A thousand cuts The bizarre underground world of collectors and dealers who saved the movies

Review by Booklist Review

Did you know that, if it weren't for a film historian's inability to procure a copy of a classic Cary Grant movie, we might never have had to endure the execrable 1973 musical version of Lost Horizon? If you didn't know that, this book will be a real eye-opener, but even if you did, you'll probably find other other stuff here that will come as a surprise (like the guy who's dedicated his life to preserving a single movie, 1962's The Day of the Triffids). The authors introduce us to collectors of horror/SF, sexpoloitation, short subjects, TV shows you name it, there's someone out there whose life revolves around it. And all these diverse people have one thing in common: a love for film. In a time when more and more images are purely electronic, this book will provide a much-needed boost to the spirits of movie fans who fear that photographic film the stuff that comes in rolls is disappearing from our planet.--Pitt, David Copyright 2016 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

---

Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

This entertaining chronicle from filmmaker Bartok and film archivist Joseph highlights a clandestine, largely bygone world of film print collectors. Long before DVD and Blu-ray, when VHS was still in its infancy, these collectors would buy, sell, trade, and copy movies. This hobby could be legitimate, legally ambiguous, or flat-out illegal. Critic Leonard Maltin's large collection of vintage short films is on the up-and-up, but Bartok and Joseph recount the great December 1974 film bust at the home of actor Roddy McDowall, of Planet of the Apes fame, from whom the FBI seized more 1,000 videos and 160 film prints. Their combined worth was comically overestimated at above $5 million. What this book does particularly well is capture the collectors' passion-the "illness of collecting," as it's called a few times. There's the collector who's spent 30 years to protect one B-grade science fiction film, The Day of the Triffids, and another just as obsessed with a 1927 biopic of Napoleon by French director Abel Gance. These are warm histories of eccentrics, each story by itself a kind of minor-key Moby-Dick. Taken together, they amount to an elegiac portrait of a vanishing filmic subculture. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

---

Review by Library Journal Review

Filmmaker/screenwriter Bartok and motion picture archivist Joseph call this book a "mad Irish wake" for a film collecting subculture, which is part business, cult, and hobby, pursued by mostly aging white males who have made it their life's passion. Well-known figures (Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne; film historians Leonard Maltin and Kevin Brownlow; Gremlins director Joe Dante) are interviewed, plus colorful characters such as one man who has devoted decades to restoring an obscure 1960s sf "B" movie, The Day of the Triffids. Another man unearths old sexploitation gems. Some collectors have paid a high price for their interests, notably the late actor Roddy McDowall, who suffered public humiliation and reduced career opportunities in the 1970s, when the FBI confiscated his collection of allegedly illegal prints. Although many collectors perform a valuable preservation service, the authors feel that for many, film collecting represents a retreat into a safety zone of childhood security. VERDICT With humor and discrimination, this work presents a fascinating, sympathetic, and finally poignant look at a dying "underworld" of film collecting.-Stephen Rees, formerly with Levittown Lib., PA © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

---