Portable Grindhouse: The Lost Art of the VHS Box, Vol. 1 (v. 1) [Paperback]

Jacques Boyreau (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 31, 2009

It's like having your very own drive-in... at home! Portable Grindhouse reprints some of the most louche, decadent, minimo-pervo artwork to ever grace a VHS box, featuring such movies as From Beyond, Cop Killers, and Cocaine Wars. A feast for exploitation cognoscenti, Portable Grindhouse 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: "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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“This book presents the most beautiful and lurid VHS boxes ever produced. ...Jacques Boyreau made something special that a lot of people are going to love owning. …[T]he introductory essay is a revelatory piece on the importance of VHS and the role it played in cinematic history.” (Nick Gazin - Vice )

“It’s the perfect book for anyone who understands the art of the guilty pleasure and the joy in a terrifically bad movie, as well as those who took great joy in the hunt for home video entertainment. Portable Grindhouse: The Lost Art of the VHS Box gets two thumbs WAY up!” (Chad Derdowski - Mania )

“Compiled by Portland, Oregon-based trash cinema expert Jacques Boyreau, Portable Grindhouse honors the pulp video era that inspired Quentin Tarantino.” (Hugh Hart - Wired )

“If you are feeling nostalgic for the days of scanning shelves full of well worn VHS tapes at your local video store, I recommend Portable Grindhouse: The Lost Art of the VHS Box.” (Modcult )

“If you own only one art book featuring a back-cover illustration of Don 'The Dragon' Wilson, make it this one. And be sure to rewind, or I’ll have to charge a dollar to your account.” (Rod Lott - Bookgasm )

“Readers will be agog at the plethora of supertrash movie titles, and then move on to rediscover the anarchic box designs.” (Flip Kart )

“This awesome picture book… [is] filled with a delightfully odd array of vintage video covers... VHS cassettes may be treated like toxic waste in the age of the Blu-ray, but Portable Grindhouse offers that micro minority who still remain faithful to their trusty VCR a long overdue reprieve.” (Ronald Hart - Popmatters )

“A nice book to have on the shelf, particularly for folks who love movies and are interested in how design has changed over the years. If you still spend time wandering around video stores looking for the weird and wonderful, check this book out.” (Syung Myung Me - Kittysneezes )

“Packaged lovingly to resemble an VHS tape from days gone by, the book Portable Grindhouse: The Lost Art of the VHS Box contains some of the greatest crap-rack video covers of all time.” (The Incubator )

“Packaged in an ingenious VHS-like format, the book comes complete with lofty intro... But the fun is paging through these lurid examples of videos you kind of forget you remember, like Streets of Fire or The Legend of Hell House.” (Kristi Turnquist - The Oregonian )

“The packaging... is brilliant and the actual product is no less magnificent. … The high resolution pictures and scans of each of the films are almost like you are holding the original. ... This is a 'must-have' for genre fans, collectors and art lovers alike.” (Cinesploitation )

“Boyreau laments how digital phased out analog when it comes to our movie viewing; has the Internet done the same with his book commemorating the losing side of that battle? I say no. It's not just because of the tremendous job Boyreau and [designer Jacob] Covey did with the cover reproductions, or the lovely, solid paper stock, or the cutesy slipcase. It's because Boyreau is right: the aura of the object is irreplaceable. A book collection of VHS box art contains preserves what was special about them in a way a Flickr gallery just can't. Next time you have a trashy movie marathon, pass this around between movies—unlike your laptop, you won't even need to worry that much about spilling beer on it.” (Sean T. Collins )

“[M]ore than a stunning collection of VHS box art. …[I]f you don’t feel a sense of loss over the current state of DVD box art, you just don’t have any feelings. ...[A] book as lovingly edited as this could only have been put together by someone whose appreciation for these objects is matched by a real love of cinema.” (Matthew Caron - Vol. 1 Brooklyn )

“Portable Grindhouse: The Lost Art Of The VHS Box is a dose of heavy design nostalgia for those of us who haunted (or worked in) video stores in the 80s and 90s. So many gloriously awful titles are given their due here.” (Kevin Church - BeaucoupKevin.com )

“Portable Grindhouse celebrates the sleazy kick of killing time in a slightly crappy video rental store, minus the inevitable arguments about what to rent or the possibility of your VCR eating the tape.” (Dave Howlett - Living Between Wednesdays )

About the Author

Jacques Boyreau is a writer, curator, and trash cinema auteur living in Portland, OR.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Fantagraphics Books; Slipcased edition (December 31, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560979690
• ISBN-13: 978-1560979692
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #171,298 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Slapped together..., December 15, 2009

By 

BronzeHorse - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Portable Grindhouse: The Lost Art of the VHS Box, Vol. 1 (v. 1) (Paperback)

A VERY dissapointing book. Although the packaging is cool, the book itself is a MAJOR letdown. Anyone expecting rare titles and wild artwork will be very poorly served by this book. For example, when I think "grindhouse" or "lost art of the VHS," I'm not exactly thinking Greatest Sports Legends starring Johnny Bench, Bowhunting Whitetails: Just For Fun!, or Network (???). Granted there are a FEW good titles here, Nightmare Circus (ANYTHING from Regal seems to have fun artwork), Night of Bloody Horror, and Video Violence. Next time, Fantagraphics might want to spend less on a fancy slipcover with blood spatters, and concentrate on producing a book with worthy art. This effort seems slapdash. I would recommend The Art of the Nasty if you're looking for interesting VHS artwork (albeit tapes from the UK Video Nasty era).

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Rare disappointment from Fantagraphics. More like a DIY art project., January 1, 2010

By 

Steven I. Ramm "Steve Ramm "Anything Phon... (Phila, PA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Portable Grindhouse: The Lost Art of the VHS Box, Vol. 1 (v. 1) (Paperback)

I have to agree with Bronze Horse (reviewer) on this. Fantagraphics is one of my favorite Graphic Arts publishers and the packaging here is great! But the inside comes off like a "poor man's Taschen" book with little input from the author as to why these (mostly) B movies are fun.

A lot of the VHS boxes would appear in the "cult" or "late night" or "horror" section of your local Video store. My store still has many of these VHS tapes because they never made it to DVD (and SOMEONE must be renting them!). There are a few comedies like "Going Ape" and the Jerry Lewis "Don't Raise The Bridge, Lower the Water". And why the 1940s "Dick Tracy" is here, I can't imagine. Most are from the minor video companies like Regal, Paragon and Media. And the only real MAJOR company is Paramount - with a few. No Fox,; no Warners. Except for a 4-page essay in the front (and no index in the back) there is nothing here except images of front and back of the boxes. (some even have rental coding labels). And not even dates for these films. More of a DIY project that any VHS collector (or former video store owner) could put together.

I'll chalk this one up as one that slipped through Fantagraphics editorial department.

Steve Ramm

"Anything Phonographic"

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Trip Down Memory Lane, February 12, 2010

By 

Daniel Kepley (Viola, DE USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Portable Grindhouse: The Lost Art of the VHS Box, Vol. 1 (v. 1) (Paperback)

Growing up during the late 1980's-90's, my favorite hangout was the video store. I used to roam around the video stores, looking at the VHS covers like I was in an art gallery. Of course, my favorite sections were the Horror and Sci-Fi sections because those films had THE best cover art ever! Of course, some of them gave me nightmares (and I hadn't even watched them at all, let alone remember them). The video store experience is in part what made me such a film buff, along with reading a few Leonard Maltin books.

Jacques Boyreau has recaptured the video store experience with his book PORTABLE GRINDHOUSE. Starting with a great introduction that recreates the experience of when VCRs were in vogue and when VHS was THE home entertainment format, Boyreau presents us with 200 pages worth of VHS box art! There's the familiar horror box art we know and love, a few mainstream releases, instructional videos, and some surprises. Flipping through this book brought back many memories of my youth! I sure hope that there will be a Volume 2 soon, since there is so much more to be seen!