Mike Vraney started Something Weird Video back in the late 1980s as a tiny videocassette concern devoted to keeping such grindhouse artifacts as Herschell Gordon Lewis's gore movies and "Chesty Morgan" vehicles alive for movie freaks, pop culture addicts, and other perverts. When DVD marginalized even the mainstream VHS market, Vraney had the choice of going to the trouble of transferring his then-vast back catalog to the new format or getting a new hobby. To his credit, Something Weird jumped in with both feet, embracing the digital age by making a redoubled effort to find the best available source materials and then jam-packing their home-video versions of such obscurities as The Girl from Rio with interviews, archival materials and other special features, as well as unearthing such neglected finds as Brian De Palma's first no-budget feature, Murder a la Mod, which was assumed to have been lost even by the director himself. If all this effort means that Something Weird became, in the words of Pop Matters blogger Bill Gibron, "the Criterion of Crap," well, just because the compliment may be a little back-handed doesn't mean it's not a compliment. If these films are going to be preserved and made available, here's to SWV for doing it with a level of inventiveness, passion and panache that the majors would do well to emulate. Unfortunately, Something Weird has now ended its association with the DVD distributor Image Entertainment. It's the latest setback for a company that had other problems, such as seeing the licensers of some of its prize titles capitalizing on the attention that SWV had won for them by lighting out for greener pastures, and if the company isn't dead yet, Gibron thinks it's "the end of an era." His full, heartfelt tribute to SWV's achievement can be read here. — Phil Nugent
