TRAILER-A-RAMA VOLUME 1: 101 MINUTES OF SLEAZE! (2015) ** ½

It’s pretty hard to screw up a horror trailer compilation, but the makers of Trailer-A-Rama Volume 1:  101 Minutes of Sleaze! come awful close to doing just that.  Typically, with these kinds of things, the previews are taken from theatrical, drive-in, or home video trailers.  This collection uses trailers from recent DVD releases, which does very little to add to the nostalgia factor.  I mean “Coming Soon to DVD” just doesn’t have the same ring as “Coming Soon to a Theater Near You”.  

Even worse is the fact that many of the trailers are for home video rereleases.  You know, the kind where they take an old movie and recut the trailer to make it look like a new one.  It’s pretty stupid if you ask me.  (Examples include Beyond Tomorrow, Texas Lightning, and The Gardener.)  It also doesn’t help that many of the trailers are taken from the same handful of home video companies such as Media Blasters (Banned, Devil Dog:  The Hound of Hell, and Anthropophagus, AKA:  The Grim Reaper), Subversive Cinema (The Candy Snatchers, Dust Devil:  The Final Cut, and The Wild Blue Yonder), and Universal (Cult of the Cobra, Dr. Cyclops, and The Land Unknown), so there is little in the way of variety, studio-wise.  Also, if you’re already familiar with the distributors’ output, you can probably anticipate what trailers will be shown which takes some of the fun out of it.  There’s also way too many trailers for Mark Savage movies (Defenceless:  A Blood Symphony, Marauders, and Sensitive New Age Killer) for my taste.  

Trailer-A-Rama even commits the cardinal sin of trailer compilations:  Repeating the same trailer twice!  Since it was for Joe D’Amato’s classic, Beyond the Darkness (“If you enjoy the violent emotions, this film is for you!”), I can’t get too worked up about it.  

Okay, so now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, this isn’t really a bad collection, if you can get past all the DVD trailers and newly recut ads.  In fact, the actual, authentic, old-school trailers are a lot of fun.  Some of the highlights include The Big Doll House, Girls Nite Out, The Godson, The Grapes of Death, and Mystics in Bali.  There are also a lot of Filmirage titles (Troll 2, Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals, Stage Fright, and Porno Holocaust) in the second act, which certainly helps to offset the amount of newfangled ads.

The complete line-up includes:  A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, Bad Inclination, Banned, Beyond the Darkness, The Big Doll House, The Candy Snatchers, Castle of Blood, Cult of the Cobra, Defenceless:  A Blood Symphony (two trailers, actually), Devil Dog:  The Hound of Hell, Dr. Cyclops, Dust Devil:  The Final Cut, The Fiendish Ghouls (AKA:  Mania), Girls Nite Out, The Godson, The Grapes of Death, The Grindhouse Trash Collection DVD box set, Hell’s Bloody Devils, Anthropophagus (AKA:  The Grim Reaper), Beyond the Darkness (again), Troll 2, Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals, Stage Fright, Porno Holocaust, Witchcraft:  Evil Encounters (AKA:  Witchery), Killing Birds (AKA:  Zombie 5), Hitcher in the Dark, Death Smiles at Murder, Just Before Dawn, The Land Unknown, Last Cannibal World (AKA:  Jungle Holocaust), Marauders, Mystics in Bali, Prey, The Revenge of the Living Dead Girls, Sensitive New Age Killer, Shadow:  Dead Riot, Beyond Tomorrow, SS Experiment Love Camp, Texas Lightning, The Wild Blue Yonder, They’re Coming to Get You (AKA:  All the Colors of the Dark), and Zombies 2 (AKA:  Zombie).