THE WATCHDOG BARKS
VIDEO WATCHDOG first became a magazine in June 1990, making this our 25th Anniversary Issue! With this in mind, it was particularly important to me that VW 179 embody our very best and freshest effort, and I believe we have succeeded. Not only is this one of our popular “All Review” numbers, we have also taken care to include a higher-than-usual ratio of A-list titles in our cover- age, including THE BABADOOK, the latest work from the Soska sisters, and THE STRANGE COLOR OF YOUR BODY’S TEARS.
As its individual pieces came together, they pro- posed something of an Arrow Video-themed issue, which is fitting—because, if we’re being A-list, no other label specializing in fantastic and marginal cinema is pulling out all the stops in quite the same way as this British label. British correspondent Lloyd Haynes asked if he might cover for us Arrow’s CAMERA OBSCURA box set, devoted to five films and assorted shorts by the late Polish expatriate director Walerian Borowczyk, which initially got this issue rolling.
When we realized that our publication date would coincide with Wonderfest’s celebration of Vincent Price and Boris Karloff at the end of May, it seemed the ideal opportunity to address Scream Factory’s VINCENT PRICE COLLECTION sets, which were more recently complemented by the release of Arrow’s SIX GOTHIC TALES and THE COMPLETE DR. PHIBES box sets overseas. There was no time to assign these to anyone else, so I took on the job myself. I contributed to both Arrow sets, but it’s not the purpose of my article to favor one set of re- leases over the other (though some constructive criti- cism is included) so much as to process the wealth of fresh supplementary materials generated by all four projects. Readers of our print edition are ad- vised that space was at a premium in this issue, so the three B&W titles exclusive to THE VINCENT PRICE COLLECTION II (HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL, THE RETURN OF THE FLY and THE LAST MAN ON EARTH), as well as their extras, had to be covered exclusively in our digital edition.
Finally, Neil Snowdon offered to conduct some interviews with Arrow personnel on the occasion of their launching of a new US arm of operation, which began in March with Michael Armstrong’s notorious MARK OF THE DEVIL (1970). A UK/US release of their breathtaking 2K restoration of Mario Bava’s BLOOD AND BLACK LACE was intended for April but has been temporarily held back stateside; for- tunately, it’s a Region A/B disc so the UK im- port will play on US systems. Arrow’s US releases will continue in May with an eagerly anticipated 2K restoration of Borowczyk’s THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MISS OSBOURNE (1981). Neil’s “Watchdog News” piece marks the beginning of what we intend to be a more open dialogue between VW and the technicians who are digitally restoring our favorite movies for Blu-ray. In our next issue, Neil will interview Arrow’s head of restoration James White, as well as David Mackenzie, the man in charge of their compression and authoring. Don May, Jr. of Synapse Films has also agreed to be interviewed about his current work on the restorations of Dario Argento’s SUSPIRIA, PHENOM- ENA and TENEBRAE in the near future. There is a lot of misinformation out there about the work these people do, and I believe VW is the maga- zine best poised to give them and their efforts a more public voice.
One last thing before you turn the page: Those of you who aren’t online may not know this, but our award-winning book MARIO BAVA—ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK, first published in 2007, is now officially out of print. We sold our last remaining copies in February and there are no plans to reprint for the foreseeable future. The digital edition, with an exciting group of supple- mentary features (that we’ll be adding to as time goes on), remains available from our website. We want to thank everyone who ordered the book, and those patrons who enabled the book in the days before Kickstarter and Indiegogo, for what Donna and I will always remember as our greatest adventure in publishing.
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