The Watchdog Barks
I’VE BEEN GIVING some thought of late to VIDEO WATCH- DOG’s editorial direction and how it might mutate in the is- sues ahead to our common
benefit. It seems to me that, as VW has evolved over time, it has slipped into the convenient habit of being guided by whatever was recently released on DVD—just like every other video-reviewing magazine or website. You can take your pick of CLOVERFIELD reviews; they are a field of clover. I find myself thinking that VW should perhaps offer an alternative to this redundancy. I’m not saying that we won’t cover CLOVERFIELD (which I rec- ommend particularly as a Blu-ray disc), but I’m thinking that our reviews should become less au- tomatic and more selective, less tied to the here and now of the marketplace. When this magazine began in 1990, our reviews were shorter and the bulk of each issue was spent obsessing over what- ever films and filmmakers happened to be obsess- ing me and our other writers at the time. In short, I feel we may have fallen into the unadventurous habit of automatically responding to what the in- dustry sends us rather than following our own muses. I find myself thinking this might be an approach worth pursuing again.
One of the most complimented (and person- ally satisfying) pieces I’ve written recently was for Video WatchBlog, a kind of fever dream aroused in me by chance exposure to a bootleg DVD-R of the 1969 mondo movie SWEDEN, HEAVEN AND HELL. I called the piece “Cincin- nati, Heaven and Hell” and it was a kind of hy- brid review-memoir-fiction-dream-essay. Hard as it might be to define, I felt I turned a new cre- ative corner with it. Within hours of it being posted, I learned from a Swedish correspondent that an English-friendly DVD had just been is- sued over there, so my essay ended up provid- ing a commercial service while, at the same time, giving me the pleasure of feeling ahead of the curve. After writing my review of Hammer’s THE MAN WHO COULD CHEAT DEATH for this issue, I blogged a sidebar appreciating Christopher Lee’s performance in the film, an oblique ap- proach to the same material in which I felt I
achieved deeper contact with the film than I did in my review. Noting this, I ask myself, “Isn’t this the sort of material that should be in VIDEO WATCHDOG?”
Would this be a smart, commercial move? I don’t know. Commercialism comes on or after the curve, not ahead of it, but our commercial covers have never sold in conspicuously greater numbers than our more obscure ones. As our readers have often remarked to us, it’s not what we cover but how we cover it that makes VW what it is. If I look over our back issues which have sold out, it’s of- ten the ones with the most arcane subject matter on the cover: GANJA & HESS, Laird Cregar, Harriet White Medin. Even our Herschell Gordon Lewis issue with the debrained woman on the cover is now in low supply. While VW needs to continue to reflect what’s newly available on video in a critical way, I think it might be fruitful to experiment, to move some- what to the left of our established curriculum, even to play hooky once in awhile, to fully re-engage with the kinds of movies that speak to us and the many levels on which they continue to fascinate us—and share these obsessions with you. It won’t fully happen overnight, or even next month, but stay tuned. We’ll see what takes shape. Speaking of obscure cinema, there’s such a wealth of it in this issue that Donna and I had a hard time picking out titles and images identifi- able enough to showcase on the front cover—so we’re just going to take pride in the fact! Our fea- ture interview is with Rodd Dana, an actor whose recognition value is somewhat tempered by the fact that he’s acted and even lived under more than a few different names (such as Robert Mark and Jon Christian Eagle) and that—as he freely admits in Michael Barnum’s revealing interview— his performances in a few important pictures have been left, whole or in part, on the cutting room floor!
But as I said before, it’s how we cover things
that makes VIDEO WATCHDOG the magazine it is— and I’m going to trust in that. With this in mind, we’re going with the courage of our convictions and putting Rodd Dana—the actor with the 3-D name!—on our cover, front and center. Enjoy!
○○○○○○○○○ ○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○ Tim Lucas
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