December is Trash Cinema Month

December is Trash Cinema Month at the PorPor Books Blog

I usually don't review trash cinema here at the Blog, as there are more than a few blogs and websites that do that on a comprehensive basis. However, as a change of scene, especially after reading nothing but horror fiction for my special 'Fall of 2025' postings, I thought I'd devote the month of December to reviewing print media associated with trash cinema (or, if you prefer, exploitation cinema, psychotronic video, sleaze movies, transgressive cinema, etc., etc.). 

These are among the books and magazines that I picked up back in the late 1980s into the early 2000s, an era before streaming, when renting VHS and DVDs was commonplace and fascination with trash cinema was moving from the underground into the mainstream.

Back then I lived in Baltimore, and the major video rental place that stocked trash cinema VHS and later, DVDs, was a six-store chain called 'Video Americain.' They first had a store in an apartment building in the Charles Village neighborhood, right next to where I lived. The shop later relocated a short distance away to a small plaza on Cold Spring Lane. 

 

It was a place I visited regularly, but sadly, it closed in 2014, done in by the advent of Netflix, Redbox, and streaming.

So, let's go back in time 30-40 years, to the days when you got your VHS or DVD rental from Blockbuster (or Video Americain) and you popped it into your console or your dedicated player and you hoped (at least, with VHS) that the previous renter had taken the courtesy to rewind the tape before returning it to the shop, and the film was watchable. 

 

And after you got done watching the tape you of course conscientiously rewound it and popped it back into the plastic box and set it on the hallway table because you knew that if you failed to return it to the rental place by its return day, you'd be charged late fees.......

Or maybe you were lucky enough to have a theater or two that would show 'midnight movies.' Or perhaps a local university, like the Homewood campus of Johns Hopkins, or the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), would screen something offbeat, and non-students were welcome to attend (nowadays you can't even open the front door of a building on these campuses without having an officially issued keycard).

In order to know which films would appeal to you, well, you relied on zines and books about trash cinema to guide your choices.......so here's stuff that I resurrected from the boxes in my basement.

One thing to note is that many of the trash cinema guidebooks first published 20-30 years ago, are long out of print, and copies that come up for sale at the usual online vendors have steep asking prices. With these overviews, I hope to give would-be purchasers some idea of what they might be getting for their hard-earned cash..........