Michael Lee Aday, known professionally as Meat Loaf, was an American singer and actor known for his powerful, wide-ranging voice and theatrical live shows. He is one of the best selling music artists in history. His Bat Out of Hell trilogy—Bat Out of Hell (1977), Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell (1993), and Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose (2006)—has sold more than 100 million records worldwide. The first album stayed on the charts for over nine years, as of 2016 still sold an estimated 200,000 copies annually, and is on the list of bestselling albums.
The VHS is a standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes, invented in 1976 by the Victor Company of Japan (JVC). It was the dominant home video format throughout the tape media period in the 1980s and 1990s.
The Ring is a 2002 American psychological supernatural horror film directed by Gore Verbinski and written by Ehren Kruger, and stars Naomi Watts, Martin Henderson, David Dorfman, Jane Alexander and Brian Cox. It is a remake of Hideo Nakata's 1998 film Ring, based on the 1991 novel by Koji Suzuki. Watts plays Rachel Keller, a journalist who discovers a cursed videotape that kills the viewer seven days after viewing it.
Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 is a 2000 American horror film directed and co-written by Joe Berlinger and starring Jeffrey Donovan, Stephen Barker Turner, Kim Director, Erica Leerhsen, and Tristine Skyler. Its plot revolves around a group of people fascinated by the mythology surrounding the film The Blair Witch Project; they go into the Black Hills where the original film was shot and experience supernatural phenomena and psychological unraveling.
Alexander Winter is a British and American actor. He played the slacker Bill S. Preston Esq. in the 1989 film Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and its sequels Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (1991) and Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020). He is also known for his role as Marko in the 1987 vampire film The Lost Boys; for co-writing, co-directing, and starring in the 1993 film Freaked; and for directing documentaries in the 2010s.
Streetwise is a 1984 documentary film by director Martin Bell chronicling the lives of homeless youth on the streets of Seattle. It followed in the wake of a July 1983 Life magazine article, "Streets of the Lost", by writer Cheryl McCall and photographer Mary Ellen Mark.
The Nona Tapes is a 1995 mockumentary by the American rock band Alice in Chains directed by Rocky Schenck to promote the band's self-titled album. Released on VHS on December 12, 1995, it features journalist Nona Weisbaum interviewing the band in Seattle and also includes the music video for the album's lead single, "Grind", and outtake footage overdubbed with the second single, "Heaven Beside You". The Nona Tapes peaked at No. 23 on Billboard's Top Video Sales and at No. 25 on the Top Music Videos chart. Because it is no longer for sale, original copies of the VHS are considered a rarity. However, in 2006, Best Buy offered a DVD version for free for a limited time with purchases of the compilation The Essential Alice in Chains. On June 19, 2017, Alice in Chains' official Vevo channel uploaded the video on YouTube.
The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters is a 2007 American documentary film about competitive arcade gaming directed by Seth Gordon. It follows Steve Wiebe in his attempts to take the high score record for the 1981 arcade game Donkey Kong from Billy Mitchell. The film premiered at the 2007 Slamdance Film Festival and was released in U.S. theaters in August 2007. It received positive reviews.
Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! is a 2008 documentary film about the Australian New Wave of 1970s and 1980s low-budget cinema. The film was written and directed by Mark Hartley, who interviewed over eighty Australian, American and British actors, directors, screenwriters and producers, including Quentin Tarantino, Brian Trenchard-Smith, Jamie Lee Curtis, Dennis Hopper, George Lazenby, George Miller, Barry Humphries, Stacy Keach, John Seale and Roger Ward.
Crypticon is a horror-oriented media convention held annually in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Seattle, Washington, and Kansas City, Missouri. Guests have included authors, actors, directors, producers, and writers from classic and upcoming horror titles.
V/H/S is a 2012 American found footage horror anthology film and the first installment in the V/H/S franchise created by Brad Miska and Bloody Disgusting and produced by Miska and Roxanne Benjamin. It features a series of found footage shorts written and directed by Adam Wingard, David Bruckner, Ti West, Glenn McQuaid, Joe Swanberg, and the filmmaking collective Radio Silence.
Gorman Bechard is an American film director, screenwriter and novelist best known for his independent feature films Psychos in Love,Friends, and You Are Alone; his four rock documentaries Color Me Obsessed: A Film About the Replacements,What Did You Expect? The Archers of Loaf Live at Cat's Cradle,Every Everything: The Music, Life & Times of Grant Hart, and Who is Lydia Loveless?; his animal welfare documentary A Dog Named Gucci; and his debut novel The Second Greatest Story Ever Told.
VHX was a digital distribution platform targeting independent filmmakers. The platform allows artists to sell content directly from their own website, providing design, social media integration, search engine optimization, and analytics tools. In May 2016, VHX was acquired by Vimeo.
Rewind This! is a 2013 documentary film directed by Josh Johnson about the impact of VHS on the film industry and home video, as well as about collectors of videotapes.
Tales from the QuadeaD Zone is a 1987 American anthology blaxploitation horror film written, directed, and produced by Chester Novell Turner. The film was originally released straight to VHS. VHS copies of the film have become collector's items due to the difficulty of locating them and the extremely limited quantities produced, with one copy selling for $2000 on eBay.
Chester Novell Turner is an American filmmaker known for his blaxploitation horror films Black Devil Doll From Hell and Tales from the QuadeaD Zone. Since their releases in the 1980s, Turner's movies have developed cult followings and are considered to be much sought after collector's items. A copy of Black Devil Doll From Hell is currently archived by the Yale University Library and Turner's other movie was featured as part of a horror film symposium hosted by Yale University in 2016.
The 1966 Live Recordings is a 36-CD boxset of live recordings from the 1966 Live Tour by Bob Dylan, released on Legacy Records in November 2016. It includes every known recording from the tour, including audience tapes. Most of the set was unreleased at that point and some tapes never circulated before.
Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché is a 2018 documentary about the first female filmmaker Alice Guy-Blaché, directed by Pamela B. Green. It was screened out of competition at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival in the Cannes Classics category. It was nominated for the festival's L'Œil d'or documentary prize. Be Natural went on to screen at Telluride, Deauville American Film Festival, New York Film Festival, and London BFI Film Festival.
Analog horror is a subgenre of horror fiction and an offshoot of the found footage film genre, said to have originated online during the late 2000s and early 2010s with web series such as No Through Road, Local 58, Gemini Home Entertainment, and Marble Hornets.
Cult of VHS is a 2022 documentary film directed by Rob Preciado, that focuses on the age of VHS, eccentric collectors from around the globe, and the video nasties that became the centre of a controversial debate on censorship in the eighties and nineties.
