This is the one must-have magazine for the video completist. Where else can you get reviews of six different versions of Blade Runner , complete with stills and dialog from deleted scenes? Who else is going to go scene-by-scene through David Lynch's script of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me , telling you what you're seeing in the context of the other 90 minutes of footage that was edited out?
Video Watchdog 's obsessive attention to detail, retitlings, and alternate cuts of movies doesn't end with new films. The editors frequently go back over lost, overlooked, and forgotten gems of the past, such as the little-known The Magic Voyage of Sinbad and Fritz Lang's Journey to the Lost City (which is really a studio cut-and- paste of two earlier Lang films, The Tiger of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb ).
Each issue also has reviews of the latest video and laserdisc releases from around the world. Read up on Hong Kong period epics, Turkish Star Trek rip-offs, '50s space operas, and restored musicals. VW isn't for the Blockbuster-Video-never-heard-of-letterboxing crowd. It's for the discerning watchers, the connoisseurs, the collectors who have one foot in this world and the other in the realm of the video-demented.
VW recently published its first Special Edition issue, which starts off with a solid dozen "Best of 1993" lists from obsessive film and video luminaries. You also get lots of strange stuff VW couldn't fit into a regular issue! The Special Edition includes the usual info on different cuts and retitlings, plus a look at hot and obscure movie soundtracks, an interview with and exhaustive look at the career of Euro-sexploitation director Walerian Borowczyk, a bio of Kathleen Burke (the sexy Panther Woman from The Island of Lost Souls ), and some background on Planeta Bur, a little known Russian science fiction film that was acquired by Roger Corman, chopped into pieces, and pasted together to make a couple of US schlock flicks. Plus, info on ordering most of the titles reviewed, great ads, and an index to the whole run of Video Watchdog .
Video Watchdog : US$24/6 issues. +1 (513) 471 8989, PO Box 5283, Cincinatti, OH 45205-0283.
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Video Watchdog
