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The Perfectionist's Guide to Fantastic Video
Fantastic cinema is the top priority but no genre is neglected.
At the beginning there was Tim's column in Video Times and Gorezone and then around 1990 he started publishing a mag of his own.
More details than any other edition is what characterizes VW. Usually there is a cover story with exclusive interviews and a lot of reviews.
Tim and Donna Lucas present a great issue every month.
It's a monthly, color, small size (A5), 80 pages magazine without any ads but with plenty to read.
USA Subscription: $60/12 issues from VW or $62.42/12 issues from Amazon.com
Issue #119-May 2005DVD Spotlight: Franco's 101 Women: There is still more Franco to be found as we review the seminal WIP movie 99 Women, the Sax Rohmer pastiche The Girl From Rio, and the psychedelic fan favorite Venus In Furs! Also in this issue's "Import" review section, reviews of Franco's "monster rally" movies Dra'cula contra Frankenstein (aka The Screaming Dead) and Ein Jungfrauen in den Krallen von Frankenstein (aka The Erotic Rites Of Frankenstein)! Watchdog News: By Popular Demand! VW's News department returns with information about Columbia's 50th Anniversary Godzilla releases... a look at some interesting Italian DVD releases, including a couple of early films photographed by none other than Mario Bava... and a report card assessing the quality of the 8 movies comprising Volumes 1 and 2 of Rhino Home Video's Horrible Horrors! Dog Bytes: Vic Morrow and Fred Williamson take action in 1990: Bronx Warriors... Gwen Verdon vies for the soul of Tab Hunter in Damn Yankees... Dennis Weaver tries to lose a tailgater in Steven Spielberg's Duel... Roger Corman crosses the finish line first in The Fast And The Furious... Jayne Mansfield falls for Tom Ewell because The Girl Can't Help It... Tom Hanks makes his big screen debut in the '80s slasher pic He Knows You're Alone... Meet a vampire slayer named Alucard in the anime Hellsing: Complete Collection... Sonny Chiba graduates from bulls to bears in Karate Bearfighter and then fights blood-bathing demon women in Legend Of The Eight Samurai... Ulli Lommel takes Suzanna Love into Hitchcock territory in the Vertigo-like Olivia... a comatose patient wreaks mental havoc in the extremely graphic Italian rip-off Patrick Still Lives... two different silent film adaptations of The Student Of Prague... a J-Horror DTV series reaches its conclusion with Tomie: Forbidden Fruit... and George Stover polishes his stake and sharpens his crucifix before going up against the Vampire Sisters! Joe Dante's Fleapit Flashbacks: This month, Joe's grindhouse retrospective reviews favor the Old West as "Alan Smithee" directs Richard Widmark in Death Of A Gunfighter... Rock Hudson saves Sylva Koscina from being raped by a bunch of horny teens (then rapes her himself) in Hornets' Nest... Omar Sharif presides over a brutal and unusual game in The Horsemen... Mary Woronov stars with fellow Warhol Factory alumni (and John Carradine!) in token horror title Silent Night, Bloody Night... Swiss filmmaker Erwin C. Dietrich offers a new definition of "layover" in The Swingin' Stewardesses... Gary Graver directs and photographs the obscure exploitationer There Was A Little Girl... and John Wayne saddles up with Ann-Margret in The Train Robbers! DVDs: Subterranean film noir in the Chinese import Blind Shaft... Danny Elfman does Cab Calloway while Susan Tyrell does Herve' Villechaize in Forbidden Zone... Tong Lung doubles Bruce Lee and also plays his brother in the delirious Game Of Death II... Japan's biggest export stomps his old stomping grounds in Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S.... Paul Naschy rules in a special two-disc set devoted to one of his scariest films, Horror Rises From The Tomb... three schlocky '50s sci-fi films are assembled for Horrors From Space Collection (Teenagers From Outer Space, Phantom From Space and Killers From Space)... Lifeforce is given an anime remake (sort of) in Kimera... ambitious anime culminates in a massive WTF ending in Neon Genesis Evangelion: Death & Rebirth and The End Of Evangelion... Paul Naschy makes an extraordinary comeback in the new Rojo Sangre... Misty Mundae loses her virginity to a crucifix in Satan's School For Lust... a bunch of slackers eventually arise to the occasion of saving humanity from a zombie takeover in Shaun Of The Dead... H.G. Wells follows Jack the Ripper into the disco era in Time After Time... and a woman possessed by evil forces is compelled to commit murders in the South Korean period fantasy The Legend Of The Evil Lake! Audio Watchdog: Douglas E. Winter reviews Digitmovies' new two-disc set of Bruno Nicolai's Eugenie De Sade '70 (containing his music for Eugenie... The Story Of Her Journey Into Perversion and other Franco films of the early '70s) and the latest "Bruno Nicolai in Giallo" disc, La Coda Dello Scorpione! Also, Locust Music's soundtrack of the classic Cornel Wilde adventure The Naked Prey! All this... plus Bob Burns' report on Paul Blaisdell's unheralded contributions to Teenagers From Outer Space. |
Issue #118-April 2005DVD Spotlight: A Tale Of Two Sisters: Tim Lucas reviews the hottest new chapter in the annals of Asian horror: a ghostly tale of broken lives and shattered minds by Korean director Kim Jee-woon – now available in single and two-disc editions from Tartan Asia Extreme! Dog Bytes: You get pretty much what you'd expect in Bloodsucking Redneck Vampires... teens find holiday peril in Bloody New Year... original horror host John Zacharle chortles his merry way through the DTV epic Dr. Horror's Erotic House Of Idiots... Something Weird Video delivers the ultimate Andy Milligan double feature with The Ghastly Ones / Seeds Of Sin... an anime classic spins off a new sci-fi police procedural series in Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex Vol. 01... Fred Olen Ray and Steve Latshaw argue on the commentary track of JACK-O... Sonny Chiba brains some bulls in Karate Bullfighter... our coverage of a major anime series concludes with Noir Volume 6: Cloaks And Daggers and Volume 7: The End Of The Matter... Shakespeare comes to DVD in contemporary attire in Richard The Second... a new DVD release of the Vincent Price thriller Shock... and Fred Olen Ray gives Dinosaur Island a sexy makeover as Teenage Cavegirl! Joe Dante's Fleapit Flashbacks: Some real obscurities this month, along with a couple of cult classics, as Joe attends first run screenings of the German sexinstruktion import The Adult Workshop On Love... Peter Lawford meets Luciano Pigozzi in Dead Run... something called The Deviates... Lenore Kasdorf as a kung fu-fighting stewardess in New World's forgotten softsploitation Fly Me... George Lucas spins a student film into his directorial debut feature THX 1138... Marvin Gaye scores Trouble Man... and Green Acres director Richad L. Bare makes his bid for horror history with Wicked, Wicked ("filmed in Duo-Vision")! DVDs: Bill Cooke on Tod Browning's Freaks... Kim Newman on Larry Cohen's mutant baby trilogy It's Alive, It's Alive Ii: It Lives Again and It's Alive III: Island Of The Alive... Shane M. Dallmann on Stephen King's Lars von Trier adaptation Kingdom Hospital: The Entire Series... Sam & Rebecca Umland on John Woo's all-star Philip K. Dick adaptation Paycheck... Richard Harland Smith on Shikoku, an early ghost story appearance by Kill Bill's Chiaki Kuriyama... plus reviews of Stephen Sommers' overblown Van Helsing... Zero Focus and The Demon, two adaptations of Japanese mystery writer Seicho Matsumoto... Lucio Fulci's paura pasta Zombi 2: 25th Anniversary Special Edition... and Import reviews of The Norman J. Warren Collection (Satan's Slave, Prey, Terror and Inseminoid)! Also, John Charles praises the boundary-shattering horror of the Asian horror anthology Three... Extremes and the feature-length "director's cut" of its tastiest story, Dumplings: Three... Extremes! Biblio Watchdog: Anthony Ambrogio reviews Mark Clark's Smirk, Sneer and Scream – Great Acting In Horror Cinema! Audio Watchdog: Douglas E. Winter reviews a number of recent solo piano soundtrack releases by Philip Glass and Dave Grusin, as well as other soundtracks from Glass and Craig Armstrong! All this – plus the first installment of Tim Lucas' Voom Viewing Diary. |
Issue #117-March 2005DVD Spotlight: Your friendly neighborhood VW critic Shane M. Dallmann spins his opinionated web on Buena Vista Home Entertainment's lavish box set of Spidey's complete animated exploits from the 1960s! Is Shane right? Listen, Fred – he's got Video Watchdog cred! Dog Bytes: Capsule reviews of Irene Papas in a George Tsavellas' 1961 production of the Greek tragedy Antigone, plus... H. B. Warner takes his gun and badge into the City Of Missing Girls... vehicles guzzle more than gas in Peter Weir's The Cars That Ate Paris... an enchanted pendant makes unsuspecting people horny in Curse Of The Erotic Tiki... "Devil's Night" Halloween riots and worse await you in Filthy... Anthony Mann co-directs with Alfred Werker in the noir classic He Walked By Night... Tangerine Dream lends a new prog score to the Italian silent spectacle L'Inferno... Sonny Chiba cracks a few dozen more skulls in Killing Machine... Jack LaRue runs the mob in the UK crime programmer Murder In The Night... Don Dohler rehashes his earlier The Alien Factor in Nightbeast... Marlon Brando and Richard Boone terrorize Pamela Franklin in The Night Of The Following Day... vampires are on the loose in the DTV horror anthology Realms Of Blood... Repo Man director Alex Cox turns his attention to 17th century drama in Revenger's Tragedy... Rob Lowe heads an all-star cast in TNT's remake of 'Salem's Lot... and Frank Sinatra plays a would-be Presidential assassin in Suddenly! Joe Dante's Fleapit Flashbacks: Reminisce about the heyday of grindhouse entertainment with these vintage reviews: Lucretia Love stars as a good-girl warrior in Alfonso Brescia's Battle Of The Amazons... Clint Eastwood and Don Rickles head an all-star cast in the Yugoslavia-made Kelly's Heroes... David Hess scares the yell out of everybody in Wes Craven's The Last House On The Left ("It's only a movie... it's only a movie...")... Kate Jackson and David Selby endure a Night Of Dark Shadows... Marie Liljedahl heats up the screen with a little help from ABBA's Bjorn and Benny in Joe Sarno's The Seduction Of Inga... and Antoinette Bower uses animal extract to turn Craig Littler into Superbeast! DVDs: In-depth reviews! Ashton Kutcher makes a powerful bid to be taken more seriously in the child abuse fantasy The Butterfly Effect... Roman Polanski directs Sharon Tate for the first and only time in The Fearless Vampire Killers... Tobe Hooper shows us that there are worse things awaiting man than the sideshow in The Funhouse... Bret Wood chronicles the darker avenues of road safety cinema in the documentary Hell's Highway: The True Story Of Highway Safety Films... Fantoma delivers more discs in their "Educational Archives" series: Driver's Ed, On The Job, Religion and Patriotism... Umberto Lenzi tackles an Edgar Wallace krimi in Seven Blood-Stained Orchids and dabbles in the giallo genre with Spasmo... and Lucio Fulci's Zombie is followed up with the not-for-the-squeamish Zombi 3 and Zombie 4: After Death! Plus: Import Reviews!: Chang Cheh directs the Shaw Brothers classic The Brave Archer (aka Kung Fu Warlords)... a new Italian import double-feature offering first-time-ever anamorphic masters of Mario Bava's Lisa And The Devil and The House Of Exorcism... and the unauthorized Australian import of Sergio Martino's tantalizingly titled Your Vice Is A Locked Room And Only I Have The Key (aka Gently Before She Dies), starring Edwige Fenech! Biblio Watchdog: Reviews of Mr Skin's Skincyclopedia by Mr. Skin... Brad Stevens' Monte Hellman: His Life And Films... and William Tsutsui's Rondo Award-nominated Godzilla On My Mind: Fifty Years Of The King Of Monsters! Audio Watchdog: Douglas E. Winter lends his reliable ears to an amazing new two-disc set of Bronislau Kaper's music for the 1962 Mutiny On The Bounty, as well as other Film Score Monthly titles... and covers recent releases composed by The X-Files' Mark Snow, including The Best Of Millennium and Helter Skelter! All this and another brilliant Charlie Largent cover, Tim Lucas's "The Watchdog Barks" and much, much more! |
Issue #116-February 2005Joe Dante's Fleapit Flashbacks: More vintage fun as Joe Dante tears your tickets to retrospective reviews of Cheri Caffaro in The Abductors... Peter Cushing and Patrick Macnee in Blood Suckers... Ingrid Pitt in the heavily-cut domestic release of Countess Dracula... Alex Cord and Samantha Eggar in Armando Cripino's The Dead Are Alive... Woody Allen's R-rated sketch comedy Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex (But Were Afraid To Ask)... and Giacopetti/Prosperi's appalling "You Are There" shockumentary about slavery in the Old South, Farewell, Uncle Tom! DVD Spotlight: Interested in how Kino on Video's box set The Wong Kar-Wai Collection stacks up against import disc releases of As Tears Go By, Chungking Express, Days Of Being Wild, Fallen Angels and Happy Together? John Charles answers all your questions in a detailed Spotlight review! Dog Bytes: Capsule reviews of Lui's Bun~uel's surrealist classic L'Age d'Or... Bob Swaim's film noir pastiche La Balance... Peter Cushing makes his final performance in Biggles: Adventures In Time... Don Johnson and his best friend trod a post-apocalyptic landscape in A Boy And His Dog... anime explodes into wild pop art in Dead Leaves... Catherine Breillat directs a deadly portrait of sibling rivalry in Fat Girl... Catherine Deneuve introduces Susan Sarandon to The Hunger... Lon Chaney Jr. quivers his baggy eyes in the '50s programmer Indestructible Man... four heads aren't necessarily better than two when you buy the MGM double feature The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant/The Thing With Two Heads... Moon Lee CHoi-fung lashes out in the martial arts spectacular Iron Fist... the low-budget graveyard lunacy of Ring Of Terror... John Carradine guards the entry to Hell In The Sentinel... Michael Murphy hits the campaign trail in Robert Altman & Garry Trudeau's political satire Tanner `88... our nation's figure head runs a few victims up the flagpole in Uncle Sam... and we witness the birth of psychoanalysis in Young Dr. Freud! DVDs: In-depth reviews of William Castle's swan song Bug... Robert Altman's masterpiece about the gambling bug, California Split ... Robert Quarry finds stardom at AIP in Count Yorga, Vampire and its sequel The Return Of Count Yorga... Robert Bresson's ascetic classics Diary Of A Country Priest and A Man Escaped... Mark Redfield's surprising homegrown production of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde... Fangoria hosts a filmmaking competition with Fangoria Blood Drive: America's Best Short Horror Films, hosted by Rob Zombie... Grade A giggles in Larry Blamire's B-movie spoof The Lost Skeleton Of Cadavra... a trio of Claude Chabrol suspensers (La Ce're'monie, Masques, Story Of Women)... Vincent Price meets John Carradine at The Monster Club... Macha Me'ril makes a terrifying impression in Night Train Murders... Matt Frewer dons a deerstalker cap in yet another Sherlock Holmes Collection... Santa decks the halls with the bowels of Holly in Silent Night, Deadly Night and Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2... Japan's favorite superhero returns in Ultraman Gaia The Battle In Hyperspace... Alberto Sordi stars in Federico Fellini's debut feature The White Sheik... and an excursion into Japanese "pink" cinema with The World Of Geisha and A Woman With Red Hair! Imports: Tsui Hark directs a legion of bloodsucking flappers in his debut feature The Butterfly Murders... and Peter Cushing battles an army of bonesucking silicate creatures on the Island Of Terror, then sweats out an alien invasion with Christopher Lee on the Night Of The Big Heat! Audio Watchdog: Douglas E. Winter reviews Trey Parker & Marc Shaiman's score for Team America: World Police, Jeff Rona's Traffic: The Miniseries, Basil Poledouris's Amerika, and also The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Volume 3 with music by Jerry Goldsmith, Morton Stevens, David Grusin and Gerald Fried! |
Issue #115-January 2005DVD Spotlight: Star Trek Generations: Michael Lennick returns to our pages with a lavish review of Paramount Home Entertainment'ss new deluxe double-disc of the movie in which Captain Picard meets Captain Kirk, and Kirk... well, that would be telling! Dog Bytes (Capsule Reviews): Two giant serpents get into a hissing match in Boa Vs Python... Michelle Yeoh and Tony Leung spark some steel in Butterfly Sword... Lawrence Tierney co-stars with his brother Edward in the hard-hitting crime drama The Hoodlum... Aerial pulp thrills predominate in Pilot X: Murder In The Sky... Rex Harrison and John Saxon go Bollywood in Raiders Of The Sacred Stone... Fangoria's Michael Gingold heads the cast of the DTV compendium The Tenement... the J-Horror trilogy Tomie, Tomie Re-Birth and Tomie Replay... and somehow they made a movie about an Undiscovered Tomb! Joe Dante's Fleapit Flashbacks: George Lucas has his first blockbuster success with American Graffiti... Sean Connery returns to challenge Blofeld once again in Diamonds Are Forever... Angel Tompkins plays moll to a gang of bankrobbing midgets in Little Cigars... Francis Coppola embarks on a new road of independent filmmaking in The Rain People... Pam Grier growls at a different kind of Bat Man in Twilight People... and Joe Don Baker swings a different kind of bat in Walking Tall! DVD Reviews: William Marshall finds belated stardom in Blacula and Scream Blacula Scream... Elvis joins forces with JFK (?) to combat a soul-suckin' mummy in Bubba Ho-Tep... scads of James Bonds scurry across the screen in the monumentally excessive Casino Royale... Jean-Pierre Melville and Alain Delon join forces once again for the classic heist film Le Cercle Rouge... Paul Naschy makes his American horror film debut in Countess Dracula's Orgy Of Blood and returns to the screen as Waldemar Danisky in Tomb Of The Werewolf... Larry Cohen writes and directs a couple of offbeat pictures called Perfect Strangers and Special Effects... Anton LaVey is the subject of the exploitative documentary Satanis The Devil's Mass, while Ray Dennis Steckler offers the chaotic co-feature Sinthia, The Devil's Doll... Japanese animation gets jumper-cabled in Speed Racer Collector's Edition... and Christina Lindberg takes aim at the people who took her eye and ruined her life in Thriller—A Cruel Picture (aka They Call Her One-Eye)! Plus! Import DVD reviews of a new German anamorphic release of Hammer's Plague Of The Zombies and Tsui Hark's cannibal frenzy We're Going To Eat You! Biblio Watchdog: Reviews of Nightmares In Red, White And Blue by Joseph Maddrey and Cult Movies In Sixty Seconds: The Best Films In The World In Less Than A Minute by Soren McCarthy! Audio Watchdog: Douglas E. Winter takes a privileged listen to a promotional-only issue of Tyler Bates' soundtrack to the Dawn Of The Dead remake, as well as a two-disc bootleg... and offers additional reviews of Jeff Danna's Resident Evil: Apocalypse and the various artist compilation Music From & Inspired By Resident Evil: Apocalypse... Dan Mudford and Pete Woodhead's Shaun Of The Dead... and Hideakuri Sakurai & Kunihiko Murai's The Best Of Lone Wolf And Cub! All this plus The Return Of Donnie Dunagan and much, much more! |
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