird in spades. The back cover points out, in short phrases punctuated with rampant exclamation points, some of the topics covered in the book:

"Ghouls! Science Fiction! Beach Blankets! Drag Racing! Sex Changes! Crazed Farmers! Mad Scientists! Disaster! Surfing! Vampires! Sex Goddesses! Ax Murderers! Cave Women! Bikers! Killer Teens! Gorillas! Rock 'N' Roll! Jungle!"

The book covered not only these topics, but so many, many more. If it was goofy and on film and released by 1981, it was pretty much in this book. Also helpful were alternate titles, directing, writing and producing credits, and availability on video (a new concept just hitting review books at the time). Many of the films had their film posters printed within the pages of the guide, and Weldon even saw fit to print a handful of film frames with ample nudity on display here and there. What a guy!

Earlier this year, I picked up two far-less-dog-eared copies of the Encyclopedia at a used bookstore in Santa Rosa (which I wrote about here in January). My intent at the time was to keep one as a backup copy to my much-loved first edition, and to send the other copy to my pal Aaron back in Anchorage. (Mr. Lowe, I know I have not sent it yet, but I seem to have misplaced your address. Please get it to me again, and I will get this in the mail to you post-haste.) So, as I have been perusing the book anew over the intervening months, something struck me... when I first purchased this book, while many of the titles in it were out on video, there were still a large number that I never got around to watching. Or even finding: there were titles in there that I was interested in, but that I was unable to locate at the time. Then adulthood happens; marriage happens; divorce happens; work happens; everything happens. The resolve with which I used to attack video stores has waxed and waned over the years, and films that I once expressed an interest in seeing long ago have fallen to the wayside for films of more recent vintage.

But now it is almost 2007, and DVD is king. More and more older and obscure titles seem to crawl back out of their hidey-holes all the time, and with a greater emphasis on special editions and superior film elements, this is perhaps the best time to seek out some of these older, stranger films. And flipping through the book, I decided it was time that I did a film-by-film analysis to discover which of those films I still needed to see. Just in A alone, there were a great many films that I had yet to see, so I decided the best thing to do would be to go alphabetical and start checking on Netflix to see which films they were carrying.

As it turns out, a great many of them, though there are still pitfalls in the book. Right on the second page is an entry for the 1974 blaxploitation Exorcist rip-off Abby, which apparently, due to legal threats, never been released on video at all. So, I probably won't be seeing that one -- ever -- even though I am interested because William (Blacula and Pee Wee's Playhouse's King of Cartoons) Marshall is in the film. But there are more than enough films sitting now in my Netflix queue that I will be watching the bigger films in the book for a good while or so.

Ah, the insanity that my love for these films inspires in me!!

[I will be posting my comments on this progress from here on out. I have actually been renting them for the better part of the last month already, so keep checking back for updates on this project.]

RTJ

Paging Mr. Psychotronic... Paging Mr. Psychotronic...

A quick jaunt up the coast this past weekend to Santa Rosa for a Capricorn party has left me practically movie-less for the past week (with one awesome exception), but not without some unexpected gains to my film library. And by "film library," I mean my actual library about film, not DVDs or videotapes. I'm talking books, people!

An unplanned side trip into Treehorn Books, a used bookstore in Santa Rosa, left two dog-eared -- but in far better condition than my original edition -- copies of Michael Weldon's The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film in my happy little hands. Long out of print (to my knowledge), I cannot stress enough how important this 1983 book was in developing my love of outré cinema, and while I still have not seen every film mentioned in its interior, I have made a pretty good run at seeing most of the pictures contained within its covers. (One of these copies is getting shipped up to Anchorage immediately to my fellow movie nut Aaron, who will appreciate its lurid cover, wonderfully descriptive film entries and black and white reproductions of a host of crappy movie posters greatly.) Weldon also started The Psychotronic Film Guide Magazine, and he doesn't so much review a film, as he does give you a list of all the reasons that you should see a film, whether or not it is a bottom-of-the-barrel scraper. Horror, sci-fi, juvenile delinquent, rock n' roll, jungle, and gorilla pictures, beach and surf flicks...really, exploitation of any sort. If you like any of these genres, this book is a must-have for your collection and further cinematic edification.

I also discovered a gorgeous hardcover copy (with protective book cover) of Astaire Dancing by John Mueller from 1985, and also long out of print. I have yet to break into its text, but much of the book is devoted to frame-by-frame breakdowns of many of the dance sequences from the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musical series, covers the majority of Astaire's career, and will be great fun to go through in conjunction with the DVD set that was recently released (and which Jen and I will naturally now have to purchase).

A not-unexpected gain, since I left the book behind on my trip to my brother's in November, was a hardcover copy of Cut! Hollywood Murders, Accidents and Other Tragedies that Mark and Marci passed on to me. I've already noticed that they left Marie Provost out of the book (nothing like being devoured by dachshunds!), so I am unsure as to how complete the research is in the book, but I will wade into it the next time I am in a particularly gory mood. Maybe it will keep me from cracking my ancient copy of Hollywood Babylon again.

A two-hour wait in the San Francisco Airport left me with time to wander about Compass Books, where I snagged a copy of Stan and Ollie: The Roots of Comedy - The Double Life of Laurel and Hardy. I am about a third of the way through this very concise history of the boys, and even if the author (Simon Louvish) gets a little too lavish with his historical overview of comedy in the beginning, I am finding it a most intriguing read.

Didn't really have time to read on the flight, though... the flight is only an hour, and by the time the beverage service shows up and leaves, you are pretty much landing, so it is hard to really get into anything heavy on such a short zip. 

And don't get me started on that crappy little bag of pretzels that they term a "snack". Grrrrr...