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 the "Chucky Lou A/V Club has a new collection to offer. It concentrates 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.

The "Chucky Lou" AV club takes its name from an extra accessible right off the disc's main menu page, a short educational subject about the life of a Woodchuck named Lou. The trailers themselves are individually accessible by name on four subsequent menus. They're arranged in a somewhat random order and broken up with frequent theatrical announcements, for the concession stand, etc.

Some of the prints are faded but all are intact. A quick look at the list below shows quite a few rarities mixed in with familiar titles. All This & WWII is as lame as I remember it being when new and Blacula is a dull entry, but the other material ranges from Sonny Chiba kung-fu to oddball musical rarities like Abba: The Movie and Musical Mutiny (featuring The Iron Butterfly). I was surprised to finally see footage from the rarely-shown Kiss the Girls and Make them Die and Albert Zugsmith's elusive Movie Star American Style or LSD I Hate You. This is the perfect way to get a taste of nonsense like The Wild World of Batwoman without having to actually be seen renting the title. There's plenty of R and probably X-rated material here, so it's no kid's show. Some really nasty moments in The Molesters and The Sin Syndicate are rather sobering. Then again, the silliest title is Bruka, Queen of Evil, a Phillipino horror picture with irresistably terrible hand-lettered title cards.

Beyond the trash are 'special shoot' trailers for Real Life (3-D!) and Stanley Kramer's unwatchable Bless the Beasts and Children, no-scenes graphics-only teasers for The Telephone Book and Hieronymous Merkin, and the truly sleazy Bakshi animation for the indefensible Coonskin. Rounding the collection off are the zonked-out coming attractions for Zabriskie Point ("How you get there ... Depends on Where You're At!") and Jonathan Living Seagull, a film in a badness category of its own. I remember this turkey playing to empty houses in Westwood with Neil Diamond's gloppy songs echoing over endless shots of dumb-cluck seagulls .... yeesh. Barbara Hershey is a great actress, but she really must have been over the rainbow to have her named changed on account of this. ²