Portable Grindhouse: The Lost Art of the Vhs Box
Fantagraphics Books, December 2009. Trade Paperback. Item #434022
ISBN: 1560979690
99 pages. Paperback in VHS facsimile slipcase. A near fine paperback copy in fine slipcase. A couple small dents on bottom of page block, else fine.
Portable Grindhouse: The Lost Art of the VHS Box reprints some of the most louche, decadent, minimo-pervo artwork to ever grace a VHS box, featuring such movies as From Beyond, Penitentiary II, Beast of the Yellow Night, Cop Killers, Bay of Blood, Escape from Death Row, and Cocaine Wars. A feast for exploitation cognoscenti, The Lost Art of the VHS Box is a portable grindhouse. Readers will be agog at the plethora of supertrash movie titles, and then move on to rediscover the anarchic box designs. Throughout, editor and cultural historian Jacques Boyreau succinctly narrates the household-piercing story of VHS:
"On par with the jukebox, disco, and neon, VHS reformatted the world's product-intake and boosted a libertarian aesthetic that conquered TV in the same way TV conquered comic books in the 1950s, and allowed us to hold movies in our hands. Posters in the lobby could advertise, even fetishize a movie; credit sequences could identify the participants, but somehow, VHS box-art 'became' the iconic equivalent of the movie."
Portable Grindhouse is published in a VHS "format," slyly packaged inside a facsimile VHS box, and contains almost a hundred reproductions of VHS art with commentary.
Price: $20.00