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Cult Cinema: An Arrow Video Companion Review
Creating Its Own Niche
♦Tripwire’s Consulting TV Editor Hugh David takes a look at new book Cult Cinema: An Arrow Video Companion, which celebrates the uniquely British video and home entertainment label…
Cult Cinema: An Arrow Video Companion
(Ltd.Edn. h/b, 246pp. Pib: 28/03/2016)
In a time of waning sales, online rivals and the resurgence of the live experience, Arrow have become the success story among British home video labels to talk about. Both their Arrow Video label and their Arrow Academy label have forged ahead into content areas previously once the province of Criterion in the U.S. or Tartan in the U.K., and after a hiccup-riddled start have settled into what seems to be a steady flow of prime product eagerly pre-ordered by discerning cinephiles and schlock fans alike from around the world.
Cue this coffee-table tome, a celebration of the kind of cinema Arrow Video has made its province, and very much the kind of luxury item one does not expect from independent labels any more. (Tie-in books these days seem to be reserved for major labels with superhero- or VFX-heavy blockbusters to tart up on shelves.) It’s certainly more than just a cash-in; fully a third of the essays are newly commissioned rather than culled from their extensive library of booklet-based ones, while there is art both new and old, and an intro from British filmmaker Ben Wheatley, who, like his friend Gareth Evans, form part of the latest generation raised on the very cinema Arrow Video now re-releases. It certainly makes for a fine purchase for the dedicated fan, whether for themselves or gifted to them.
Full disclosure: this writer has either worked with or is acquaintances with at least five of the scribes published therein, as well as for the sales company Arrow used at the very start of the journey for this label. However, that was in a previous career, and now it is a pleasure to be reviewing this as something of a milestone for Arrow as they take the big risk and try to crack the American market. The latter has killed more than one British label before (Tartan is the most obvious example), so one hopes this book does not come to signify the beginning of an end. Nevertheless, for all the positives so far, it is worth highlighting a few things that niggle, and almost certainly not just this reader.
The authors who fare best are those with a track record of being well-published authorities on their subjects. Film fans will already have been aware of the likes of Tim Lucas, Alan Jones, Kim Newman, Tom Mes and Jasper Sharp before ever reading their work here, which means a guaranteed level of both intellectual and emotional pleasure from them. That, however, also means the bar is set ridiculously high for some of the lesser-known authors, and while most of them hurdle it with ease, a couple come a cropper due to lack of perspective, rigour or simply breadth of knowledge. One does not know the brief they were given or the pressures they were under to deliver, so one is tempted to err on the side of generosity toward the enterprise as a whole, but one should not go in expecting every single new essay to satisfy.
That said and done, it’s a fine collection that certainly wins on points, and is a much handier way to re-read some of the best film writing published with discs of the last six years than reaching for booklets inside cases inside slipcases. We highly doubt that Arrow Video fan themselves will be disappointed, and if it means more people buy those in-depth books published by the individual authors in order to dig deeper into their favourite genres and subgenres then so much the better.
HUGH DAVID
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