Thursday, May 25, 2006

Introduction

Hello and welcome to my new little enterprise here. The point and purpose of this blog is a centralized source of info concerning DVD release news and rumors of cult, exploitation, genre and just plain odd films from outside the English-speaking world. Continental Europe, Asia, and Latin America are the focus, (and perhaps even further afield - Africa, maybe?), in particular those released during the golden age of exploitation the 1960s-the1980s. That means nothing from the US or the UK or even Canada or Australia. Why? Well, why not? That's just where my particular movie obsessions seem to have been moving lately. The strangeness of these kinds of films (genre, exploito, etc.) seems to be intensified to us in the English speaking world when it comes from these far flung locales. It's an essentially ethno-centric attitude, y'know maybe Indonesian martial arts/fantasy films really aren't all that weird to the folks in Jakarta. But here in Seattle, Washington USA? That's some fucking bizarre stuff. And to me, totally exciting.
My main inspiration here would have to be the work of Immoral Tales and Mondo Macabro author Pete Tombs. Those books (and even moreso, his DVD label Mondo Macabro, who's releases will be featured frequently here) have opened up this world to us more curious and adventurous cineastes, and so props must be given and credit must be due. Your first homework assignment from Worldweird is to track these books down and read every word in them. At least twenty times. I know I have.
So what I'm trying to do is stay on top of the latest news about DVD releases of these kinds of films from cutting edge DVD labels such as Mondo Macabro, Onar Films, No Shame, Panik House, CasaNegra, Blue Underground, Raro, Synapse, Criterion, and whoever else pops up on the "scene". I will also try and write about interesting movies which haven't been released or don't seem to be "in the pipeline" as it were, to try and bring some of these to light. If you have a film you would like to recommend, a "scoop" you'd be willing to share or even a review you'd like published here - please by all means contact me, I can't do it all by myself.
It's a big world out there, y'know?

No comments: