A mail order company called Sinister Cinema used to have sixty or seventy volumes of compilations of theatrical coming attractions, usually based on genre. Before many of the full films were available on home video, these trailers were often one's first opportunity to get a glimpse at obscure horror and science fiction titles.

There have been trailer compilation DVDs of varying quality and now two micro-label DVD outfits have new collections to offer. Both concentrate roughly on sleazy pulp from the 1960s and 1970s, with bizarre cultural oddities mixed in. Unlike the old Sinister Cinema tapes the quality here is consistently good and all of the trailers are mastered from 35mm prints. At the present time, both DVDs are available only online.

Ban One Productions' first trailer instalment concentrates on the Horror genre, although some sex & sadism titles end up in quasi-porn territory anyway. The overall quality of transfer and encoding is even better than on the competing DVD. The list below isn't in disc order but the trailers are this time individually accessible, and there are other extras in the form of galleries of lobby cards, etc.

Starting with a late 60s reissue trailer for Freaks, the 42nd Street collection stays mostly with the kind of film that would be grindhouse fodder, with a few interesting digressions. Jack Cardiff's silly The Mutations is here, along with Bob Clark's influential Black Christmas and the splatterfest Mark of the Devil 2. Unrelated to horror but very welcome is a trailer for Otto Preminger's Skiddoo (with Carol Channing's demented title song). You couldn't get me near Chatterbox and the trailer here helps banish any residual curiosity. There are a couple of cannibalism titles, hillbilly sleaze epics, blaxploitation crudities and marginal trash pictures with titles remembered from low-rent marquees, like The Aroused and Virgin Witch. One special title is Michael Reeves' Revenge of the Blood Beast, a rare Barbara Steele film that I've only seen in unwatchable flat VHS copies. This widescreen trailer has perfect color and makes one hope the title will be restored some day soon.

The collection ends with a real coup, an original German theatrical trailer for Salo, the 120 Days of Sodom in excellent condition. This is surely the classiest, most disturbingly valid film ever made.  ¹ The trailer barely has to show anything to give us the impression of a peek into the heart of true depravity - and it's put together with a classy art-film sell. Brrrr.