Vinegar Syndrome’s New Label Reviver: Bringing Lost Films Back to Life
Back in 1993, Mike Vraney ran a bootleg VHS label specializing in low-budget and forgotten genre and exploitation films named Something Weird Video when he received a tip from his friend that an old film laboratory in NYC was going out of business. In the days when producers needed to send their films to laboratories to be developed, any films that were developed but never picked up by the producers for one reason or another (typically because they couldn’t pay the bill) were left behind at the lab. Then, when the lab finally closed down, most of these orphan films ended up in the trash. When Vraney heard that Movielab in NYC was closing their doors, he enlisted friend and fellow cult film expert Frank Henenlotter (the director of Basket Case) to make the trek with him and, for hours, they wandered through the vast warehouse of forgotten films destined for the dumpster pile and grabbed as many as they could feasibly take (by all accounts, a couple of warehouses worth). This haul formed the basis for much of Something Weird’s catalog for years to come, a collection of some of the strangest, most esoteric corners of film history that continues to define the cult cinema canon to this day.
Mike Vraney of Something Weird Video
Much of the joy of a Something Weird Video VHS tape or DVD came as much, if not more, from the joy of discovery as it did from the actual films contained in each release. Vraney and Henenlotter described going through the Movielab warehouse like kids in a candy store years later, expressing bemused bafflement at such titles they had never heard of like Monster of Camp Sunshine or Fiend of Dope Island. To them, uncovering these lost films and releasing them to the public was more than a business decision, it was a mission statement. Each release seemed to say, “We know these films may not be very good, but isn’t it incredible that they exist and isn’t it good that it still survives?” In a way, Vraney and the whole Something Weird team took audiences into that Movielab warehouse so everyone could share in the joy of discovering films previously thought lost to time, if they were even thought of at all.
Eleven years after Vraney’s death, the ethos of Something Weird has been resurrected in Reviver, a new sublabel of Vinegar Syndrome, the popular boutique Blu-ray distributor. While many in the collector’s market know Vinegar Syndrome for their high-quality releases of genre, exploitation, and cult films from all across history, home media isn’t their only area of focus. Operating out of a warehouse in Bridgeport, CT, they also maintain one of the largest film archives in the country dedicated to preserving the weirdest and the most psychotronic movies in existence. The archive houses thousands upon thousands of film reels, original negatives, release prints, and audio tracks - and the craziest part is that they still haven’t cataloged everything that’s in their archive. Speaking to the archivists who work tirelessly at Vinegar Syndrome headquarters, it sounds like every day is another discovery waiting to happen; a moment when you come across a film canister with an enticing title and thinking “What could this possibly be?”
Head archivist Oscar Becher, much like Vraney before him, wants to bring this thrill of discovery to Blu-ray collectors with Reviver. This new sublabel will focus exclusively on releasing previously lost films, many of which were discovered in the Vinegar Syndrome archives. These will be films that have not seen an audience since their original release, some from exploitation filmmakers who have made notable titles in the cult movie canon, presented to consumers in a surprising new way: Viewers won’t actually know the title of the movie when they buy it. Each Reviver title will be released by number only, with packaging made to represent the original canisters or packaging VS received the film in. Much like a film archivist wouldn’t know what a movie was until they spooled it through a projector, Reviver customers won’t know the film until they put the disc in their player, and to make it even more similar to the experience of discovering a lost film, the discs forego menus and instead throw the audience right into the movie. As Becher says, “as soon as you press play, you’re going to be seeing a movie that was thought to be lost until now.”
Archivist Oscar Becher winding through the first mystery release from Reviver
It’s certainly a marketing gamble, and for what it’s worth, Reviver will be providing audiences with hints about what each disc contains, but the titles will remain a secret until customers receive their discs in the mail or buy them at their local video store. That said, Vinegar Syndrome has steadily grown this interest in “lost” films for well over a decade. Their first release was three of pioneering horror director Herschell Gordon Lewis’s sexploitation films, released in one box under the title “The Lost Films of Herschell Gordon Lewis.” The three films contained on that box - Linda and Abilene, The Ecstasies of Women, and Black Love - were not only thought to be lost to time; conflicting reports indicated that they may have never existed in the first place (especially if you asked Lewis himself, who denied ever making them).
To release them all in one fell swoop was an impressive gauntlet throw, and while VS has grown immensely since that time and released closer-to-mainstream fare like Dirty Work, The Amityville Horror, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, and more in the last few years, they’ve never abandoned their mission to restore and release these lost films. In 2023, to celebrate 10 years in business, they put together a boxset called “Vinegar Syndrome’s Lost Picture Show,” a collection of 10 films from their archive that were assumed lost. Unlike Reviver, customers knew the title of each film on this set before they bought it, but it still took the risk that audiences would be willing to buy something without knowing if they would like any of the films on the set. To give audiences their money’s worth, they loaded the box with special features like audio commentaries, other surviving film elements they uncovered like outtakes or trailers, two booklets of essays about each film and their makers, and a full feature-length documentary on the various home video studios dedicated to preserving rare and lost genre films.
Reviver titles will be similarly packed to the gills, but what you get will depend on the title and what’s available. One release may have an in-depth look at the filmmaker behind the feature available on the disc, another may contain two or three features all sharing a similar genre or themes much like a drive-in triple feature, and still another may contain a vast collection of shorts and various rare ephemera the Vinegar Syndrome team has uncovered in their archive. Some will also include behind-the-scenes looks at the preservation and restoration process of these films, much like “Lost Picture Show” provided.
Everything will be transferred via 4K, but they won’t be overly cleaned up or tidied. Typically, when films are digitally transferred and restored for home video, the restoration team will take the film through a process called “de-dusting,” clearing the image of any dust, dirt, or debris to provide the clearest image possible. Much like Something Weird before them, Reviver will forego any de-dusting to provide the films as they were initially discovered, treating the film as a piece of living history and bearing the marks of its creation and exhibition. Each film will still be meticulously scanned and color-corrected, but the goal is to let viewers feel like they pulled the film cans off the shelf themselves.
A peek inside some of the hundreds of shelves in the Vinegar Syndrome Film Archive
One of the most important aspects of these releases, especially for a company dedicated to film preservation, is that 100% of the profits from each release will go to funding the upkeep of the Vinegar Syndrome Film Archive. The problems any film archive faces typically boils down to financing - having enough money to afford to keep a large, cavernous space cold and dry, and having enough modern plastic film cans to keep moisture out and prevent film’s fading or shrinkage. Air-conditioning doesn’t come cheap for large spaces, and beyond the appeal of discovering previously lost films, the hope is that customers will want to support Vinegar Syndrome’s preservation mission through their purchase of Reviver discs.
Too often, the internet has given movie buffs the illusion of access, that every movie in recent memory will be available online somewhere in high-definition whenever you want to watch it. But the reality is that most films still only exist in poor transfers, old and outdated home video releases, or - in the case of Reviver’s slate of releases - as film reels rotting away in storage units or basements somewhere waiting to be rediscovered. As anybody who studies film knows well, film history is never finished; it’s always waiting to be rewritten through new discoveries and findings that change the way we see cinema. In the 1980s, Doris Wishman was a forgotten exploitation filmmaker working in a Florida sex shop, resigned to a label of being “one of the worst directors of all time,” but the systematic rediscovery and restoration of her films by genre film collectors and archivists has led to a discovery and reappraisal, to the point of having academic books written about her films and highlighted collections on the Criterion Channel.
Only time will tell if any of the titles Reviver releases to the public will enter the cult film canon, but beyond cultural impact, the most important element of film preservation is that any little nook and cranny of film history is uncovered and made available to the public. But much like Something Weird Video before them, the ethos behind Reviver is a desire to take viewers on a journey of discovery, metaphorically walking them through an archive and pulling something off a shelf that hadn’t been seen by anybody in decades. That ought to be catnip for any historian, preservationist, or crate-digger worldwide.